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SPIDER-MAN 3
(Review)
Let’s kick off with a scorecard, shall we?
I loved Spider-Man. I thought it was a thematically cohesive film that made good use of the superhero origin cinematic template (where roughly the first half of the film depicts the main character growing into his heroic role, without the primary colour swirl of his trademark costume), allowing us to witness the life of Peter Parker, come to care for him, and thus, make us willing to take the journey of discovery with him.
I did not love Spider-Man 2. Though it arguably had a more human antagonist in Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, I thought the script was overly burdened by plot contrivances and was manipulative of the audience. And the over-dependence on CGI that was nowhere near flawless was a major sticking point as well.
All this was conveniently brought back to me in the wake of the images that accompany the third installment’s opening credits.
And what do I think of Spider-Man 3?
Let’s see…
To put a bullet in the back of the suspense’s head, I actually like it more than Spider-Man 2. But, like the beleaguered Peter Parker, it’s got a lot of problems.
Big problems.
I wish it were as simple as saying, “Well, if they’d just dropped a villain or two here, shaved off a subplot there, then maybe the movie would have been better.”
It isn’t, though. Not really.
The thing is, given what they were attempting to do, the story Sam Raimi set out to tell, I can see the roles each villain had to play.
Let’s take a look at Harry first (or, as the end credits so unimaginatively dub him, the “New Goblin”).
Harry is the most important villain of the piece, I don’t think that’s even in question. He is Parker’s best friend, we’ve watched his character arc over the Spider-Man films as he progressively became the obsessed, revenge-driven son, and perhaps most importantly, he was shown entering the arsenal of his late, deranged father at the end of the second installment, after having discovered that Peter and Spider-Man are one and the same individual.
Everything was set up for a cataclysmic confrontation between these once-best friends.
And, truth to tell, perhaps the most interesting beat in Spider-Man 3 is when Peter (after having almost killed him with one of those Goblin grenades) actually asks a scarred Harry for help to battle Venom and the Sandman in order to rescue Mary Jane. Harry says “No,” Parker leaves, faithful butler Bernard (nicely played by John Paxton, incidentally, father of Aliens’ Bill Paxton) tells Harry what he knows: the elder Osborn caused his own death, thus rendering all of Harry’s hate towards Spider-Man null and void. (True, this smacks of plot contrivance, as Bernard could have spoken up far sooner, thus saving Harry and Peter a whole lot of heartache, but what can you do? It’s not like plot contrivances are anything new to this franchise anyway.) Harry then goes off to help his friends, and proves that the words he spoke early on in a hospital bed were the truth.
Now, as painful as Harry’s death was (really the only moving part of the entire film), the sacrifice is essential since this is all meant to be a lesson for Parker (and his words during the final voice-over say as much).
The funny thing is though, the redemption Harry earns is far more evident and potent than Peter’s. And let’s face it, Peter has a hell of a lot to redeem himself for, not just in Mary Jane’s eyes, but in the audience’s as well.
(It should also be noted, where Harry is concerned, that what at first seems to be a painful soap opera cliché, the convenient bout of memory loss, becomes essential to Harry’s pivotal decision in the third act. Harry needed to know what it was like to “come home,” to live without the burning desire for revenge, for him to truly understand the price he was paying for his Spider-Man vendetta, and so that he would have something to fall back on, once Bernard pulls the rug out from under Harry’s hate for Spidey. That amnesia-induced idyll for Harry was there so that his choice to help Peter—despite the bit with the grenade in the face—would actually have resonance and not seem like some mawkish Hollywood convenience.)
Secondly, Venom.
I know this is asking a lot, but let’s put aside all the problematic plot point baggage that comes with Venom, since it does have a role to play in this erstwhile morality play.
Venom is here to show Peter what can happen if he allows his emotions to rule him, if he allows his aggression to come to the fore and shadow his very soul.
This is all very weighty, so why is it that when Venom does seem to take full hold of Peter, it turns him into a sleazy loser? (A sleazy, dancing, and piano-playing loser, to be precise.)
Why does Venom turn Eddie Brock (the still-reeking of That 70’s Show Topher Grace) into a vicious, snaggle-toothed steroid monstrosity, while turning Parker into a pathetic nimrod who would put John Travolta on a Saturday night in the 70’s to shame? (And Travolta really doesn’t need any more embarrassment in his life.)
