Took half-a-day off yesterday and ended up renting Spiderman 3. I'd heard that this was the best of the series, and since I thought the first 2 were pretty good, I was ready to sit down and be entertained. I only wish that someone had told me to turn off my brain first!
I know there are numerous Spiderman fans out there. At the risk of those fans going ballistic, here are my thoughts on the movie. Note: I've never read the comics and I realize some of my complaints might be explained away if I had.
Don't get me wrong. The movie did have some upside to it. For a good 2 hours I didn't have to watch any commercials. And I was treated to a preview of National Treasure 2.
But as for the movie... I know I harp on this, but just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should. I know there are all kinds of special effects out there, and some are pretty darn good. Unfortunately, most of the "swinging" and fighting special effects in this movie are not. Never once did I confuse the computer generated figures in the fight scenes between Spiderman and the Goblin Jr. as the real deal. Hey Hollywood - we know that Spiderman can swing from his web strands - you don't have to go on showing us that action over and over and over again. And when you do it just looks plain cheesy. I will say that I liked the Sandman villain - but then I liked him in the Mummy as well.
As far as character development goes. I really wish they had done more with the Sandman. I felt for the character and was pulling for him most of the time. Can someone tell me - did his daughter ever get the money for whatever life-saving surgery she needed. Would have been nice if they had closed the loop on that one. Spiderman... what was the deal with him all of sudden going bonkers over his fame. In the previous 2 movies his character always shied away from the lime light. I think the movie was trying to make him more "human", you know with flaws just like the rest of us. For me, all they did was create a mismatch in his character that I never really bought in to. Especially the scene where he's hanging upside down and tells the blond to plant one on him while the girl he loves watches on. How out of character is that!
My last tidbit of fit is one that I really hate. There are so many reasons why what I'm about to complain about happens that I don't have the energy to go into them all, so let me just stick to the product that I hate and not the causes behind it. In this movie, Spiderman is slammed into steel I-beams and brick walls so hard that the I-beams bend and the brick walls give way. Now I know the movie is fiction and that Spiderman is the hero, but I sure could feel for him a little bit more if it ever looked like he could get hurt. The punishment he takes would kill a real man a thousands times over (and I'm talking about just one fight scene). If they want to make Spiderman "human" - show him bruised up and barely able to move the day following one of these fights (like they did in the new Batman movie). Make us, the viewers who pay to see these movies, feel like this young man is putting his life on the line to save whoever the damsel in distress happens to be that day. By the way - why didn't he ever go up and secure the crane after saving the blond?
Anyway. I know you're tired of hearing me complain and I'm tired of replaying this movie in my head. Sitting through it once was enough.
On a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being a great movie), I'd give Spiderman 3 and 2, and tell any who will listen that the latest reel is the worst of the three.
J/W
