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Hmmmm...
Saw this last night...I went in going "Hell with all the naysayers, I'm sure I am going to love this! I trust in Raimi!!! It's going to be great!"
And I was shocked. I was actually kind of disappointed. I kept trying to love it but the poor quality kept tapping me on the shoulder going 'uh, hi, I'm still here.'
Those who have said the writing (dialogue and plotting) was kind of weak for this movie, were, I gasped, RIGHT! Especially the dialogue. Gone was the intelligent, tight, layered dialogue from Spider-Mans 1 and 2. In its place were cheesy cliches by the dozen. ("I got here just in the nick of time!" "A few minutes earlier would have been good too.") Sure, #1 and #2 have lots of soap opera in them, but they were intelligently-written soap opera, with clever dialogue with lots of meaning packed into it. In Spider-Man 3, everyone says EXACTLY what they mean. And nothing else. I find most of Spider-Mans 1 and 2 very moving, thanks to the synthesis of pacing, acting performances, and brilliant sharp dialogue. The only parts I found remotely moving in #3 were due to ONLY the performances of Tobey and Kirsten.
Sure, as Cameron said, a lot of the film hinges on too many coincidences. But, I could have lived with that if the story and dialogue had been sharper. In Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock robs the same bank that Peter & Aunt May are at, trying to get her a loan. No one commented about that when the movie came out because the script was so tight and the character's stories, so compelling.
Although someone said here that Sam Raimi and his brother wrote this story instead of Oscar-winning writer Alvin Sargeant, Sargeant is indeed a co-writer of this movie as well. Yet his deft hand is nowhere to be seen.
I liked Topher Grace a lot as the cocky, selfish Brock...the only parts that didn't work for me were when he was in the Venom suit talking like a snarky 25-year old. When he was in the Venom suit talking with a dark, ominous tone (usually helped by sound FX enhancement), it worked much better for me. And man, for the most part, every time Venom showed up, especially when he did that freaky monster-noise (sounds a bit like Godzilla's roar) and showed the teeth, it was actually scary.
>> Those newscasters, damn... The type of footage, the picture's quality. The scene-breaking amount and type of exposition... (not only on information, but on how the director wanted us to feel about all that, "this... could very well be... the end... of Spider-Man").
Yeah. These were severely cheesy; I know Raimi likes this kind of stuff and I could live with it. (the google-eyed male newscaster was funny, in a good way I guess) I like the fact that they named Sandman but didn't name Venom. But what I thought was much worse, and which got LOTS of derisive laughter in the theater when I saw it was when the British-accented reporter, after Spider receives a brutal beating at Venom & Sandman's hands, says "Wow...the brutality that is happening is...just too much for words." Of course it is, we just saw it for 5 minutes, why have a reporter tell us exactly what we just saw, literally?
>> Oh my Gaaaaahhhh, that hair!
I actually didn't mind the hair and the eyeshadow, I just didn't need to see a scene where Peter "creates" the look. He could have just shown up with that look and we would have gotten it. Many online have said "evil emo beatnik too cool for school Peter = evil Red Kryptonite Superman from Superman III," and I think that about nails it on the head. Peter saying 'now dig this' in the emo beatnik hipster sequence got roars of good laughter (I think) from the audience. I found 'evil emo' Peter pretty funny; I just thought 'how odd is it that he doesn't even tell Mary Jane about the black suit and what it seems to be doing to him?' I thought there'd be a scene where she says "That...thing is doing something to you! Get rid of it!" And he clings to it like the drug it is. But no.... he just starts acting wacko, wearing black, dangling emo hair and eyeshadow. I know the point was that Peter and MJ aren't communicating, but man, he didn't let her in on ANYTHING about the black suit.
>> OMG, that american flag... How can even someone from the U.S. just not find that entirely scene-breaking?
Yeah, haven't we already had one shot of Spidey in front of a flag per movie so far? This one was the most ham-fisted out of all of 'em, I thought.
The action sequences were fun, but was I the only one who thought a) the CGI almost wasn't quite as good as the CGI in #2 and b) all the aerial battles and super-fast-jump-cut editing were so fast and so dense that it was almost too hard to actually watch and take in what was going on? It was like your eye couldn't really focus on anything for more than a split-second.
I loved Eddie Brock praying for God to kill Peter Parker. That scene (and the synchronicity of him discovering Peter and the black goop in the belltower) worked for me, since it was literally an answer to Eddie's prayers.
A lot of the movie people just kept laughing in all the wrong places - laughing AT the movie's all-over-the-place tone and the weird, wacky, bizarre parts. When I saw Spider-Man 2, both times in the theater, no one laughed at anything in the 'wrong' parts and no one mocked the movie. In Spider-Man 3, the audience was mocking lame dialogue and cheesy cliches about every 20 minutes. And sadly, I felt the same way most of the time. I kept trying to enjoy it but couldn't ignore the drop in quality from 1 and 2.
And I agree that Peter hitting MJ just seemed glossed over. In the comics, Hank Pym hits Jan and the hurt from that action reverberates for years. In this movie, they just get past it. Plus, the script doesn't even have Peter telling MJ "But I was possessed by an evil alien goo that amplified my rage!"
And whooo, that Harry butler scene...out of nowhere, and why did he never speak up before about it? To say nothing of the fact that the butler wanders into the Goblin Armory like it's the kitchen.
When MJ stops singing at the end to greet Peter and reconcile, Raimi doesn't even show us the amused, romantic and/or startled reactions of the band (since MJ stopped literally in the middle of a song during a performance at a busy jazz club). Usually in a scene like that, there's at least an acknowledgment that the performer has stopped in the middle.
So much cliche dialogue...so sad. Also, the music cues and score were repetitive and cheesy. In #2, the score, subtle though it is, often moved me tremendously. Here, we had 3 music cues repeated ad nauseum: the Spidey theme, the "king kong"-esque Sandman lumbering cue, and the 'this is where dramatic things happen in a scene that you really wish was better-written' wistful dramatic theme. Over and over, cycled through many times throughout the movie. I really found myself missing Elfman, who found variety and subtlety in #2's score.
I found myself going "Wow, I can't believe it...this is just a weird and kinda disappointing movie." Especially, as Cameron also said, after reviewing Spider-Man 2 recently and seeing how perfect it is (and 1 really holds up to time and repeated viewings as well). Even some of the J. Jonah Jameson stuff wasn't quite up to snuff - why did they install a thing where his whole DESK vibrates like a fire alarm/snooze clock buzzer when he gets mad? That doesn't remotely exist in real life for ANYONE in any office anywhere --- and again, the 'it's a comic book movie, stop being critical' defense doesn't work when 1 and 2 are such great, intelligent films. |
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