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Note: this review contains some non-specific/minor spoilers, so be warned.
It has to be said that I left my cinema last Friday pretty disappointed at what Sam Raimi had cooked up. I initially had high hopes for this film, although the astronomical amounts of hype did worry me, and the fact that the film's Rotten Tomatoes rating has steadily dropped from 80% to 61% (considering Spider-Man 1 had 90% and 2 had 93%) wasn't too encouraging. I heard a lot of bad things about the film in the days before its release, and I have to say that most of these things were glaring errors that I can't believe nade it past the draft stage of the script. I loved the first two films, and what we get here is an ultimately unsatisfying endeavour that somewhat mires what could have been a superb trilogy had it not been for this extremely troubled film.
The film starts nicely - the opening credits treat us to Danny Elfman's opening theme from the previous films, and we are reminded of the events of those films. I had goosebumps at this point, and I was actually thinking "Y'know, this could be pretty damn good". However, as soon as the next scene begins, the film begins to go to pieces in a singing scene that appears dubbed to the point of parody.
Next we have Venom's introduction, which was about as understated as you can get. I shan't go into the specifics of it, but it wasn't quite the introduction I was expecting, really.
Still, we have Sandman's introduction also, which I liked for the most part. They really screwed the pooch by giving him certain emotional motivations, though - I just want a villain that's pure evil and isn't either doing their acts involuntarily or has some sort of sympathetic motivation that makes it apparently fine to kill people and thieve...The circumstances under which he changes is also pretty convoluted. Still, I'll roll with it as the actual transformation was pretty impressive, and looked appropriately disturbing.
The opening fight scene comes up next, and here's where I really started having problems with the film. This fight is just a huge blurry mess - CGI and shaky camera work is just used to the point of irritation, and some of the time it was difficult to tell what was going on. It really detracted from the scene and I didn't like what had the potential to be an excellent fight.
And what's with MJ in this film!? She's such a self-absorbed, needy little biddy! Most of her screen time is spent whining about how Peter never has time for her, or how their kiss now has no meaning. It's terrible writing, and just unsatisfying to watch.
We have the Sandman's first fight scene next, which I thought was pretty cool. They really got the feel of the Sandman right, I think, although why they used CGI filing cabinets in the climactic part of the fight I have no idea. Is it really cheaper to make a rendering of one than just throw one out of a building? Pfft.
I liked how Eddie Brock was handled in this film - he was a git, but a likeable one. I liked how he tried to upstage Peter several times, and kudos to Topher Grace for doing the role justice.
It was great to see JK Simmons back as J Jonah Jameson also - he was one of the better parts of the first two films, and again he shines through here. He's appropriately funny (in light of some of the terribly cheesy humour in these films) and crafty - I love it. Also, Bruce Campbell's cameo was pretty hilarious, and one of the better scenes of the film.
Soon enough we're told a piece of information regarding events from the first film, and how what we believed to be was in fact not true. Let's just say it's an incredibly ham-fisted way for us to care more about Spider-Man taking down the antagonists of the film. This just felt tacked on to the point of ridiculousness, and not even the excellent James Cromwell (playing the informing policeman) could save this scene from causing me to shake my head in disbelief.
Everyone's seen in trailers how the symbiote takes over Spider-Man, and this is one of the better parts of the film - seeing Dark Spider-Man wander around New York City tearing things up. I will give credit to Raimi here - he swerved me, by having Dark Spider-Man do something to one of the villains in the film, yet it appears that later on in the film this isn't to be. Props to them for getting the drop on me here and surprising me.
It was also pretty cool to see Dr. Connors in there as Peter's teacher - a nice little allusion to Lizardman. Maybe we'll get him in Part 4.
MJ and Harry's "dinner date" was a pretty awful part of the film, and telegraphs where the film REALLY starts going down the toilet. The previous hour or so ranged from bearable to decent, but this telegraphs the downfall of the film - we get this terribly cheesy dance scene that is mercifully short but nonetheless more irritating than when your chips stick to the baking tray.
