Spouting Spidey Venom

Aunt May got it right. She sat there, Yoda-esque on her hospital bed in The Webbed One's second silver screen outing, and said to him... "You do too much... you're not Superman, you know!". Maybe someone should've said that to Sam Raimi and the scriptwriters for Spiderman 3 - You do too much... you aren't George Lucas you know!

Aah sweet disappointment. That tantalizing glimpse of genius in the middle of so much dross. The right source material, seemingly in the right hands, and yet the end result is so mundane... so gimmicky... it breaks my heart! And that in a nutshell was Spiderman 3. Still want a detailed review? Well, ok... and I'll try and avoid spoilers. So here goes...

With Spiderman 3, I experienced my first midnight showing of a movie and was treated to the expected fan audience. Lots of people in Spidey and Venom regalia, packed house (8 screens, same movie), and for once, hardly a geriatric in sight. From my experience over the last two years, that's saying something here in the US... and especially in Buffalo.

This movie had so many expectations to live up to... Long back, in my ecstatic Batman Begins review and general rant on heroes, I had summed up the first two movies in the series as follows:

Spiderman, to me, was always the Saturday afternoon cartoon on DD who spent 5 minutes in every 10 minute show simply swinging from building to building. The theme song from that badly drawn, worse animated (by today's standards) series is a classic that still plays in my head.

But who would've imagined that Sam Raimi, the guy that made Evil Dead, would make two amazing movies that would rock so hard and solidify Spidey's place in my head?...

Spiderman 1 is another amazing origin story... right up there with Superman and Batman Begins. Spiderman 2, as an internet reviewer called it, should've been named "The Passion of Peter Parker"... what a movie!

Here was the guy next door superhero. Played to perfection by Toby Maguire. But nuff said... enough accolades have been heaped on these movies recently, so I needn't say more...

Spiderman 3 breaks with this niceness... It feels as though a whole different team made it, and had no idea what happened in the two movies preceding it. It feels more like a one off "what if" story than anything else.

In fact, the one movie Spiderman 3 reminds me most of is "Superman Returns" in how it is a damp squib in the face of fantastic expectations. So I'll write this review in the same format as I did my Superman Returns review...

The Plot

I'm not sure this movie had a coherent plot - do let me know if you notice one when you watch it! It was as if somebody made a really stupid Fanboy a studio executive when he grew up, and got him to 'tweak' the movie's script based on what he recalled of the time he used to play with his action figures. Here's how their development meeting would've gone:

So Spidey battles THREE villains instead of the boring one (OOOOOOH!! says the Studio) and we finally get to see the Sandman and Venom (AAAAAAAH!!) and oh yeah... they put in Gwen Stacy baby! (OH BEHAVE!!) and, and, there's a funny little track with J Jonah Jameson (HA HA HA!!) and Tobey Maguire finally gets to play Anakin Skywa... I mean... Peter Parker with some style (SWOOOON!!) and you know, when he does that snazzy li'l sashay, he'll remind your mom of Gene Kelly (GEEEEE!!).

Oh, give me a break!

Performances

Tobey Maguire - B+ (His 'dark side' is more like the burnt side of a greasy toast)
Kirsten Dunst - C (Insipid, most insipid... its not hard to understand why MJ gets fired from Broadway! Somebody give her a personality)
James Franco - A (He's actually pretty darn good in the movie. I liked how he came across as vulnerable and yet fierce. But he was working in the face of impossible odds)
Thomas Hayden Church - A- (He passes muster acting wise with his really expressive close up shots, but just doesn't have a meaty enough role or adequate screen time)
Topher Grace - B+ (Doesn't really leave That 70's Show behind... and is LAAAAME in the church scene... the whole scene is lame actually.)
Bryce Dallas Howard - C (She should go back into the water... and stay there! Vapid performance)

What Works

1. The look and the special effects. The action sequences really are rather well designed... although in the climactic fight MJ is too ruddy helpless and gets into the same type of trouble too often (Look Spidey... that cab is coming at me!! Look Spidey... that cab is coming at me!! Look Spidey...) Technically well executed flick otherwise.

2. James Franco and Thomas Hayden Church. In a movie that feels surprisingly superficial given its predecessors, these guys elevate proceedings to some dramatic height. Or maybe they were just the best things in an otherwise lacklustre cast.

What Fizzles

1. Too much Star Wars inspiration - Peter Parker dealing with his "dark side" and particularly the romantic scenes between him and MJ remind us (painfully) of the equivalents in Attack of the Clones between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. Not to spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that at one point when Spidey was caught in a bad place and was very unsubtly waiting for his savior (Han Solo in his Millennium Falcob anyone?), I was so bored I grunted like Chewie.

