The Inevitable Review

06May07

So.

Spider-man.

Hm.

Well, it’s certainly not as good as Snow Patrol’s video for ‘Signal Fire’, but it’s not as bad as other people think it is.

I don’t think it joins the ranks of Batman Forever, Superman 3, Blade Trinity, X-Men 3, as part of the ‘third sequel comic movie curse’. For all it’s faults, it’s not THAT bad. Just almost.

It’s probably the weakest of the three though, or at best tied with the first one. Spider-man 2 was definitely the best (that’s because it had Spider-man’s REAL arch-nemesis, BEFORE the whole Gwen Stacy thing - Dr. Octopus).

Still, you can’t NOT like it. The movie is really the runt of the litter, the small puppy with the bad leg. You can’t really do anything with it, but it’s just so cute! And adorable! And sometimes, sometimes, it can be pretty amusing.

Spoilers from here on out.

The action scenes, for one were spectacular (and AMAZING! and SENSATIONAL!). They’re what superhero fights are supposed to be - a lot of property damage, a lot of near-deaths, and each of the combatants taking as much as they give out. Sam Raimi definitely turned it up a notch for this movie.

The casting was great. Getting James Cromwell to go as Captain Stacy is like getting Patrick Stewart as Professor X. Bryce Dallas Howard was a fantastic Gwen Stacy. She was able to capture what Gwen Stacy was supposed to be - absolutely gorgeous, with her own brand of sweetness. Thomas Hayden Church as the Sandman fulfilled the potential that it had when we all first heard about it. And Topher Grace as Edward (not Eddie) Brock Jr., although not quite like the Eddie Brock of the comics(who ironically enough, Thomas Hayden Church could also pass for), fit the character he was going to be in the movie.

And the small character moments were entertaining. It looked like Sam Raimi really had fun making the movie.

Problem is, the movie was only good if you take each scene in a vacuum. Taking it as a whole, it falls apart.The overall plot was really just too weak to carry everything.

The general consensus about the movie is pretty accurate - Sam Raimi really did put way too much material into this movie, as if this really was going to be the last Spider-man movie that was ever going to be made. For all of time.

So many elements from the forty plus years of Spider-man history were included in the story that a lot of shortcuts had to be made just to make things serviceable. The symbiote needed to be just some random meteorite crash that just happened to be in the same place as Peter & MJ’s makeout place. The Sandman’s first encounter with the police needed to be near a truck filled with sand (in the middle of New York??!) so he could be SuperGiantSandman. Spider-man needed to be taking off the symbiote in the church steeple of Eddie Brock’s church so that the church bell could coincidentally hurt the symbiote and at the same time get Eddie Brock to wear the symbiote right after. The butler needed to confess his knowledge about Norman Osborn’s death only after Harry’s been scarred, Two-Face style, and Spider-man needs his help.

Not only did those shortcuts mean that some elements of the story had to go ahead without any explanation, but it also meant some elements of the story had an incomplete or no payoffs at all, so much so that it was all mostly pointless. What ever happened to Penny, Flint Marko’s daughter? Did Peter ever propose (again) to MJ? What ever happened to Gwen Stacy?

The plot would pick up on one idea, run with it, and once it’s inconvenient, throws it away.

It’s unfortunate, because the movie had enough material for at least two movies. Possibly even three. And everything could have flown more naturally had they just been more conservative with what gets to be part of the movie.

Some more observations:

All of the reporter scenes were obviously narrative shortcuts to explain what was happening. It’s as if the whole show, don’t tell thing they keep telling you in college never really sunk in with the writers.

But it’s not just that they used reporter scenes in lieu of actual plot development, it’s that they used it so much. Everytime something happens, there’s a talking head on the screen a few seconds later.

And the reporters were really really really hamming it up.

It wasn’t just the reporters that were hamming it up though, the extras were too. Sometimes, they’d even steal the show. That scene where Gwen Stacy announces the arrival of Spider-man during the key-giving ceremony? There’s a lady on the stage that was more groupie than city official that it was just hilarious.

