This Spidey's Web is Too Tangled.
Written: May 06 '07
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Good special effects, good heroic themes, connections with previous films...
Cons: Too soft on the villains, too hard on the audience.
The Bottom Line: I'm so close to NOT recommending this...
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| JediKermit's Full Review: Spider-Man 3 |
Spoilers will abound in this review. You've been warned.
I like Spider-Man. I like comic books. I like superheroes. I like comic book movies and loved the first two Spider-Man movies. So when the 140-minute "Spider-Man 3" was finished, and the credits started scrolling up the screen last night, I was left kind of stymied. There had been some exciting moments, some sequences that were adequate, but on the whole...it wasn't nearly as good as its predecessors.
Spider-Man goes up against multiple villains this time around, and there are many connections to the first two Spider-Man movies to make that less confusing for newcomers to the series. But in between the multiplicity of villains, allies, heroes, and plotlines, the big picture gets lost. And maybe some of Spidey's heroism, as well.
The biggest problems seem to come from trying to compress so many storylines from the comic books into one movie. So you get:
Peter Parker breaking up with Mary Jane Watson...
A search for Uncle Ben's real killer...
Competition for Peter's photographer job at the Daily Bugle...
An alternate take on the Gwen Stacy story (one of the comic's most tragic and well-written stories, completely wasted here)...
Sandman's twist, from a villainous shapeshifting thug into a villainous shapeshifting thug with a heart of gold...
The Venom storyline--a symbiote from outer space that makes Peter Parker all emo-looking and angry...
Harry Osborne's accepting his father's crazy mantle as the New Goblin...
At least four quiet, deep conversations with Aunt May, about love, loss, revenge...
Dr. Connors, Peter's college professor, now missing an arm and helping Parker on the case...
...and there are probably five more storylines shoehorned in as well. Just too much fat. What's left feels cobbled-together and confusing, and they don't give enough time to any single plot to get emotionally invested in it. There's been a trend in the Spider-Man movies that ties each of the villains more to Peter Parker than to Spider-man...they did it with the Green Goblin, with Doc Ock, and now with Venom...and while at first I enjoyed those connections, it also means the villains generally find some measure of redemption through the innate goodness of Peter Parker.
I don't think they should be killing off villains as indiscriminately as they do in these movies--they should go to super-prison of some kind. But on top of that, to have them recant their evil deeds and die as martyrs at the end of each movie? That bothered me in Spider-Man 2, as Doc Ock sacrifices himself for New York City--but it bothered me even more as Sandman broke down blubbering in tears as he apologized for killing Uncle Ben, and Peter Parker, also in tears, says something like, "I've done bad things too, buddy..." It's too much. There are too many similar scenes that just feel out of place: one with Harry Osborne's butler, another with Chubby Checker's "Twist" in the background, yet another where MJ says "hit me on the head, would ya?" and then Harry...does... They needed to cut some of that out.
Like "X-Men 3" and some other recent heroic entries, it's just trying to cram too much in, and never finds its focus or its heart. There's some fun eye candy, of course, but there's nothing like Spider-Man 2's train chase to make us gawk at the coolness that is Spider-Man. We also get yet another tongue-in-cheek alternate Peter Parker, which is fun at first, but gets old quickly...and Sam Raimi's love of Bruce Campbell gives him a scene in a French restaurant that goes on way too long.
And yet, it is Spider-Man, and it's still worth seeing. My wife liked it more than I did, partially because she doesn't have the geek baggage I do. So I'll go ahead and give it three stars. If you liked the first two Spidey movies, I don't know if this will live up to your expectations, but it's a fun enough diversion. Maybe you can navigate Spidey 3's tangled web more more agility than I did. Let me know what you think!
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Worst Part of this Film: Script
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JediKermit
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Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
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Books, Movies, and Toys. Is there more to life?
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