I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Raimi’s sometimes ill-placed penchant for humour (most famously in that terrible collision of The Evil Dead and the Three Stooges, Army of Darkness), but in a film that arguably should have been the darkest of the series thus far, given its subject matter, there are moments (and stretches) during its 2 hour and 20 minute running time where the laughs are just so out of place, it’s not merely embarrassing, it’s downright painful.
Thirdly, Sandman.
Giving a run for Doc Ock’s money in the Let’s Humanize the Baddie sweepstakes, Flint Marko (played fairly effectively by Thomas Haden Church) is here to give Peter an opportunity to forgive the nominal reason for his Uncle Ben’s death.
This is essential since a major factor in Peter’s choosing to take on the mantle of Spider-Man was because of his uncle’s death. But there was always that element of revenge and bitter hatred and guilt and self-loathing that came with the package. In finding the grace to forgive Marko (whether he actually meant to pull the trigger or not), Peter thus relieves himself of much of the weight that burdens his soul, and hopefully, allows him to learn from all his tribulations and become a better person, man, and hero.*
This is, I feel, one of the greatest shortcomings of Spider-Man 2, that we don’t really see if Peter has changed. He makes his choice, chooses to be Spider-Man, thus sacrificing his love for Mary Jane, but he still ends up getting the girl, who ditched a well-meaning if boring fiancée at the altar to be there for her arachnid love.
And though asking Mary Jane to dance isn’t really that much better (for all we know, Parker just wants to relive his Dancing Venom days), at least there is an inkling of a man who is trying to atone by Spider-Man 3’s end.
So where does all that really leave us?
With the frustrated knowledge that here was an interesting story actually worth telling, but somehow, it just got garbled and mixed up and resulted in the deeply flawed film that is Spider-Man 3.**
Which is sad, because this was ambitious, and had some genuinely interesting moments (mostly within the Harry subplot).
That said, it also had some truly horrendous moments. Not only did the whole protracted Venom-influenced Parker sequence (particularly the piano-and-dance number) seem like it was hijacked from some other, more frivolous film, but like Spider-Man 2, 3 commits the major sin of introducing us not to characters, but to plot complications.
In 2, it was Mary Jane’s astronaut fiancée; here, it’s Gwen Stacy. Bryce Dallas Howard (excellent in The Village and passably acceptable in Lady in the Water) is severely underutilized here, as the plot complication meant to give Brock more reason to hate Parker, and to be a bone of contention between Mary Jane and Peter.
But do we really know anything about her as a person? Not really. As I said, she really isn’t a person to begin with; she’s a plot complication. And to do that to a character like Gwen Stacy, who carries a lot of weight in the Spider-Man comic book mythos, is another whole can of worms.
All things considered though, she’s probably in a better position than astronaut fiancée guy; all he really got to do was be Mary Jane’s Kissing Slut, before getting dumped by her.
Which, in a roundabout sort of way, leads me to another point: as the films progressed, I came to realize these weren’t exactly characters I had grown to like. I mean, I liked them well enough at the beginning, but as I got to know them better, I realized they weren’t particularly nice people.
What Mary Jane does to her fiancée is terrible enough, but to see no hint of remorse on her part…
And Parker. Oh boy. This is not just a flawed character. This is a sad, confused, messed-up guy who never really seems to learn anything. (Although, to be fair, that last dance could be the start of a more mature Peter. Of course, if that happens, it probably won’t be Tobey Maguire in the role any more; which is quite possibly a good thing, as the apparent actor’s fatigue he displayed in Spider-Man 2 has given way to an erratic and agonizingly uneven performance here.)
I could go on—the iffy performances of some of the cast, the (equally and still) iffy CGI, the epileptic pacing, the reliance on plot contrivance and convenience to fuel the narrative, the stunningly needless and grotesquely indulgent Stan Lee cameo, and on and on—but that would be flogging an already lame horse.
If the Raimi brothers (Sam and co-writer Ivan) had perhaps done one more sweep over the script for another draft, and figured out a better way to inject the levity into the proceedings, then this might have been the best of the Spider-Man series thus far.
As it is (and in the questionable tradition of the X-Men franchise), it’s the monstrously flawed third installment that will nonetheless make a squillion dollars worldwide and get the studio to salivate at the prospect of the next cash cow (sorry, I meant “film”) in line.
* It also prevents him from becoming Batman.
