Spidey Squeezin's(I'll keep the safe part up here and leave any spoilers concealed.)
Nick and I hit the 9:15 showing of Spider-Man 3 this morning down at the local Regal, where 5 of the 10 screens were covered in webs this weekend.
As is always the case with these films it had its flaws, and if someone goes in with a chip on his shoulder, well, he's going to find something to knock it off. I, however, had a good time and was pleased with how much they managed to fit neatly into 2 hours 20 minutes. Perhaps a tad too neatly in some spots and with a rough seam showing here and there, but a nice job in general. Certainly much, much better than I'd braced for.
I'm not going to do anything approaching a proper review, but I do have some more comments to make that anyone who hasn't seen it yet won't want to read. So, go see it before clicking for the rest of this post... or don't blame me. (Note: I've added some more text since last night, as some other things bubbled up in my mind and I finally took a look at the paid reviews.)
A tidy job of summarizing the first two films during the opening credits.
Deciding to make the symbiotic organism something that simply fell from the sky a'la 1958's The Blob was likely a good move. No reason to over-complicate matters. You saw how much good it did for Ang Lee when he tried doing it with The Hulk.
The Sandman and Venom effects were generally terrific.
The shoehorning in of another person in the incident where Uncle Ben was killed was much smoother than I'd expected.
Making a water tower a prominent feature in the big final battle, when Harry circles it on his way back into battle against the Sandman, and then not using it was a fun tease. Anything to derail the jerks and assholes who seem to live for going to a movie and smugly pronouncing "I saw that coming" is usually welcome.
Peter turning into a jerk was a little uncomfortable to watch, but having seen some people make the "bad boy" thing work for them before I couldn't just dismiss it. I thought Raimi captured nicely how once he really started to strut that women will react to his face with a "are you serious" but look back over their shoulders with a "that could be something good" glance. Women can be maddening.
Some details along the way were anywhere from amusing to troubling:
- So, without even pausing to wonder what it was that the wacky scientists were doing trying to "demolecularize" a pit of sand... they just conduct their experiments in an open pit in a field, not particularly concerned with contamination nor apparently doing any follow-up testing of material from the test area? Your tax dollars at work!
- Spidey comes across the bank, doors ripped open and a stream of sand disappearing down a grate in the street -- a grate with no apparent larger opening than what one could put his fingers through... so how did Sandman get those two large packs of cash down there with him?
- Also, about the money from that heist... It's not really so troubling in the way the other things in this list are, but presumably it was left down in the tunnels beneath the rails? Presumably it was still missing if Eddie Brock was able to make his Photoshopped Spidey fly for the newspaper and authorities. Maybe Flint Marko (Sandman) was the only one to remember it, which definitely would have given him an extra reason to make peace with Spidey (whose identity he now, essentially, knows -- which is a troubling detail) and then drift off across the city.
- Uh... how did Harry survive in close quarters with an explosion that we saw essentially vaporize people in other instances?
- It's a good thing no one else in the city has a telephoto lens considering all of the time Spidey (and Harry after a while) went around without his mask on.
- Man, where was the symbiote getting all the mass to make that much webbing? I guess we could say the same about Peter.
- I don't think even enhanced humans such as Peter and Harry could take the beatings they were with brick and metal without showing more damage. Venom wailing on Peter's face with full-arm swings of a metal bar... he'd look a little worse off than dazed.
Really, though, despite all that the only spot where my head dropped forward in sympathetic shame for the filmmakers was when Spidey was swinging to MJ's rescue and landed on a building with the huge U.S. flag billowing behind him.
In the end we can presume Harry's really dead (even if the treatment he took allow him to regenerate I doubt they buried him both without any embalming and with an air supply), as is Eddie Brock. If they want to have a new Venom (or Carnage or whatever) they can always have some bit of it (including the piece that Doc Connors has) infect someone. Sandman drifted away, so even though they parted with an understanding of sorts, he's out there somewhere.
A fun time, I'm happy I went. While I enjoyed the second one this third entry in the series was much better -- certainly more than most of the critics' reviews I've subsequently read.
While I can certainly fault the movie for trying to put too much into a single film, most of us out in fandom knew that was coming for months, and so were braced for it. Accepting that it all was going to be in there I was generally pleased with how Raimi and crew made it work.
Comments
I liked it a great deal, especially pleased with how well Sandman worked. Not sure if I needed any of the Flint Marko has a sickly child or killed Uncle Ben, but at least that last bit sets up the "dark Spidey" going out of his way to try to kill him.
Eddie Brock was fine creep and one has to realize there's more than one jerk out there who goes to church to pray for someone else's death. Never really cared for Venom in the comics, but he wasn't bad in the movie, and certainly hope that's the last of him.
Harry dies a hero. Well, why not?
That closes a chapter on the Spidey movies and no one has to wonder what Harry will be doing next time, cause he's gone.
And yeah, sure, Spidey takes a beating and has simply got to start carrying extra masks around. He goes through them way too fast. The little bit of him leaping in front of the American flag made me and Nanc laugh, and apparently we were alone in that. I thought it was a fine bit of kitsch, like Bruce Campbell's cameo.
It was a little long though. Mary Jane's problems aren't of much interest to me, though her firing was pretty good in a funny "that's showbiz" sort of way. I suppose there was some justification in her becoming more and more jealous of Peter/Spider-Man, but eh, can't say it bothered me as much it bugged her.
Gwen and Captain Stacey are fine additions to the character crew, but would have liked just maybe one more scene with JJJ instead of MJ freting over stuff. Though, the over the top Jazz club dance routine was pretty funny, even as a cruel put down.
Good stuff, glad I saw it.
And I remain: Grant Schreiber.
I do wonder what hit the cutting room floor and what they would have done differently (ie saved for another screenplay) had a Spidey 4 been part of the original plan, but despite its flaws I enjoyed it. Questions to possibly be answered once it hits DVD.
That MJ came across as selfish and disproportionately fixated on her own career setbacks was only partially balanced by her invoking her abusive, derisive father's memory. I, too, could have done with less of her torturing Peter with her moods.
The financial take on the film was phenomenal, though it bears noting that they broke records heading into this by debuting it on more screens than any movie in history. Seeing what next weekend's attendance is will be interesting, though if they only have the usual 50% drop-off it'll still be a huge sum. The relatively narrow niche audience for 28 WEEKS LATER - the next big budget, highly-promoted movie to hit theaters, coming this Friday - might not manage to knock Spidey out of the #1 spot. Between those two, SHREK THE THIRD and the third PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film coming out over the next few weeks, many of them likely taking multiple screens at each multiplex, I'm wondering if there's seriously going to be much room for the other, less heavily-backed movies coming out each week. Spidey's arrival bumped five movies completely out of the local Regal by taking up half the screens.
It felt for all the world like someone using today's technology to become a deadly super-villain. The flyer was amazing, and the big fight at the beginning of the show was worth the price of admission.