Just got back from watching Spidey 3.
To summarize my feelings on Spidey 1 - Great Peter Parker stuff, lousy villain (Green Goblin sucked - but Norman Osborne was wicked). Spidey 2 - Great villain, lousy Peter Parker stuff. Spidey 3 - Great Peter Parker and great Spidey stuff, lousy Peter Parker and lousy Spidey stuff.
C'est la vie.
Bruce Campbell's appearance made me wonder why Sam Raimi slipped in an episode of Frasier into the film, but I didn't mind. It was very funny.
The butler was bollocks. As was Sandman's, "I have a sick daughter".
That said, Sandman was brilliant. Really well done. The actor was great.
Venom suffered from Green Goblin's problem - ****ty villain, great human side. Eddie Brock was entertaining. Venom was jumbled.
Venom is one of the only supervillains in Spidey's rogues gallery that you can just do as a film. It's a solid story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, very satisfying, and very full. It's not fatty at all. The pay off to Venom is Venom stalking Spidey, really getting under his skin by having tea with Aunt May and making MJ think Spidey's in the house (MJ was so scared of Venom, that's why Spidey ditched his black costume) and so forth. In this - he just holds her hostage.
Any villain could have done that.
In fact, they HAVE.
Spider-Man 1 - Green Goblin holds MJ hostage.
Spider-Man 2 - Doctor Octopus holds MJ hostage.
Spider-Man 3 - Venom holds MJ hostage.
What makes Venom special is the stalker aspect. This is completely missing in his movie portrayal. He's unneccessary. Hell, Venom pops up in the last 20 minutes. I don't think major villains should be cropping up at that time. He looked cool - but he wasn't cool.
Mary Jane was terrible as always. I don't know how much (if any) is Ms Dunst's fault, but the script - she's got no character to her at all. She goes from whiny to upset and then kidnapped. That's it.
The problem I have with superheroes is generally, their girlfriends aren't women I'd actually bother with. What I mean is, if I'm Superman, I don't chase Kate Bosworth. Sure, she's pretty and nice. But as soon as she starts giving me ****, I'm out of that relationship. Same as Kirsten Dunst. There's nothing there wanting me to stay and put up with her crap. Again, I don't know how much is the actor's fault (I'd say none), but I'm not interested in seeing the two together. Let him have Gwen.
I liked how neither Stacey died. Good for them!
I also loved 'evil' Peter Parker except for his appearance - making Spider-Man an emo goth was just stupid. BUT I did love that even though he was 'evil', he was still Peter Parker. I loved how Peter Parker thinks strutting is cool. Bruce Wayne wouldn't strut. Clark wouldn't strut. But Peter would. I thought that was well handled.
I also found two things that I'd never seen before and I give huge props to the Spidey 3 guys for - Firstly, I've never heard of Harry and Peter teaming up. That's a great idea and I'm surprised it's not been done before. Secondly, I'm surprised no one has ever had Sandman fly. That's superb. Sandman was really well handled (so was Harry).
I also loved Sandman's theme tune. It was really B-movie. I loved how they didn't even pretend to explain why people would be spinning sand around in a particle generator. I think the deleted scene there is some head honcho guy walking in and going,
"What the hell is the purpose of this experiment?"
"We like sand."
"... You're all fired."
Speaking of outtakes, I think there's a scene where Harry and his butler, Bernard, have to stop Harry getting married in a PG Wodehouse type of farce. Hey, if we can have a Frasier scene, we can have a Jeeves & Wooster scene.
And why did everyone forget Spidey has a Spider-Sense in this film? It never happened. Venom mentions it once and that's it.
But to get to what I think of the film - the film was sound in idea and intent, and had a lot going for it. However, it was a fatty film. It was far too long and it's production was unimaginative. Too many fights looked like a video game sequence. But the film was simply too long. It could've lost half and hour without any trouble - it spent too long on too much, creating an extremely slow-paced film. A slow pace that never really picks up. Even the final fight is very slowly paced, and somewhat unprogressive. But it's finale, like the first two, are flabby and wasteful. The best scenes of all three films should be the ending climax, but it's sad that they most certainly are not.
But it wasn't bad at all. It was okay. It didn't give me the Rage or anything, so that's good enough for me.
And it was, at times, truly, genuinely exciting and funny and even quite brutal.
I just think it could've been much better. That's what I come out with. "It was good, but it should've been better. Why wasn't it?" I feel like something's lacking. And that's because the film just didn't go far enough. We didn't reach the end of the line - we didn't see the darkest moment, and therefore, the brightest moment seems duller for it.