** And certainly not the “silly” one George Lucas said it was.
(Spider-Man 3 OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)
(Review)
Let’s kick off with a scorecard, shall we?
I loved Spider-Man. I thought it was a thematically cohesive film that made good use of the superhero origin cinematic template (where roughly the first half of the film depicts the main character growing into his heroic role, without the primary colour swirl of his trademark costume), allowing us to witness the life of Peter Parker, come to care for him, and thus, make us willing to take the journey of discovery with him.
I did not love Spider-Man 2. Though it arguably had a more human antagonist in Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, I thought the script was overly burdened by plot contrivances and was manipulative of the audience. And the over-dependence on CGI that was nowhere near flawless was a major sticking point as well.
All this was conveniently brought back to me in the wake of the images that accompany the third installment’s opening credits.
And what do I think of Spider-Man 3?
Let’s see…
To put a bullet in the back of the suspense’s head, I actually like it more than Spider-Man 2. But, like the beleaguered Peter Parker, it’s got a lot of problems.
Big problems.
I wish it were as simple as saying, “Well, if they’d just dropped a villain or two here, shaved off a subplot there, then maybe the movie would have been better.”
It isn’t, though. Not really.
The thing is, given what they were attempting to do, the story Sam Raimi set out to tell, I can see the roles each villain had to play.
Let’s take a look at Harry first (or, as the end credits so unimaginatively dub him, the “New Goblin”).
Harry is the most important villain of the piece, I don’t think that’s even in question. He is Parker’s best friend, we’ve watched his character arc over the Spider-Man films as he progressively became the obsessed, revenge-driven son, and perhaps most importantly, he was shown entering the arsenal of his late, deranged father at the end of the second installment, after having discovered that Peter and Spider-Man are one and the same individual.
Everything was set up for a cataclysmic confrontation between these once-best friends.
And, truth to tell, perhaps the most interesting beat in Spider-Man 3 is when Peter (after having almost killed him with one of those Goblin grenades) actually asks a scarred Harry for help to battle Venom and the Sandman in order to rescue Mary Jane. Harry says “No,” Parker leaves, faithful butler Bernard (nicely played by John Paxton, incidentally, father of Aliens’ Bill Paxton) tells Harry what he knows: the elder Osborn caused his own death, thus rendering all of Harry’s hate towards Spider-Man null and void. (True, this smacks of plot contrivance, as Bernard could have spoken up far sooner, thus saving Harry and Peter a whole lot of heartache, but what can you do? It’s not like plot contrivances are anything new to this franchise anyway.) Harry then goes off to help his friends, and proves that the words he spoke early on in a hospital bed were the truth.
Now, as painful as Harry’s death was (really the only moving part of the entire film), the sacrifice is essential since this is all meant to be a lesson for Parker (and his words during the final voice-over say as much).
The funny thing is though, the redemption Harry earns is far more evident and potent than Peter’s. And let’s face it, Peter has a hell of a lot to redeem himself for, not just in Mary Jane’s eyes, but in the audience’s as well.
(It should also be noted, where Harry is concerned, that what at first seems to be a painful soap opera cliché, the convenient bout of memory loss, becomes essential to Harry’s pivotal decision in the third act. Harry needed to know what it was like to “come home,” to live without the burning desire for revenge, for him to truly understand the price he was paying for his Spider-Man vendetta, and so that he would have something to fall back on, once Bernard pulls the rug out from under Harry’s hate for Spidey. That amnesia-induced idyll for Harry was there so that his choice to help Peter—despite the bit with the grenade in the face—would actually have resonance and not seem like some mawkish Hollywood convenience.)
Secondly, Venom.
I know this is asking a lot, but let’s put aside all the problematic plot point baggage that comes with Venom, since it does have a role to play in this erstwhile morality play.
Venom is here to show Peter what can happen if he allows his emotions to rule him, if he allows his aggression to come to the fore and shadow his very soul.
This is all very weighty, so why is it that when Venom does seem to take full hold of Peter, it turns him into a sleazy loser? (A sleazy, dancing, and piano-playing loser, to be precise.)
Why does Venom turn Eddie Brock (the still-reeking of That 70’s Show Topher Grace) into a vicious, snaggle-toothed steroid monstrosity, while turning Parker into a pathetic nimrod who would put John Travolta on a Saturday night in the 70’s to shame? (And Travolta really doesn’t need any more embarrassment in his life.)
