So I finally got to see Spider-Man 3 via Netflix delivery the other day.
Um.
While it certainly wasn't as good as Spider-Man 2 or even the first film, it didn't really suck.
But the more I watched the more I got the feeling that they just tried to cram too much shit into the thing!
I mean, I've never been able to find any enjoyment in Spider-Man in the comics at all. It was just never my thing. Raimi's films have been where I have found the most enjoyment of the characters and even the villains which I've always found to be the lamest of most comic super-heroes.
I just don't get the thing of cramming so many characters into a single story. There's only so much plot a film can deal with and Spider-Man 3 started to really fall apart for me because of too much "stuff" trying to get done.
You really had 3 possible films here crammed into one and I realized that because it is so dense that I really only cared for maybe 2 of them.
*spoilers ahead for a film most readers probably have seen*
You've got your Harry Osborne/Green Goblin storyline that has been at the core since the first film. There was enough here to broaden it to the whole plot of Spider-Man 3 yet it becomes a 1/3 of the story and pretty much the deus ex machina at the end.
Then you've got your Flint Marko/Sandman storyline. I actually loved Raimi's version of this otherwise boring ass character and I could have handled an entire film of this story, especially with more depth into the Marko's faults. He didn't have enough screen time and I how and why he teams up with Venom is just so f'n lame!
So Venom? Once again an entire film could and should have been written around this character/plot device. Instead it becomes and underlying thread from the first moments of the film and then kind of just gets wrapped up rather quickly at the end.
There's just too much attempted in the time allotted for 1 film here!
And to pointlessly throw Gwen Stacy into the mix is even more insane.
I will give kudos to Willem Defoe for coming back for his minor bit as well as Elya Baskin and Mageina Tovah as the Ditkovitches. It really does help create the feeling of consistency and continuity with the other films.
I really wanted to like it, and I did, but it really could have been so much better if it had been 2 films.
Eddie Brock being taken over by the Symbiote should have been the ending of one film and then the whole major Venom story the 4th.
Of course, seeing what they did here, they probably would have thrown that Carnage thing into it.
Oh well.
Now I'm patiently waiting to see if Iron Man will replace Spider-Man 2 as my favorite comic book super-hero movie. I find it funny that 2 characters I could care less about may provide me the best comic book-to-film translations yet.
Absolutely agree. Batman and Robin (apart from the overload on 60s comedy), should've proven the point that too many villains spoil the plot... Just the one will do, especially if they're well-fleshed out like Green Goblin and Doc Ock.
What should've been done was the Flint Marko story, with the Harry story interwoven. Then Spidey 4 with the Venom story. (Rumour has it though that Raimi doesn't really like the symbiote...)
M.
Venom doesn't really have much going for him to appeal to a wide non-comic book reading public. I can see why he doesn't like him.
In fact, outside of just being a brute force entity, that's about all he is in this film.
I said the exact same thing, there was really too much crammed into the film, the Venom story, the Sandman story, Harry's story, it all felt really crammed together. Which was a really stupid thing to do because it isn't like there won't be a Spider-Man 4. Venom and Sandman should have been separate films, and Peter's conflict with Harry could have been interwoven into the Sandman story. Hell, they had the perfect set up for Spidey 4, Peter gets rid of the symbiote, and Venom returns in the next film for an ALL OUT BRAWL!!!!!
JJJ needs more screen time, IMO.
As an aside, why is it that every superhero film has to end with the villain dying? Joker, Penguin, Doc Ock, Goblins 1 and 2, Venom, sheesh. I would have LOVED to have seen Jack Nicholson do another turn as Joker.
Oh, forgot to add;
the only thing I really liked (I mean, really, really liked) was the part that most people really, really hated, and that was the emo, Saturday Night Fever part of the film. You're swinging along, watching Peter Parker act like an ass, enjoying his little night club dance routine and all...and BAM! He knocks MJ down and you're snapped back to reality. I thought that was a nice little bit of film making.
I still think the best comic to film translations are American Splendor, Ghost World and Sin City (because they couldn't have gotten any closer to the books than they did. . . ) but I really have high hopes for Iron Man.
HA: I totally liked Emo-Peter. I especially loved when he basically attacked Eddie in the Bugle offices.
I can't agree with Nicholson as the Joker though. I hated that.
THANK YOU.
