Fantom Comics

From Fantom gossip reporter Ari Saperstein:

Spider-Man 3: The Soap Opera… or it might have well has been.
By Ari Saperstein
1 out of 4 stars

After watching a screening of Spider-Man 3 Thursday night, everyone left the theatre with the same though on their mind: “What the hell was that?”

That’s the impression that the third – and by far the worst – Spider-man movie gives you. There are so many bad things about this movie, but I’ll spend my time talking about just two: the script and the plot. The movie actually gets off to a pretty good start with its four main story lines. A black alien goop falls from space and lands in a crater (that happens to be 20 feet away from Peter and MJ, though neither notices). Flint Marko, a convict on the run, accidentally stumbles – literally, stumbles – into a pit during a science experiment separating sand particles, and he becomes the “Sandman.” Eddie Brock (the future Venom) is a photographer trying to steal Peter’s job at the Bugle, no matter what. Harry has taken on the role of the New Goblin, using the same serums on himself that turned his father crazy. In a battle between Harry and Peter (known to some of you as the seven minute scene on Yahoo!), Harry hits his head and develops short term memory loss. Hmm, how lucky for Peter.

Meanwhile, things are really going bad for MJ. She gets fired from her play and cannot manage to tell Peter because whenever she tries, he interrupts her saying the absolutely wrong thing. Or, Peter is off spending time with Gwen Stacy, who just happens to be his lab partner, and she also just happens to be Eddie Brock’s girlfriend, and he just happens to save her, and she just happens to kiss Spidey. Even for a comic book adaptation, there’s a lot I’m not buying.

Now here is where the film starts to go way, way downhill. Just when you think MJ & Peter have everything going wrong for them, revenge and evil consume Peter through the form of the black alien goop. He’s got a new costume, and a new personality – he’s a real jerk dressed in black. The black goop turns him into an ego-centric, selfish, self-centered guy that is the farthest thing from Spider-Man and it makes him seem more like a villain. Tobey McGuire does a great job playing a bad guy – almost too good a job because it is honestly disturbing to see him as Spider-Man act that way. Between Spidey’s personality change and MJ’s depressing life, S3 is more like a 2 ½ hour soap opera. This is one of the main problems with the entire movie: nothing has really evolved from the first film, but at the same time nothing really feels that familiar, whether it’s the relationships, villains, or powers. Plus there is Sandman, who it turns out killed Ben Parker (Peter’s uncle) and apparently feels bad about it, since he was only trying to get money to help his sick daughter (tear – more soap opera…). Does that sound like a villain to you? As you may be able to tell from my description, this character is written as an incredibly sympathetic man who at no point ever actually acts villainous.

Spidey 3 suffers from two life threatening illnesses. The first, Hypedup3rdmovie-itus, which as you may remember, is the same disease that “X-Men: The Last Stand” suffered from. Hypedup3rdmovie-itus, in both cases, puts major pressure on the films to be at least as good as the 1st and 2nd. This ailment results in symptoms such as:
• Writers re-writing the script so many times, because they want it to keep up with the first two movies, but ending up ruining the film.
• The movie not being able to focus on all its many new stories.
• While spend so much time trying to develop all its story lines, the movie forgets to leave room for cool action/fight scenes.
• Not focusing on cool new characters, but spending too much time on the relationships between old characters.

Even worse, the second disease this movie suffers from, which is fatal to all comic book and action films: Takesitselfwaytoseriously Syndrome.

Many hyped-up and supposedly awesome films have suffered from TS, one of the most famous being “Hulk” (2003). “Spider-Man 3” is a sad, depressing and very serious film that in the end is just not fun to watch. The sappy and very cheesy script (especially when it comes to Harry) makes it so much worse. S3, like the “Hulk”, fails at creating a good experience for the audience, which we’ve come to expect. A day after watching S3 a very interesting comparison about the film came to mind; it is just like a panel to panel adaptation of those cheesy dialogued, morality teaching, 70’s comic books.

In the end, I guess the truth is that it could have been worse, like if they’d gone with their original idea of having only one villain, which was Ben Kingsley playing The Falcon.

Be sure to look out for: A framed picture on Peter’s nightstand, which is the one he took in the first film of MJ holding a packet next to the spiders.

Final Word: If the Hulk and X3 are both your favorite films, you’ll love this. If you liked Spider-Man 1 and 2, this is a failure.