It was cool to see Willem Dafoe back again very briefly, though. I didn't really buy Harry's subsequent transformation back into evil much - it just seemed to be a little tick in his brain almost randomly changing his psychological tide.
MJ and Peter have more "emotional" scenes, in what felt like a scene ripped out of the OC. The acting here was pretty questionable on both Dunst's and Maguire's parts, and I found the scene to be unintentionally quite amusing.
This is followed by a scene that truly had me in hysterics - Harry and Peter have a confrontation in a cafe, and as Peter leaves, Harry gives him this awesome grin that was teetering on the edge of complete cheese but not quite falling in. It looked ridiculous, and was hilarious.
Now comes what I've heard most of the problems about - the "Saturday Night Fever homage" dance scene. What follows is just truly awful - Peter walking down the street dancing. It was supposed to be funny, and I'm sure plenty of people found it so, but it was overlong, and I personally found it unfunny. Just a terrible waste of time - there has to be a better way to show us Peter's mental state as a result of the symbiote.
I thought that the terrible dance scene was over, but no. Peter and Gwen Stacy (who was one of the better parts of the film, I might add) go to this Jazz club where MJ sings and there's a big song and dance number. Spider-Man: The Musical has well and truly taken hold. This is the point where I pretty much gave up on the film as a serious piece of work and just had a bit of fun extracting the urine out of it really.
Eddie Brock becoming Venom was a hell of a lot better than I expected. The trailers made Venom look awfully thin, but in the end I was quite impressed. Still, it's a shame that every time Eddie spoke, the Venom face receeded. They got the muscly look of Venom just right for the most part.
The final fight for the most part was pretty cool. Sandman is a huge, impressive beast that in of himself would have served as an impressive final monster, but we also have Venom. It was at this point that, combined with Venom's limited screen-time in this film, I thought that perhaps they should have left Venom for Spider-Man 4 and just had Sandman and Green Goblin 2 in this one. This rather impressive action scene is ruined a little by this irritating news reporter interspersed within the action, telling us what's going on, as though we don't know already. When one reporter uttered "is this the end of Spider-Man?", I was actually hoping that he was referring to this damned film. The true death of the scene comes when Harry throws a Pumpkin Bomb at Sandman's head, and some annoying kid shouts "Wicked cool!". Did they REALLY need to throw something so inane in there? It's more evidence that this thing wasn't even proof-read before it went into production.
A certain character biting the bullet actually caught me off guard - I quite liked this. Still, their final moments were just added to a long list of cliches, and it was again like a soap opera on crack.
Once the battle is over, the rest of the film is pretty much a big message about forgiveness. Ok, sure, it's alright to kill someone and thieve as long as a) it's sort of an accident b) you have family problems. Pfft, nice message to give to your young audience, Raimi.
The whole forgiveness thing is bolstered as the film ends on the wholly unsatisfying note of MJ and Peter making up. A pretty rubbish ending, really. I wanted it to at least end with the classic scene of Spidey swinging around New York City, reinforcing to us that "the old Spidey is back". Still, I guess that would qualify as a cliche.
Here's two other observations I made that irritated me beyond belief:
- Stan Lee's completely unnecessary cameo. He's on screen for 10 seconds and says "I guess one person really CAN make a difference. Nuff said". The "nuff said" is like he himself realises that this is totally forced and just nerd-service and Stan Lee's way of getting himself another film credit. Laughably bad.
- Spider-Man landing in front of that damn American flag. I'm not an idiot - I know that's a big patriotic message, and did Raimi really need to do this? It's just silly and unnecessary. I laughed pretty hard when I saw this - and it goes by so fast that it's almost subliminal. I mean, we're not dealing with Captain America here - and I never really thought of Spider-Man as a film to have much of an ideological or political message behind it.
