Saturday, May 5, 2007 4:08 PM
WARNING - This post gives away massive spoilers to the new Spiderman 3 movie. If you don't want to ruin the movie for yourself, stop reading this now...delete it from your blog reader...avert your eyes as you scroll over the GWB feed. Otherwise, enjoy the post.
Overall Score - Average Person (Non-Comic Book Geek) 2/5
Overall Score - Comic Book Geek (Casual) 3/5
Overall Score - Comic Book Geek (Snob) 1/5
Ovarall Score - Venom Fanatic -Infinity/5 (yes, that's a negative sign in front of the word Infinity)
I of course fall into that last grouping. I have the Secret Wars comic that the symbiote first appeared, the first regular appearance of the black suit in Spider Man comics, the first appearance of Venom...Words cannot express my man-love and geeky devotion to the Venom character. But let's talk about the movie on a whole.
First off, if you're a comic geek you have to throw away everything you know about the spiderman story arc...forget it going in...this is alternate-reality space for us. My biggest fear of the movie was that Raimi was going to try and do too much in this third installment, with the fear that maybe his stars wouldn't return for a fourth (so let's jam as much as we can into this one). So we have the unfinished Green Goblin storyline (where the Green Goblin ends up becoming a good guy in the end to help Spidey because his butler's profound words obviously have more power than his father's voice that seems to linger in his head).
Then we have the Sandman storyline, where Sandman is shown to be a good con at heart who just made poor decisions. He was only stealing money to help his sick daughter, and he really didn't mean to kill Peter's uncle (so basically its Sandman in appearance and power alone, not in actual storyline).
Then we have the Symbiote storyline, where a meteor just "happens" to fall to Earth, and the symbiote just happens to hop onto Peter's bike. However...I did like how they showed Peter turning somewhat bad-ass and enjoying the symbiote's power. However...did they have to make him look all emo? Dude looked like the long lost member of Good Charlotte.
Oh...and I don't know exactly how long after the second movie this was supposed to happen...but do you think that JJ Jameson would still be a little pissed that his almost-daughter in law left his son at the alter for his photographer? This would have made an excellent reason to do one of the alternate storylines in the comics where JJ's son is actually Venom. But instead we get...
Venom...the BEST Spiderman villain EV-AR! Now I know what you're thinking: Was Topher REALLY the best casting decision for Venom? Maybe not (physique wise), but he was really good as Eddie...I really enjoyed him actually. Unfortunately, any hope that Venom would be the primary villain in Spiderman 4 (if that ever happens) was squashed by a HORRIBLE script decision. Let's see...
Eddie is called out by Peter about his fake picture...ok, that's jives (was a fake story, but close enough)
Eddie is humiliated and fired...good so far...
Eddie loses Gwen Stacey as a girlfriend...yeah, I believe his ex-wife's name was Anne.
Eddie goes to church to pray that God kills Peter Parker...actually, Eddie is a devout Catholic and goes to the church to pray for forgiveness because he was contemplating suicide.
Eddie as Venom teams with Sandman to take down Spidey and DIES. Yes, you read that right: Raimi has KILLED VENOM. And if Venom isn't dead, I'd LOVE to hear their explanation of how he survives.
Horrible...you have a MONEY character in Venom and you squander him?! I can accept the changes in the storyline (kind of hard to explain Secret Wars in such a short time-span, and they had to move Eddie's story arc along in the movie), but I stopped caring for the movie as soon as that scene happened...total BS.
Other stupidity in the movie:
- A scene where bad-Peter takes Gwen Stacey to a jazz club where MJ is singing (to make her jealous) and does a piano number and jazz dance routine...I kid you not.
- Green Goblin doesn't actually wear the "Green Goblin" mask...its more like a retractable paintball mask. Green Goblin is also scooting around on a kicked up hovering skateboard that he must have borrowed from Back to the Future.
- They have a scene where Harry and MJ are cooking an omellete together, and they spent time doing these great overhead shots of the stove while things are cooking...I mean, awesome if this was the FOOD NETWORK.
- Peter takes a sample of the symbiote to Dr. Connors, where Connors says "Peter I'm a physicist not a biologist...so I can only speculate." Then a few scenes later Connors is talking to Peter about the apparant biological makeup of the substance while we see some lizard skeleton in the background...I thought he was a physicist?!
- Y'know...seriously...if I was MJ, I'd get a little tired of always being the damsel in distress. Let's recap:
Spiderman 1 - Rescued from that bridge in NYC and the Green Goblin
Spiderman 2 - Resuecd from certain doom at the hands of Doc Oc
Spiderman 3 - Harry threatens MJ with violence unless she breaks up with Peter and THEN she gets
aprehended and placed in a taxicab suspended from a building under construction
Now, this may sound like I'm down on the movie...but it wasn't all horrible...just maddening. It was a good time, and its worth the price of admission. But it's not the best of the trilogy, and of course the whole Venom thing really just screws the pooch for me. However...there is one special cameo that makes this movie: Bruce Campbell! No, unfortunately Ash is not in this as a villain attacking Spiderman with his boomstick...but he does play a pretty funny Maitre-de!
Sigh...they better not f**k up Transformers....
*Edit: Robert May didn't like the movie either.
D