Spider-man 3 succumbing to Batman/Superman syndrome?
While I've yet to see this confirmed, FreezeDriedMovies is announcing three villains in for the next movie.
We knew that James Franco, playing Harry Osborne, was going to be following in his father's footsteps and would be on the vengeance trail against Peter Parker/Spider-man. Moreover, given the personalities and the father/son dynamic in play most of us suspected Harry would change his father's costume and become Hobgoblin rather than try to become his father; his lack of self esteem, if nothing else, would have prevented that.
Now we find out that Topher (That 70s Show) Grace is reportedly bulking up to be Venom, and Thomas Haden Church is set to be Sandman, both to debut in Spider-man 3. I suppose I should say some versions of the characters, as odds are one or both will end up being catspaws that Harry's used Oscorp's facilities to bankroll. It's the tidiest way to cram three villains - two of whom have no backgrounds established in either of the first two movies - into one movie.There was no way Venom's history was going to be covered comics-accurately in the films anyway (not that most of my contemporaries or me, even, would care much), so I'm guessing it's much more likely going to be a thought-responsive bit of high tech that one of Harry's payrolled scientists came up with rather than some alien symbiote with an intimate connection to and jilted lover loathing for Peter Parker. It can start out more as a casually threatening element with chameleon tricks (probably including a frame-up for Spider-man) and then move into more combative, aggressive applications. Harry - still feeling deeply betrayed by a friend who had not only been practically a brother, but someone who found more favor in his father's eyes only to (as Harry believes) to have killed the Great Man - can be the source for the personal emnity component. It just remains to be seen if Topher's character is given a reason for hating Spider-man and/or Peter Parker, too... though the latter would complicate matters terribly. Harry himself is already posing a moral dilemma for Peter because he knows who he is, bringing someone else into it would only make things worse and someone's going to have to die.
Church's Sandman... eh. An ex con or current convict who's made himself available for a scientific experiment in a shady deal to potentially take time off his sentence? He looks the part for that. A tough, street-smart Sandman could work. Still, it's almost certainly going to be a version unique to the film franchise. How well it folds in remains to be seen.My expectations for the film franchise's health are dropping. This looks like too much tossed into the same pot, and is reminding me of what became of both the (first) Batman and Superman film franchises, which started strong and soon fell to ineptitude and clutter. I'll be very pleased to be proven wrong on this, but for good or ill that's next year.
Comments
It's interesting to me, though, to think that perhaps Osborne bought samples of the strength serum, or at least the formula, from some illicit underworld source that had somehow gained access to the same formula developed by Prof. Erskine for the Captain America project. I mention this because, without the vita ray component, Erskine's formula had the effect of making its subjects paranoid to the point of violent sociopathy... an effect clearly observed with Osborne.
If Osborne got the strength serum from an outside source, perhaps he also lifted plans for the glider, the bombs, and his various other weapons from somewhere else as well. He was certainly unscrupulous enough. Maybe he just straight up bought the stuff from the Tinker and later on deluded himself into believing he'd invented it.
Going back to the movies, I found the Octavius/Parker relationship dynamic to be so identical to the Osborne/Parker relationship, and I found that to be only one of probably dozens of plot elements that were virtually Xeroxed from one movie to the other. I've always intensely disliked the Hollywood tendency to give us a 'sequel' that is little more than a photocopy of the first movie with different proper nouns and slightly better special effects, and the stuff that was genuinely different in the second film (the MJ relationship stuff) honestly revolted me.
In later years other writers decided the accident must have physically changed him beyond simple damage, and started to build more into a superhuman-creator when they moved into Hobgoblin territory.
Since then -- well, really, in relatively recent times -- Osborne was retroactively turned into something closer to a scientific genius.
Even in the film, Osborne was a dick who rarely showed a more pleasant side. A driven businessman who had become so used to sizing everyone up in terms of strength and weaknesses, looking to exploit every situation. The only thing that gave him any sort of connection to Peter (aside from his friendship with Harry) was a sense of independence (making his own way in the world) and the retro-fitted scientific background.
Octavius was little to nothing like Osborne. His detachment from humanity, such as it was, was a result of his focus on learning and discovery, and he'd been balanced and drawn out by his arts and culture-focused wife. He demonstrated a possible path for Peter's life as Peter Parker: Scientist. A fruitful, fulfilling, happy and intellectually exciting life.
In the first film Peter had his new powers go somewhat to his head, and started to go down his own version of the self-interested path only to have Fate slap him back and finding a need to use his powers for the greater good. In the second film (borrowing strongly thematically from Spidey's first Annual) he was looking at the ruin of two half-lives and his own emotionally conflicted state tried to give him an easy out by psychosomatically negating his powers. Peter was lured into a life as Peter Parker, freed of the burden of obligation of Spider-man's powers. The movie was about him coming to realize he'd done this to himself, and that it was a new attempt at selfishness. In the end, yes, he had to make much the same choice -- give up much of the potential happiness of being Peter Parker on a full time, no strings attached basis for the greater good -- but that's central to the character.
