No, Spidey, No! Don't Touch That Script! Spider-Man 3
Written: Feb 20 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Maguire; Dunst; Franco
Cons: Clunky writing; obvious plot devices; visually and emotionally dark; good actors underused
The Bottom Line: Forget not touching the symbiotic black goop, Spider-Man! Just don't go near this script!
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| befus's Full Review: Spider-Man 3 |
I didn't grow up with lots of comic book superheroes. Maybe that's a girl thing. But I've always loved Spider-man, from the time I first met the web-crawling hero years ago. My soft spot for Spidey may seem a bit strange, given my arachnophobia, but perhaps that's where my sympathy started. What made Spider-man interesting to me as a kid, and what's kept him interesting all these years, is that Peter Parker is just an ordinary guy who happened to get bit by a radioactive spider. Not his fault, not his plan, but it's up to him to decide what to do with those new-found powers he's given as a result.
I've also never been a huge fan of big action movies (yet another girl thing?) so I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed the first two Spider-man films directed by Sam Raimi. Lots of explosions! Colossal villains! Loud sound! Sizzling kisses! But at the heart of it all...Peter Parker, just an ordinary guy who happened to get bit by a genetically engineered spider and now has to make choices, every day of his life, about how to deal responsibly with power. I was especially impressed with Tobey Maguire in the role of Spider-man. He managed to convey both the wonderfully goofy, nerdy ordinariness of Peter and the growing depths of heroism that emerged from Spidey whenever Peter put on the red mask.
All of this is my way of saying: I wasn't at all sure I wanted to see Spider-man 3. It was the third film of a trilogy, and those can pose all sorts of problems. It was the last film they were going to make, which means they'd be trying to tie things up for us in a bow. And then when I saw the previews, and realized this time around we were going to see Spidey battling his dark side...well, I just blanched. Spider-Man in a black suit did not feel at all appealing to me. So I held off seeing it... until just the other evening, when my husband rented the DVD. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my expectations low.
Did Spider-Man 3 rise above my expectations?
Not really. But it was hard to keep my expectations low once the credits started. When the main titles began to play, I recognized the horn-filled Danny Elfman theme from the earlier movies. Then they began running a montage of exciting clips (all mirrored in "shards" of glass and caught up in animated webs) from the first two films. I could feel those expectations start to soar like Spidey himself.
Unfortunately, the familiar Elfman theme in the main titles is about all the Elfman music you get. He didn't sign on for third film, so composing duties were taken over by Christopher Young, whose musical efforts did not impress me. Not that a Danny Elfman score would have saved this movie, but it might have helped.
It's not really the composer's fault that the music in this film doesn't have much chance to soar. Spidey doesn't have much chance to soar either. The premise of the film is dark. Spider-Man deals with exterior and interior forces of evil that tempt him to use his powers to wreak vengeance and pain. The plot is crowded, packed as it is with not one, not two, but three villainous opponents, each with differing and not always believable motivations for their villainy. The script is weak. There are some truly major plot problems, stretching my willingness to suspend disbelief thinner than a spider web. The dialogue also felt clunky, even at times between Peter/Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) and his beloved girlfriend MJ Watson (Kirsten Dunst).
Maguire and Dunst did their best with the material and turned in completely watchable performances. Indeed, Maguire really had to stretch in this role, showing us a dark side and yet still managing to stay "in character." I believed that if Peter Parker suddenly turned nasty, aggressive and mean, then this is how he would act. Maguire's performance, along with the nuanced performance of James Franco as Harry/Green Goblin Jr. (who finally got some good screen time) are the highlights of the film.
Unfortunately, believable performances aren't enough. You need a believable story too. And in a word, this story...isn't. The writing problems were so noticeable that I found myself wincing. And these weren't minor problems, but obvious "how do we move the plot and motivate the characters" kinds of problems. When Spidey needs motivation for vengeful behavior, the writers conveniently re-wrote the murder of his Uncle Ben to involve another character we know wasn't there. We know because we saw the scene play out in first film. This film gives us a black and white "flashback" that appears to be an actual memory from Peter Parker, but it's just the old footage from the first film re-arranged with the new character inserted. When the writers needed Harry to have a sudden, life altering epiphany and change of heart, they revealed information to him via a minor character who had not had a prominent role until now. Harry instantly believed him. (I might have cut this moment more slack but I was feeling really grumpy by then and this felt like just another stilted device to move a character from point A to point B.)