Overall, the film was a big disappointment. It'll no doubt do extremely well at the box office, and blind fanboys will love it regardless of its glaring errors, but as someone able to remove themself from the fan-service (even as a big Spider-Man fan myself, although I'm more of a Batman guy at heart), I can really see that this is a truly troubled and problematic film. I'm not really bothered about a fourth now, although at least there's NO CHANCE it'll be worse than this. Not a chance.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer.
It has to be said that I left my cinema last Friday pretty disappointed at what Sam Raimi had cooked up. I initially had high hopes for this film, although the astronomical amounts of hype did worry me, and the fact that the film's Rotten Tomatoes rating has steadily dropped from 80% to 61% (considering Spider-Man 1 had 90% and 2 had 93%) wasn't too encouraging. I heard a lot of bad things about the film in the days before its release, and I have to say that most of these things were glaring errors that I can't believe nade it past the draft stage of the script. I loved the first two films, and what we get here is an ultimately unsatisfying endeavour that somewhat mires what could have been a superb trilogy had it not been for this extremely troubled film.
The film starts nicely - the opening credits treat us to Danny Elfman's opening theme from the previous films, and we are reminded of the events of those films. I had goosebumps at this point, and I was actually thinking "Y'know, this could be pretty damn good". However, as soon as the next scene begins, the film begins to go to pieces in a singing scene that appears dubbed to the point of parody.
Next we have Venom's introduction, which was about as understated as you can get. I shan't go into the specifics of it, but it wasn't quite the introduction I was expecting, really.
Still, we have Sandman's introduction also, which I liked for the most part. They really screwed the pooch by giving him certain emotional motivations, though - I just want a villain that's pure evil and isn't either doing their acts involuntarily or has some sort of sympathetic motivation that makes it apparently fine to kill people and thieve...The circumstances under which he changes is also pretty convoluted. Still, I'll roll with it as the actual transformation was pretty impressive, and looked appropriately disturbing.
The opening fight scene comes up next, and here's where I really started having problems with the film. This fight is just a huge blurry mess - CGI and shaky camera work is just used to the point of irritation, and some of the time it was difficult to tell what was going on. It really detracted from the scene and I didn't like what had the potential to be an excellent fight.
And what's with MJ in this film!? She's such a self-absorbed, needy little biddy! Most of her screen time is spent whining about how Peter never has time for her, or how their kiss now has no meaning. It's terrible writing, and just unsatisfying to watch.
We have the Sandman's first fight scene next, which I thought was pretty cool. They really got the feel of the Sandman right, I think, although why they used CGI filing cabinets in the climactic part of the fight I have no idea. Is it really cheaper to make a rendering of one than just throw one out of a building? Pfft.
I liked how Eddie Brock was handled in this film - he was a git, but a likeable one. I liked how he tried to upstage Peter several times, and kudos to Topher Grace for doing the role justice.
It was great to see JK Simmons back as J Jonah Jameson also - he was one of the better parts of the first two films, and again he shines through here. He's appropriately funny (in light of some of the terribly cheesy humour in these films) and crafty - I love it. Also, Bruce Campbell's cameo was pretty hilarious, and one of the better scenes of the film.
Soon enough we're told a piece of information regarding events from the first film, and how what we believed to be was in fact not true. Let's just say it's an incredibly ham-fisted way for us to care more about Spider-Man taking down the antagonists of the film. This just felt tacked on to the point of ridiculousness, and not even the excellent James Cromwell (playing the informing policeman) could save this scene from causing me to shake my head in disbelief.
Everyone's seen in trailers how the symbiote takes over Spider-Man, and this is one of the better parts of the film - seeing Dark Spider-Man wander around New York City tearing things up. I will give credit to Raimi here - he swerved me, by having Dark Spider-Man do something to one of the villains in the film, yet it appears that later on in the film this isn't to be. Props to them for getting the drop on me here and surprising me.
It was also pretty cool to see Dr. Connors in there as Peter's teacher - a nice little allusion to Lizardman. Maybe we'll get him in Part 4.