That wasn't the joker. That was Jack Nicholson made up as Tammy Faye Bakker and for some reason everyone kept referring to him as the Joker.
Loved Jack Palance and William Hootkins, tho.
yeah, i liked parts of the movie, but i agree. it was too much, and a lot was left unflushed out. i mostly hated the group therapy feeling at the end. it sort of ruined it for me. oh well...
I think I liked 3 more than 2 because the pace felt right. I loved Doc Oc but I think the film started to drag for me. It was still a good film though.
for 3 I agree with everyone too many villians and killing too many of them as well. Knew it was going to happen with Harry eventually. Wish they would have waited with Venom till the next. Sandman was very well done considering that was Lowel from Wings.
Noticed that here to the obsession to have mouths and faces exposed to covey emotion. Did you notice how often masks needed to be removed or were? I guess it just seems out of place for super hero genre of films.
But yes the emo Peter was great.
I do like Spider-Man overall (not that I am an avid collector of his comics or anything). I have to agree that they tried to cram too much into this. Having so many plot points meant that they did not get enough time and realization to make them important and believable. Of particular ire to me is the whole thing in the church. Peter did not really have any reason to go there to try to get rid of the costume (he didn't know, as he did in the comics, that the symbiote was susceptible to sound) and really, Brock didn't either (praying for Parker's death!? how lame).
I dunno. I have the first 2 on DVD but won't be getting this one.
Ah, you're talking to the wrong guy here about this one. I usually agree with most of the stuff you say here but I really loved Spider-Man 3 (as you could probably see from the latest couple of posts on my website). I thought it was as good as the first film and I think the first film ties with Superman for being the best superhero movie that's been made so far. I thought it was great and I wouldn't change anything about it except for...
A) I probably would have had Eddie get the symbiote in the last shot of the film
and
B) If I didn't got with plan A I would keep Venom alive. Killing Venom was one of the only outright stupid things Raimi's ever done.
But yeah, I thought it was a great film. The only other problem I have with it is I think the plot should have been used for Spider-Man 4. Spider-Man 3 should have been about Spider-Man's powers mutating out of control. That storyline would have made more sense seeing as how his powers were failing him in the second one. It would have been a great opportunity for Spidey to go to Conners and then have to battle the Lizard and possibly Harry or the Vulture.
As for Spidey's villains being lame...again, I disagree. I actually think Spider-Man probably has the best villains gallery out there. Mysterio, Venom, Electro, Kraven...those guys are awesome. I always thought Batman actually had the lamest gallery. It really shocks me how much people love the Batman villains so much when really Bane and maybe Ra's were the only interesting villains that were truly his equals.
But...yeah, I will agree they tried to have too many stories in S3 and that the plot should have been for two movies. I think they did it in one movie instead of two though because everyone was just contracted for three movies.
I find more Marvel villains lame with the rare exception of a decent Magneto or Doctor Doom story. Maye Kingpin every now and then.
But I also find the Batman villains often quite as bad.
My problem with them, and this tends to be my general boredom with superhero comics anymore, is the fact that instead of creating new villains and characters to take comics into the the next 40 years all writers ever do is regurgitate the same old things over and over and over.
I'd love to see the Joker shelved for 10 years. Along with so many other Bat villains.
I'd love to see writers forced to come up with new characters in these books but I'm afraid all we'd end up with at DC are derivative villains.
I can't imagine Marvel would be much different.
At least there was that period in the brief late 80s/very early 90s when writers for both companies tried to do this. This is where your Banes and your Venom come out of. Hell, that's even around when when Claremont was mythos building with the X-Men before the huge glut of X-books.
This makes me think though: Who really are the newest (and I mean last 10-15 years) created villains for either company that have had any staying power?
Also, I don't think I'd really want to see a Spider-Man 4 if it wasn't directed by Raimi and had the same core cast. I don't know why but that tight continuity onscreen between all 3 films was vitally important for me with this francise.
I suppose it is the same with the Harry Potter films, though director hasn't been as important. I can't imagine any other actors regardless of age for the main characters. But then again, Dumbledore being replaced worked but obviously that was out of necessity.
Oh. And at least when Grant Morrison wrote X-Men he tried to come up with drastically different characters! Man, that was probably the most creative era of X-men in terms of trying to come up with new characters that I can think of in such a short amount of time.