Another odd thing was the movie's emphasis on Peter's Aunt Mae's engagement ring. In a sentimental moment, and one of the few moments we got with the talented Rosemary Harris, she gives the ring to Peter so he can give it to MJ. We're set up repeatedly for the "big moment" through at least two huge scenes, one where Spider-Man almost loses the ring in mid-air, and another very funny scene where Peter and MJ's relationship unravels in the fancy restaurant on the night Peter plans to pop the question. Obviously this film could not focus entirely on Peter and MJ's relationship. But it seemed awfully strange to invest that little ring with so much screen time and symbolic energy and then have it fade from sight completely, a little like someone taking out a gun in the first act and never shooting with it before the curtain drops.
I don't mean to nitpick the writing to death, though I did feel it was the movie's ultimate downfall. I enjoyed some of the other performances in the film, though most of my favorite minor characters, like Rosemary Harris' Aunt Mae and J.K. Simmon's J. Jonah Jameson, were not given nearly enough screen time. Bryce Dallas Howard looked lovely as Gwen Stacy, MJ's rival for Peter's affections, but didn't have a whole lot to do. Some of the other non-lead performances didn't feel as strong as I expected, but that might be because they were swallowed up in the spotty pacing and flashy special effects. The effects were quite mesmerizing and creepy, especially the Frankenstein-ish creation of the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and the crawling, symbiotic black goop that crawls out of a downed meteorite and latches itself onto Peter when he's at his most vulnerable, his most open to hatred.
I will say here that I appreciated the fact that the film tried hard to show us that some of the darkness was within Peter as well as without him. It wasn't all just this goopy, creepy black stuff transforming him into a dark-hearted villain. Before the gooey stuff showed up, we already recognized that Peter was losing his equilibrium, beginning to bask far too much in the adulation of adoring crowds, forgetting his true calling. It seems to me that his pride and vanity and ultimately anger were what left him open to the creepy dark stuff latching on and doing its worst. Otherwise, why didn't the stuff latch on to him at other moments, or latch on to everyone it saw? It seemed to be drawn to latent aggression and hate already in a person, which is why when Peter finally manages to make the right choice and find the strength to cast it off, it goes falling and crawling straight to another person ready and willing to feed on its evil nourishment, photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace). What I didn't quite understand was why it would morph Eddie into such a powerful monster (similar but somehow very different to what it did to Peter who already had special powers for the stuff to exploit). Perhaps somehow the goop senses the "inner you" and amplifies it for evil. Whatever. All I know is that I wasn't quite prepared for Eddie's complete morphing into "Venom" (a scary character indeed!) and I didn't completely buy his deep desire to kill Peter/Spider-Man.
What's most important? Who we are? What happens to us? The choices we make in response to what happens to us? I think the movie tries hard to argue the latter, but the message comes off more more ambiguously than it did in the earlier films. Sandman, for instance, makes it clear that he did not "choose" all the things that happened to him, and I think we're supposed to see him almost completely as a victim of fate. Yet some of his choices, as well as some of Peter's, definitely lead to the pain they both feel and their ultimate confrontation.
Just too much happens in this movie. The complex plot is not woven very well, and the devices to move us from place to place, emotion to emotion, are clumsy and obvious. The movie's dark tone was also matched by its dark look. Maybe that worked better on a big screen, but on a small screen, the absence of color made action difficult to follow. On a night of lowering skies and gothic architecture, to have so many characters dressed in black (though Spidey was thankfully back to his trademark dark red) was depressing and visually challenging. Not even Harry, as inheritor of his father's Green Goblin mantle, gets many touches of green except for the occasional flame from his super-charged flying machine.
Well, at least I've seen it now. And I was left not knowing how to feel, except some relief that it was over. Although I'm sure I will revisit the first two Spider-Man films from time to time, I think I'll pass on a re-watching of this third and final installment.
~befus, 2008
Spider-Man 2
(for some reason, I didn't mind the plot creaks in that one so much...and they didn't seem so glaring!)
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Worst Part of this Film: Plot
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Member: Beth
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You-can't-get a cup-of-tea big enough or a book long-enough to suit me...C.S Lewis
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