In so many significant ways these were different films with different paths. The characters underwent some changes from the first film, as did aspects of the dynamics of their relationships (Peter to Aunt May, Peter to Mary Jane, Peter to Harry), and I was happy with #2 being significantly different from #1. I'm not going to dump on the filmmakers for daring to have a car chase through the streets in each film, nor a fire rescue scene in each, especially as the point of fire scene was completely different.
In the first it was a trap the Goblin had set, and in the second it was just another urban tragedy which enabled Peter to realize that even without powers (or at least without reliable ones) he still had the moral compulsion to attempt to save lives. That he was able to save a child as Peter showed him that, but that he wasn't able to save someone else in the building due to not being Spider-man started to work on his conscience and start him down the path of realizing that he'd subconsciously buried his powers.
Whether or not one cares for Mary Jane, Kirsten Dunst, the idea of Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane, and/or the idea of a Peter and Mary Jane romantic relationship is it's own issue or set of issues. At least they had the balls to move the story ahead instead of playing up the revelation of a secret identity only to wipe it out with the equivalent of a magic kiss at the end a'la Superman II. Unless one's criteria for a different movie involves him changing cities and supporting casts and/or taking a Gilligan's Island approach to the story (well, we tried patching the hull of the boat in the first episode and Gilligan screwed up the glue, so we can't try that again...), or perhaps insisting that a new, central menace be someone the hero only interacts with in costume, Spider-man II was a significantly different movie than the first one. I can't bring myself to fault the second film for doing some similar things with Doc Ock that they did with Norman Osborne in the first one - namely, having a accident lead him into madness, leaving Peter with the conflict of having someone he in some way admired be someone he had to stop, and having loved ones used as pawns. Why? Well, partially because I'd be more inclined to fault the first film for the artificial impositions of character elements on Osborne than I would for portraying Octavius the way they should have. Partially it's because, as mentioned above, these were different characters with different dynamics in their relationship with Peter. At best, Norman Osborne and Peter were cycling around a Father & Son dynamic, which even Pete soon realized didn't really fit. Peter and Octavius, though, was much more a case of kinship - of Peter speculating that looking at Octavius and his life might be like looking in a magic mirror showing him his future a decade from now.
All in all, the most annoying thing in Spider-man II for me? That they had to resort to the failure of an "inhibitor chip" and the corrupted AI of the artificial limbs to largely explain Doc Ock. They were heavy-handed, terribly artificial means necessitated by their not wanting to do it the same way they seemingly did it with Norman Osborne. In the end, I suppose we can blame Stan Lee for repeating himself. Unfortunately, since the movie franchise chose to use the Goblin first they went with it (the simpler path) with him even though Doc Ock had the right to that "scientific accident causes brain injury" angle, those scenes having been written over two years before Stan - freshly working with John Romita after Ditko walked out largely over the issue of who the Goblin would be revealed to be - decided to make Norman Osborne be the Goblin.
I'm going to see these movies to see Spider-man movies, so, well, I want to see Spidey in action, swinging and fighting through the city, some conflicts with regular street crime and local disaster scenes along the way, the love/hate relationship with a fickle city made up of fickle people, a deeply jealous JJJ pushing his and the public's buttons, and the seemingly insoluble problems created by trying to lead two half lives and keep them separate while still searching for a solution and sometimes thiking he's found one. Were I to go in and find those elements in the sequel and am bothered by it, well, then I'd have to ask myself why I came to see a Spider-man movie.
The end of the second film sets us up for a new dynamic in the third, as Peter now has both a knowing ally and a conflicted, unstable foe with the same knowledge. I'm not glowing with optimism as to how they'll resolve it. Harry's knowledge is the biggest problem, just as it was in the comics, and just as it was in the comics there's no obvious, truly satisfactory resolution -- For Fate to keep killing people off for their knowledge is tedious, and gaslighting Harry into thinking he'd imagined the whole thing is so weak that I don't see how anyone could be satisfied with it. Forcing Harry's face into the dirt of who his father really was, and to take an objective view of the details of the man (or at least the man he became -- using the enhancing experiment as a way of divorcing the distant, idealized memories of a loving father from the man he'd really become even before the accident --is a way to soften the issue) and having Harry realize he was wrong and simply end the insanity would be a novel approach. Still, what's to be done with him after that? Heading into Spider-man 4 with Peter having both a supportive wife and a vastly wealthy best friend, each of whom knowing his full story, is really too rosy a picture for Spider-man.