A little bit of preamble, if I may. So far I've been disappointed with sequels of sequels of comic book movies. Yeah, I'm talking about X-Men 3. I was much more of an avid reader of the X-Men comics than I ever was of Spiderman, though, so I don't have a lot of canon knowledge of the latter. However, I wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it turned out to be -- it was far too long, with unnecessary bits that could've died on the editing room floor quite happily, and the only good thing that will redeem it is the special effects. But, then again, I suppose that's all that matters -- special effects, and the money it will rake in.
Having said that, in no way whatsoever will Spiderman 3 die in the box office -- I'm confident that they'll reap back all of the $258 million they spent making it, and $500 million+ on top of it probably. The trailer is captivating enough that people will flock in and be completely unaware of the 2.5 hour insipid plotline they are in for. But the effects only shine through during the fight scenes (as they would do), and since there are only two major ones in the movie, the approximate hour and 40 minutes left me dreading frames to come -- twice did I seriously contemplate walking out (I only stayed because I paid $9 for my ticket, and I'm never one to leave a movie halfway. Well, unless that movie happens to be Epic Movie). My sister fared worse than I did, but she's always been the staunch and can't-take-any-emo!type. Oh, yeah, emo. I'll get back to that... I have far more than two cents on that.
I'll start from the beginning, with the credits. Don't worry, there aren't any spoilers.
They had a montage of the actors, along with main plot snippets from the first and second movies -- to serve as pipe for this third movie, I'm guessing. Do you guys reckon that Topher Grace and Tobey Maguire look quite similar, and that James Franco (especially when he's doing the angry "YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!" thing) looks a whole lot like Chris Evans? In this one scene, JF had to stare at himself hard in the mirror, and he kept quirking his right eyebrow... it was a bit funny, and somehow I can picture Chris Evans doing that exact same thing. But anyway, back to the opening sequence. My gosh, was it long! They totally killed it with length. About 3/4 of the way through, they had a shot of the Venom symbiote crawling menacingly and foreshadowingly (symbolically?) over the web, and I thought that that was a really really cool way to open the movie...
...then the montage started again. What the hell?!
I suppose that was the first sign that Spiderman 3 was going to be far too lengthy. That's one gripe over.
So, I didn't know they were going to make Spiderman 3 into a dramedy. I know that the first two (and all other drama movies, incl. X-Men trilogy etc) had comic relief in the form of one or two snarky lines, but Spiderman 3 had what seemed like a whole 30 minutes dedicated to making the audience laugh. It became a serious dramedy at that point. I found it unnecessary and massive overkill -- if they wanted to reflect Peter Parker's change in character due to the symbiote, five minutes of succint information would've been enough. Instead, they made a mockery of his character, going as far as making him emo!
That's right, they made Peter Parker a wannabe emo. I'm not sure if they think that all that comprises an emo is the dark hair, because that's all they went for, but it was pretty obvious to me that they turned Tobey Maguire into an emo. Were they trying to reflect the "dark and twisty" (ten points if you can tell me where that came from) nature of emos? Were they trying to tell emos that being emo is okay, because if Spiderman's alter-ego can be emo, so can you? Tobey Maguire is far too chubby to be emo. I'm not trying to make fun of his weight OR emos, but during one scene where he was fighting with Harry, you could see his ab flab... nitpicking, I know, but surely if he spent all his time swinging tall buildings in a single squirt of webbing, he'd be pretty buff.
Last gripe -- the movie's over, they're wrapping things up and it's all happy... fade to black...
I'm waiting for the credits...
...oh, there's another scene, hold your horses, the movie's not over!
Scene out, fade to black...
I'm waiting for the credits...
...third time MUST be the charm, oh please tell me it is so, I'm starving and this movie has interested me for about 45 minutes out of 139...
Yay it's all happy again!
Fade to black...
Better not get up, there might be another scene...
...oh thank goodness, I have never been so happy to see credits rolling.
Surely when a movie has to fade to black three times, you know it's far too long. I acknowledge that they had to wrap up the loose ends, but I can think of another way that would've saved screentime AND got me out of there faster.