MJ and Harry's "dinner date" was a pretty awful part of the film, and telegraphs where the film REALLY starts going down the toilet. The previous hour or so ranged from bearable to decent, but this telegraphs the downfall of the film - we get this terribly cheesy dance scene that is mercifully short but nonetheless more irritating than when your chips stick to the baking tray.
It was cool to see Willem Dafoe back again very briefly, though. I didn't really buy Harry's subsequent transformation back into evil much - it just seemed to be a little tick in his brain almost randomly changing his psychological tide.
MJ and Peter have more "emotional" scenes, in what felt like a scene ripped out of the OC. The acting here was pretty questionable on both Dunst's and Maguire's parts, and I found the scene to be unintentionally quite amusing.
This is followed by a scene that truly had me in hysterics - Harry and Peter have a confrontation in a cafe, and as Peter leaves, Harry gives him this awesome grin that was teetering on the edge of complete cheese but not quite falling in. It looked ridiculous, and was hilarious.
Now comes what I've heard most of the problems about - the "Saturday Night Fever homage" dance scene. What follows is just truly awful - Peter walking down the street dancing. It was supposed to be funny, and I'm sure plenty of people found it so, but it was overlong, and I personally found it unfunny. Just a terrible waste of time - there has to be a better way to show us Peter's mental state as a result of the symbiote.
I thought that the terrible dance scene was over, but no. Peter and Gwen Stacy (who was one of the better parts of the film, I might add) go to this Jazz club where MJ sings and there's a big song and dance number. Spider-Man: The Musical has well and truly taken hold. This is the point where I pretty much gave up on the film as a serious piece of work and just had a bit of fun extracting the urine out of it really.
Eddie Brock becoming Venom was a hell of a lot better than I expected. The trailers made Venom look awfully thin, but in the end I was quite impressed. Still, it's a shame that every time Eddie spoke, the Venom face receeded. They got the muscly look of Venom just right for the most part.
The final fight for the most part was pretty cool. Sandman is a huge, impressive beast that in of himself would have served as an impressive final monster, but we also have Venom. It was at this point that, combined with Venom's limited screen-time in this film, I thought that perhaps they should have left Venom for Spider-Man 4 and just had Sandman and Green Goblin 2 in this one. This rather impressive action scene is ruined a little by this irritating news reporter interspersed within the action, telling us what's going on, as though we don't know already. When one reporter uttered "is this the end of Spider-Man?", I was actually hoping that he was referring to this damned film. The true death of the scene comes when Harry throws a Pumpkin Bomb at Sandman's head, and some annoying kid shouts "Wicked cool!". Did they REALLY need to throw something so inane in there? It's more evidence that this thing wasn't even proof-read before it went into production.
A certain character biting the bullet actually caught me off guard - I quite liked this. Still, their final moments were just added to a long list of cliches, and it was again like a soap opera on crack.
Once the battle is over, the rest of the film is pretty much a big message about forgiveness. Ok, sure, it's alright to kill someone and thieve as long as a) it's sort of an accident b) you have family problems. Pfft, nice message to give to your young audience, Raimi.
The whole forgiveness thing is bolstered as the film ends on the wholly unsatisfying note of MJ and Peter making up. A pretty rubbish ending, really. I wanted it to at least end with the classic scene of Spidey swinging around New York City, reinforcing to us that "the old Spidey is back". Still, I guess that would qualify as a cliche.
Here's two other observations I made that irritated me beyond belief:
- Stan Lee's completely unnecessary cameo. He's on screen for 10 seconds and says "I guess one person really CAN make a difference. Nuff said". The "nuff said" is like he himself realises that this is totally forced and just nerd-service and Stan Lee's way of getting himself another film credit. Laughably bad.
- Spider-Man landing in front of that damn American flag. I'm not an idiot - I know that's a big patriotic message, and did Raimi really need to do this? It's just silly and unnecessary. I laughed pretty hard when I saw this - and it goes by so fast that it's almost subliminal. I mean, we're not dealing with Captain America here - and I never really thought of Spider-Man as a film to have much of an ideological or political message behind it.