But Nala, you know if they tried to come up with new characters and villains, there would be the general outcry "WAAHHHH! WE WANT MORE JOKER!! WE WANT MORE GREEN GOBLIN!!! YOU CAN'T DO THIS!"
I believe Batman stories are at their best when he's fighting everyday criminals and being all detective-y. He doesn't have super-powers, just lots of cool gadgets and money with which to thwart the bad guys. He doesn't need Super-villains. I've always thought Batman (who is really the only DC hero I know anything about) would play better as a gritty crime drama than as a traditional "save the world" superhero.
As for rehashing old super-villains; you can only come up with so many chemically/radioactively/mutantly-enhanced characters. If you're going to go that route, might as well go ahead and feed your readers stale bread instead of having to waste time actually developing back story on a new one, right?
Spiderman 3 was fun. Definitely felt crowded with the addition of Venom (wasn't that foisted on Raimi, or some such?) but even with that dragging things down, the movie was still so much better than most of the dreck to come out of the Hollywood blockbuster machine.
I would also add - although it's becoming redundant at this point - that the 'emo Peter' sequence is fucking hilarious, and will go down in history as such. :)
I'm glad we agree on Batman's rogues gallery.
To me Batman needs someone who is as intelligent AND as strong as he is and dudes like Joker or the Riddler or The Penguin just don't it for me. That's why I really loved Bane and Ra's. They really stood a serious threat because they could outsmart him AND kick his ass. I mean, The Joker might have killed Jason Todd but Bane friggin' BROKE BATMAN.
And don't get me started on Magneto. The X-Men have so many great villains they could have used in the movies but they just had Magneto over and over and over and over and over and over again when they could have brought in Sinister or Apocalypse (one of the most bad-ass villains of all-time before they gave him the lame-ass backstory).
I know it's blasphemous but I'd extend your "shelve certain villains for a couple of years" to Optimus Prime and Megatron in the Transformers cartoons. I think the thing that made Optimus Prime really cool was that he died and stayed dead for almost a year in the 80s. I'm not saying put those guys on the shelves for a couple of years but I don't think it would be the end of the world to have those guys disappear from the comics or the cartoons for a while. I mean, think of all the cool stand-in leaders for the Decepticons and the Autobots they had in the old comics over the years. I for one would think that route would be pretty interesting as long as their replacements weren't Rodimus and Galvatron again.
Sean: I'm glad you brought TF leaders up since the same does apply. But obviously, the two big names sell and Hasbro is all about selling.
But in Japan, it is insane that after Galvatron and Rodimus leadership went to Fortress Maximus and Skorponok (with some Chromedome thrown in there) and then to some degree on Earth you had MetalHawk and Ginrai. Then full leadership seems to have gone on to Star Saber and so forth.
With TFs in the movie now I doubt we'll see anything other than Ops and Megs. And they will no doubt find some non-plausible way to return Megs to life within the opening of the 2nd film or quite early in it.
Encore wise, I wouldn't be too shocked in the big box US retailers actually tried to see the G1 versions of all the characters in the film. Those characters were chosen for a reason and now we've got G1 Ratchet and G1 Ironhide being rereleased.
Alas, those may be 2 of the ugliest Diaclone molds ever used.
Here's hoping that Hasbro does a little Clasics Ironhide/Ratchet action that isn't a total rip from the Botcon exclusives from 2005.
I've already got the way they're going to have Megatron return. See, they dropped him in the Laurentian Abyss, which they THOUGHT was the deepest place on Earth. They SHOULD have dropped him in the Mariana Trench, but since they didn't, he's gonna be just fine. Oh, but for some unexplained reason, he's going to call himself Galvatron instead.
"Eddie Brock being taken over by the Symbiote should have been the ending of one film and then the whole major Venom story the 4th."
I couldn't agree more. Venom is far too big to cram in to 20 minutes at the end of the movie.
I would have made the majority of the movie about the symbiote suit taking over Peter. Then the growing struggle between him and Harry. The rivalry between Peter and Eddie was cool. Then Sandman as a minor villain someplace in the story. The fact that they made it so Sandman killed Uncle Ben really pisses me off btw. I would get rid of that right away. Actually with all that other stuff, you could get rid of the Sandman from this movie completely and I wouldn't mind.
The movie should end with Peter shedding the black suit and it falling on to Eddie.