I'm not saying Spiderman 3 was a total waste of money -- the fight scenes were exhilarating and the effects were great. But I said that at the beginning. What disappointed me most was the fact that they (although I should be used to this by now) turned the character of Peter Parker into a joke, and the predictability of the plot. Script = banal, insipid, soporific. "PRODUCT PLACING" (I have no better term) THE AMERICAN FLAG = NOT PRICELESS (more like "oh.my.giddy.aunt. they.didn't.just.do.what.I.think.they.did."). They took their liberties in tweaking the comic to suit the movie, but that's no different to any other comic book movie -- after all, how are you going to fit all pivotal characters into three movies, when they've come from comic books written since the 1970s? The last shot at redemption for Marvel is now the F4 trilogy (I'm assuming they're going to have a third one)... otherwise they can just call themselves Disney.
In all that panning, I forgot to add that Venom lived up to expectations and was tres fantastico. I heart Venom (bring on Carnage, too!), big ups to Raimi for deciding to chuck him in.
Oh, I have more adjectives to describe the movie now!
Cheesy, corny... wait those two kind of sum it up quite well actually.
Venom -- great. I love Venom, not going to take that back. Topher Grace played him really well. But... Venom is a huge villain/kind-of-ally of Spiderman's throughout the comics! They kind of just set him up, gave his reason to be a villain, and then teamed him up with the Sandman (who had far too much screentime if they were going to have two villains) to try and kill Spiderman. It wasn't well delegated between Sandman and Venom, and I feel that even though it was good that Sam Raimi added him to the roster, they should've shifted stuff around so that it doesn't become Venom on the backburner, then some screentime as an afterthought.
Sandman -- basically just the problem of too much screentime (but that's a pretty major reason). We already know the reason why Flint Marko did what he did, yet most of his scenes were spent (I felt) cementing his motives for his crimes. We know the motive! It was obvious right from the very start, after he said THOSE LINES to his daughter (I don't want to print those lines because I don't want to spoiler anybody)... there was no need to show more of those scenes. We ARE an audience able to think and link for ourselves... at least, the majority of us are.
Some other things:
Too many rehashes of Peter being a dick. + the emo thing. Can anyone say overkill?
The truth about Harry's father. I'll just throw a key word in here: butler. You'll know what I mean when I say, "wtf... couldn't have told him sooner?? You decided to just keep that in your back pocket for the last few years?"
Okay, I'm done. I promise.
Having said that, in no way whatsoever will Spiderman 3 die in the box office -- I'm confident that they'll reap back all of the $258 million they spent making it, and $500 million+ on top of it probably. The trailer is captivating enough that people will flock in and be completely unaware of the 2.5 hour insipid plotline they are in for. But the effects only shine through during the fight scenes (as they would do), and since there are only two major ones in the movie, the approximate hour and 40 minutes left me dreading frames to come -- twice did I seriously contemplate walking out (I only stayed because I paid $9 for my ticket, and I'm never one to leave a movie halfway. Well, unless that movie happens to be Epic Movie). My sister fared worse than I did, but she's always been the staunch and can't-take-any-emo!type. Oh, yeah, emo. I'll get back to that... I have far more than two cents on that.
I'll start from the beginning, with the credits. Don't worry, there aren't any spoilers.
They had a montage of the actors, along with main plot snippets from the first and second movies -- to serve as pipe for this third movie, I'm guessing. Do you guys reckon that Topher Grace and Tobey Maguire look quite similar, and that James Franco (especially when he's doing the angry "YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!" thing) looks a whole lot like Chris Evans? In this one scene, JF had to stare at himself hard in the mirror, and he kept quirking his right eyebrow... it was a bit funny, and somehow I can picture Chris Evans doing that exact same thing. But anyway, back to the opening sequence. My gosh, was it long! They totally killed it with length. About 3/4 of the way through, they had a shot of the Venom symbiote crawling menacingly and foreshadowingly (symbolically?) over the web, and I thought that that was a really really cool way to open the movie...
...then the montage started again. What the hell?!
I suppose that was the first sign that Spiderman 3 was going to be far too lengthy. That's one gripe over.