2. Too much going on in general - They should've stuck to two villains instead of three - drop either Venom or Sandman, and the movie would've had the time to treat the source material with the respect it deserved when it came to plotting and screenplay.

3. Where is the Passion of Peter Parker? - When in the name of all that is holy did Spiderman get popular? Nothing bad really happens to Peter Parker in this movie... he does NOT lose the ring, he gets a key to the city, he gets the girl, beats the villains, and manages to become a Good Forgiving Christian Jedi. Good grief! What happened to the angsty teen hero we were expecting?

Oh and JJ Jameson is reduced to slapstic comic relief in this movie... the kind that reminds you of Mehmood or Asrani and their ilk and their 'movie within a movie' that used to be a staple feature in the 70s hindi action flicks.

What Bombs

1. The Romance(s) - The character of Gwen Stacy was completely unnecessary. The triangles between her, Peter, and MJ, and between Peter, MJ, and Harry were both useless.

2. Kirsten Dunst - Sucks. And not in a good way. Ahem.

3. The Villains - This is the biggest failing, so I will now rant about it. Maybe I'm just elaborating on the fallouts of my "Too much going on" comment here... but because that is true, we get villains that are badly thought out.

The strength of the first two movies was how you could really got what the villains were about. Osborne was a maniac, and yet had a vulnerability about him (in spite of the stupid mask). You never really hated Doc Ock, because you got WHY he was doing what he was doing. And they both had this personal connection with Spidey that had you sold - in their own way, they were both redeemed by Spidey. Osborne was redeemed in that Peter didn't tell Harry the truth on his request. Ock was more obviously redeemed when he sank with his experiment after Peter woke him up to what he had become.

That doesn't really happen this time, no siree... and here's the details on how/ why (some spoilers here, but nothing you don't already know if you've watched the trailers):

a. The Sandman is a wasted opportunity. Nothing happens between him and Spidey to justify him wanting to kill Spidey. There is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment of redemption in there for his character, but the resolution that comes of it is completely useless. Okay, so he didn't MEAN to kill Uncle Ben... so Spidey shouldn't be driven by revenge and try to kill him. But he IS a robber... why would Spidey stop trying to arrest him and let him go a-blowin on the wind at the end? Oh, and we have no idea what finally happens to that little girl he left behind...

b. Harry Osborne got so shortchanged, I was reminded of all those times when various girls ditched me! It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, and his redemption is a completely moronic fake.

i. They lowered the intensity of Franco's Harry Osborne. They did not flesh out his creation story (I thought that green gas didn't really work, and drove people insane?) and stole his "I will live up to my dad" angsty thunder.

ii. What's with that stupid amnesia plot device? It would've been poignant if it had lasted longer than it did, or if Harry had more screen time... As things played out, it was just a 'let's take a breather' gimmick.

iii. I thought Harry wasn't really as smart as his father (or most people on the planet for that matter). How the hell did he figure out all the gadgets and the chemistry behind his weapons?

iv. Didn't really like the suit/ hoverboard thing they had going on.

c. Venom - Sigh. Such a waste. They dealt with Venom so much better in the comics... the movie has plot holes the size of Venom's own maw! Although, they did get his look right.

i. What's with the lame meteorite origin? Why introduce Jameson Jr in Spidey 2 if you aren't giving him a single frame in Spidey 3? He should've been Venom's vehicle to Earth, like in the cartoons, not some stupid looking molten rock.

ii. In the comics, Spidey rang the bell because he had already realized that sound is Venom's nemesis! In the movie, he gets a major D'oh! moment worthy of Homer Simpson in the climax.

iii. Venom's intentions aren't really clear... If it is a symbiote, why doesn't it permanently stick to Spidey? If Spidey could take off the black suit all the time and mostly kept it locked in a trunk, why was it so hard to take off in the church?

iv. The alliance between Venom and Sandman seems lame and just too freaking unconvincing and convenient. They never really double team Spidey - he fights them one at a time, and their alliance breaks off too easily.

I could really go on with this one!

-=-=-

So yes, me hearties. Another KLPD. I could go on poking holes in this crapfest all day, but I have a job to do. So... suffice it to say that the Studios will have their way financially. Their gimmicks drew the Day Zero and Weekend One audiences to the theatres (me being a case in point) and the movie will probably set box offices on fire. But this movie will be known in posterity as Spidey's worst outing.

To close, I have to say I'm kind of gloomy right now. I'm wondering if the Superhero movie genre is cyclic... it begins on with a bang (as the last one did with Superman I) and ends on a subsonic fiss (Batman and Robin anyone?). I'm wondering if Spiderman 1 was the beginning of the current "hero movie cycle"... and I'm hoping Spiderman 3 didn't signal the beginning of its end.

Ah well... I hope Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" proves me wrong next year...

Peace... Out!