And if we were going by the kind of extras that they used to populate New York with, then I guess New York is full of models.

Corollary to this, MJ, the girl who’s supposed to be a supermodel and famous actress, was probably the ugliest girl on the set.

You could make a drinking game with how many times Harry Osborn/Green Goblin 2 hit his head in the movie. It’s like everyone who fights him in the movie is always aiming for his head, particularly his face.

They really had to have that over the top scene with the American flag, didn’t they?

Apparently, Peter Parker with the symbiote is, as the One Tree Hill gang would say, Pete Wentz from Fallout Boy!

That entire montage with emo-Parker/Pete Wentz from Fallout Boy pretending to be the BeeGees is this close to Joel Schumacher territory.

This movie paid the price having organic webshooters instead of the mechanical ones in the first movie. Because of the organic webshooters here was absolutely no added value in the black symbiote costume for Spider-man. Originally it was supposed to be the unlimited webbing it supplied, among other things. Since Peter already has unlimited organic webbing in the movies, and they didn’t include any of the other additional powers that the symbiote had in the comics, the only point of wearing the black costume was, I guess, that it was slimming.

The biggest dissapointment for me though was the retcon with Uncle Ben’s killer. For me there really was no point in that decision. I get that they did it in order for Spider-man to have some motivation to capture Sandman, and I get that the motivation had to be in line with the whole revenge theme that the movie had going on, but then they didn’t have to go have a retcon just to have that happen. They could’ve had Harry hire Sandman to get MJ or Aunt May to make it personal, and if it was Aunt May she could’ve been on life support the entire movie, only to be saved (with Sandman’s contribution, ideally) in the end. That could’ve hit all the right notes all the same. It makes the fight between Spider-man and Sandman personal, it gives Spider-man a reason for revenge against Sandman, and it doesn’t involve changing anything about Spider-man’s history. As it is, the whole power and responsibility thing with Uncle Ben is compromised with the retcon, only to be addressed by a plot contrivance - that the original robber conveniently accidentally shoved Flint Marko which caused him to shoot Uncle Ben.

Weak, very weak.

I was a little dissapointed with the origin of the symbiote. I was hoping that they weren’t going to follow the lead of the actual origin and NOT have the symbiote come from another world, since that idea is so far removed from the Spider-man mythos that it makes the black Spider-man (and subsequently, Venom) one of the worst additions to Spider-man history, comparable to the whole Shi’ar thing with the X-men and only topped by the Clone Saga and J. Michael Stracynzski’s run in Spider-man with Gwen Stacy having retroactive sex with Norman Osborn which led to retroactive Green Goblin fraternal twins that are age really fast resulting in the girl twin that looks 20 but is really 10 falling in love with Peter Parker.

In any case, the thing about Spider-man’s villains is supposed to be that they are Spider-man’s foils. They should have roughly the same kind of origin, but because of the choices they make (ie power with no responsibility) they turned out differently. As such, most of the classic Spider-man villains were either rooted in science gone awry (Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, Sandman, for example) or animalistic by nature (the Lizard, Black Cat, Kraven). Venom doesn’t fit in either category, so although having a Bizarro Spider-man (because let’s face it, that’s all that Venom really is) sounds like a good idea on paper, the execution of it was really shoddy.

So yes, I’m really not a fan of Venom.

Unfortunately, the weakness of the original concept from the comics followed through with the movie, and with so much other stuff going on, the movie wasn’t able to properly develop that plotline, making it even worse.

Personally, if they really wanted to have a Spider-man movie with Venom in it, there was a better (in my opinion) way to do it. I’d talk about it even further, but this “review” has gone on long enough.

In the end, as many problems as this movie had, it didn’t leave me pissed off like X-men 3 did, nor did it leave me shaking my head the way Blade Trinity did, and it didn’t leave me saying WTF the same way Batman Forever did. In short, despite its faults, it still had its great moments, and I still enjoyed watching the movie.

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