So, I didn't know they were going to make Spiderman 3 into a dramedy. I know that the first two (and all other drama movies, incl. X-Men trilogy etc) had comic relief in the form of one or two snarky lines, but Spiderman 3 had what seemed like a whole 30 minutes dedicated to making the audience laugh. It became a serious dramedy at that point. I found it unnecessary and massive overkill -- if they wanted to reflect Peter Parker's change in character due to the symbiote, five minutes of succint information would've been enough. Instead, they made a mockery of his character, going as far as making him emo!
That's right, they made Peter Parker a wannabe emo. I'm not sure if they think that all that comprises an emo is the dark hair, because that's all they went for, but it was pretty obvious to me that they turned Tobey Maguire into an emo. Were they trying to reflect the "dark and twisty" (ten points if you can tell me where that came from) nature of emos? Were they trying to tell emos that being emo is okay, because if Spiderman's alter-ego can be emo, so can you? Tobey Maguire is far too chubby to be emo. I'm not trying to make fun of his weight OR emos, but during one scene where he was fighting with Harry, you could see his ab flab... nitpicking, I know, but surely if he spent all his time swinging tall buildings in a single squirt of webbing, he'd be pretty buff.
Last gripe -- the movie's over, they're wrapping things up and it's all happy... fade to black...
I'm waiting for the credits...
...oh, there's another scene, hold your horses, the movie's not over!
Scene out, fade to black...
I'm waiting for the credits...
...third time MUST be the charm, oh please tell me it is so, I'm starving and this movie has interested me for about 45 minutes out of 139...
Yay it's all happy again!
Fade to black...
Better not get up, there might be another scene...
...oh thank goodness, I have never been so happy to see credits rolling.
Surely when a movie has to fade to black three times, you know it's far too long. I acknowledge that they had to wrap up the loose ends, but I can think of another way that would've saved screentime AND got me out of there faster.
I'm not saying Spiderman 3 was a total waste of money -- the fight scenes were exhilarating and the effects were great. But I said that at the beginning. What disappointed me most was the fact that they (although I should be used to this by now) turned the character of Peter Parker into a joke, and the predictability of the plot. Script = banal, insipid, soporific. "PRODUCT PLACING" (I have no better term) THE AMERICAN FLAG = NOT PRICELESS (more like "oh.my.giddy.aunt. they.didn't.just.do.what.I.think.they.did."). They took their liberties in tweaking the comic to suit the movie, but that's no different to any other comic book movie -- after all, how are you going to fit all pivotal characters into three movies, when they've come from comic books written since the 1970s? The last shot at redemption for Marvel is now the F4 trilogy (I'm assuming they're going to have a third one)... otherwise they can just call themselves Disney.
In all that panning, I forgot to add that Venom lived up to expectations and was tres fantastico. I heart Venom (bring on Carnage, too!), big ups to Raimi for deciding to chuck him in.
Oh, I have more adjectives to describe the movie now!
Cheesy, corny... wait those two kind of sum it up quite well actually.
---------
Now that I've thought about it some more, I can't keep on editing my previous post. Hopefully this is more expanded/elaborative, and makes more cohesive sense as well.Venom -- great. I love Venom, not going to take that back. Topher Grace played him really well. But... Venom is a huge villain/kind-of-ally of Spiderman's throughout the comics! They kind of just set him up, gave his reason to be a villain, and then teamed him up with the Sandman (who had far too much screentime if they were going to have two villains) to try and kill Spiderman. It wasn't well delegated between Sandman and Venom, and I feel that even though it was good that Sam Raimi added him to the roster, they should've shifted stuff around so that it doesn't become Venom on the backburner, then some screentime as an afterthought.
Sandman -- basically just the problem of too much screentime (but that's a pretty major reason). We already know the reason why Flint Marko did what he did, yet most of his scenes were spent (I felt) cementing his motives for his crimes. We know the motive! It was obvious right from the very start, after he said THOSE LINES to his daughter (I don't want to print those lines because I don't want to spoiler anybody)... there was no need to show more of those scenes. We ARE an audience able to think and link for ourselves... at least, the majority of us are.
Some other things:
Too many rehashes of Peter being a dick. + the emo thing. Can anyone say overkill?
The truth about Harry's father. I'll just throw a key word in here: butler. You'll know what I mean when I say, "wtf... couldn't have told him sooner?? You decided to just keep that in your back pocket for the last few years?"
Okay, I'm done. I promise.
------
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