I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Raimi’s sometimes ill-placed penchant for humour (most famously in that terrible collision of The Evil Dead and the Three Stooges, Army of Darkness), but in a film that arguably should have been the darkest of the series thus far, given its subject matter, there are moments (and stretches) during its 2 hour and 20 minute running time where the laughs are just so out of place, it’s not merely embarrassing, it’s downright painful.
Thirdly, Sandman.
Giving a run for Doc Ock’s money in the Let’s Humanize the Baddie sweepstakes, Flint Marko (played fairly effectively by Thomas Haden Church) is here to give Peter an opportunity to forgive the nominal reason for his Uncle Ben’s death.
This is essential since a major factor in Peter’s choosing to take on the mantle of Spider-Man was because of his uncle’s death. But there was always that element of revenge and bitter hatred and guilt and self-loathing that came with the package. In finding the grace to forgive Marko (whether he actually meant to pull the trigger or not), Peter thus relieves himself of much of the weight that burdens his soul, and hopefully, allows him to learn from all his tribulations and become a better person, man, and hero.*
This is, I feel, one of the greatest shortcomings of Spider-Man 2, that we don’t really see if Peter has changed. He makes his choice, chooses to be Spider-Man, thus sacrificing his love for Mary Jane, but he still ends up getting the girl, who ditched a well-meaning if boring fiancée at the altar to be there for her arachnid love.
And though asking Mary Jane to dance isn’t really that much better (for all we know, Parker just wants to relive his Dancing Venom days), at least there is an inkling of a man who is trying to atone by Spider-Man 3’s end.
So where does all that really leave us?
With the frustrated knowledge that here was an interesting story actually worth telling, but somehow, it just got garbled and mixed up and resulted in the deeply flawed film that is Spider-Man 3.**
Which is sad, because this was ambitious, and had some genuinely interesting moments (mostly within the Harry subplot).
That said, it also had some truly horrendous moments. Not only did the whole protracted Venom-influenced Parker sequence (particularly the piano-and-dance number) seem like it was hijacked from some other, more frivolous film, but like Spider-Man 2, 3 commits the major sin of introducing us not to characters, but to plot complications.
In 2, it was Mary Jane’s astronaut fiancée; here, it’s Gwen Stacy. Bryce Dallas Howard (excellent in The Village and passably acceptable in Lady in the Water) is severely underutilized here, as the plot complication meant to give Brock more reason to hate Parker, and to be a bone of contention between Mary Jane and Peter.
But do we really know anything about her as a person? Not really. As I said, she really isn’t a person to begin with; she’s a plot complication. And to do that to a character like Gwen Stacy, who carries a lot of weight in the Spider-Man comic book mythos, is another whole can of worms.
All things considered though, she’s probably in a better position than astronaut fiancée guy; all he really got to do was be Mary Jane’s Kissing Slut, before getting dumped by her.
Which, in a roundabout sort of way, leads me to another point: as the films progressed, I came to realize these weren’t exactly characters I had grown to like. I mean, I liked them well enough at the beginning, but as I got to know them better, I realized they weren’t particularly nice people.
What Mary Jane does to her fiancée is terrible enough, but to see no hint of remorse on her part…
And Parker. Oh boy. This is not just a flawed character. This is a sad, confused, messed-up guy who never really seems to learn anything. (Although, to be fair, that last dance could be the start of a more mature Peter. Of course, if that happens, it probably won’t be Tobey Maguire in the role any more; which is quite possibly a good thing, as the apparent actor’s fatigue he displayed in Spider-Man 2 has given way to an erratic and agonizingly uneven performance here.)
I could go on—the iffy performances of some of the cast, the (equally and still) iffy CGI, the epileptic pacing, the reliance on plot contrivance and convenience to fuel the narrative, the stunningly needless and grotesquely indulgent Stan Lee cameo, and on and on—but that would be flogging an already lame horse.
If the Raimi brothers (Sam and co-writer Ivan) had perhaps done one more sweep over the script for another draft, and figured out a better way to inject the levity into the proceedings, then this might have been the best of the Spider-Man series thus far.
As it is (and in the questionable tradition of the X-Men franchise), it’s the monstrously flawed third installment that will nonetheless make a squillion dollars worldwide and get the studio to salivate at the prospect of the next cash cow (sorry, I meant “film”) in line.
* It also prevents him from becoming Batman.
** And certainly not the “silly” one George Lucas said it was.
(Spider-Man 3 OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)
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