The Imagination of Fantasy

DISCUSSION: SPIDER-MAN 3 (SOME MINOR SPOILERS)

Hi all.  Oh my gosh, I haven't done this in a while.  Truth be told, this is the first movie I've seen at theaters since the Illusionist.  How sick is that?  Also, this is the first movie I've seen period in a couple of months.  I've been very busy, but summer always has a way of providing time for movies.  It's time to get back to my favorite medium of visual entertainment...

Kicking off the summer blockbuster season is Spider Man 3.  I was really looking forward to this flick, since the first two were pretty awesome, especially the second one.

OMG.  What the hell happened????  My jaw was on the floor while watching this movie and not because of the allegedly cool visual effects.  Well, maybe sometimes.  This was a huge disappointment!  Even huger than X-Men 3 was to the X-Men trilogy.  The sad part: it's the same director, same group of writers, same cadre of actors.  How could they mess up a flick with three of the SP villians???  There was so much secrecy around this film, and yet the hype failed to deliver this time around.

First off, this movie had a surprising amount of plot exposition, given that it was the third in a film series, making it slow (and slower than the other two?).  The relationship between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson was, well, kind of sickening and not at all like I remember it.  It seemed disingenuous to the series to make Peter enamored by Spidey's fame (which is how the film starts), and when he takes his dark path after the Venom-ous type alien, he turns into an evil dork.  As much as I love Topher Grace, he was totally miscast as Venom, and his plotline was stupid, and he sounded just like Eric Foreman.  Some of the fights Spidey has were fun to watch, but some were just plain boring.  And I have no idea why Bryce Dallas Howard was cast as the mayor's daughter for the purpose of creating romantic complications for Pete and MJ.  She seemed out of place.

This movie was all over the place, which is really frustrating, because if they planned to make this a trilogy only, this was a sorry way to end it.  I won't get into all of my complaints, as I will be giving too much away, but I just remember thinking, "I'm so disappointed," and, "the second film is the best of the series."  Tobey McGuire gave an interview in which he intimated that a fourth movie could be made provided that the story was good.  I hope they make a fourth movie for the sole purposes of redeeming this flick, but they're running out of villains (that's all I'll say).

The only redeeming feature to this movie, I feel, was the development of the Harry/Peter rivalry.  This was the only storyline given a resolution that was satisfying to me in the end, and James Franco has done well with this character.  Though he never referred to himself as the Hobgoblin, so I don't know what's going on.

Did you see the movie?  Discuss it here.

Personally, I can't wait for Pirates....!