Overall, the film was a big disappointment. It'll no doubt do extremely well at the box office, and blind fanboys will love it regardless of its glaring errors, but as someone able to remove themself from the fan-service (even as a big Spider-Man fan myself, although I'm more of a Batman guy at heart), I can really see that this is a truly troubled and problematic film. I'm not really bothered about a fourth now, although at least there's NO CHANCE it'll be worse than this. Not a chance.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer.
Note: this review contains some non-specific/minor spoilers, so be warned.
It has to be said that I left my cinema last Friday pretty disappointed at what Sam Raimi had cooked up. I initially had high hopes for this film, although the astronomical amounts of hype did worry me, and the fact that the film's Rotten Tomatoes rating has steadily dropped from 80% to 61% (considering Spider-Man 1 had 90% and 2 had 93%) wasn't too encouraging. I heard a lot of bad things about the film in the days before its release, and I have to say that most of these things were glaring errors that I can't believe nade it past the draft stage of the script. I loved the first two films, and what we get here is an ultimately unsatisfying endeavour that somewhat mires what could have been a superb trilogy had it not been for this extremely troubled film.
The film starts nicely - the opening credits treat us to Danny Elfman's opening theme from the previous films, and we are reminded of the events of those films. I had goosebumps at this point, and I was actually thinking "Y'know, this could be pretty damn good". However, as soon as the next scene begins, the film begins to go to pieces in a singing scene that appears dubbed to the point of parody.
Next we have Venom's introduction, which was about as understated as you can get. I shan't go into the specifics of it, but it wasn't quite the introduction I was expecting, really.
Still, we have Sandman's introduction also, which I liked for the most part. They really screwed the pooch by giving him certain emotional motivations, though - I just want a villain that's pure evil and isn't either doing their acts involuntarily or has some sort of sympathetic motivation that makes it apparently fine to kill people and thieve...The circumstances under which he changes is also pretty convoluted. Still, I'll roll with it as the actual transformation was pretty impressive, and looked appropriately disturbing.
The opening fight scene comes up next, and here's where I really started having problems with the film. This fight is just a huge blurry mess - CGI and shaky camera work is just used to the point of irritation, and some of the time it was difficult to tell what was going on. It really detracted from the scene and I didn't like what had the potential to be an excellent fight.
And what's with MJ in this film!? She's such a self-absorbed, needy little biddy! Most of her screen time is spent whining about how Peter never has time for her, or how their kiss now has no meaning. It's terrible writing, and just unsatisfying to watch.
We have the Sandman's first fight scene next, which I thought was pretty cool. They really got the feel of the Sandman right, I think, although why they used CGI filing cabinets in the climactic part of the fight I have no idea. Is it really cheaper to make a rendering of one than just throw one out of a building? Pfft.
I liked how Eddie Brock was handled in this film - he was a git, but a likeable one. I liked how he tried to upstage Peter several times, and kudos to Topher Grace for doing the role justice.
It was great to see JK Simmons back as J Jonah Jameson also - he was one of the better parts of the first two films, and again he shines through here. He's appropriately funny (in light of some of the terribly cheesy humour in these films) and crafty - I love it. Also, Bruce Campbell's cameo was pretty hilarious, and one of the better scenes of the film.
Soon enough we're told a piece of information regarding events from the first film, and how what we believed to be was in fact not true. Let's just say it's an incredibly ham-fisted way for us to care more about Spider-Man taking down the antagonists of the film. This just felt tacked on to the point of ridiculousness, and not even the excellent James Cromwell (playing the informing policeman) could save this scene from causing me to shake my head in disbelief.
Everyone's seen in trailers how the symbiote takes over Spider-Man, and this is one of the better parts of the film - seeing Dark Spider-Man wander around New York City tearing things up. I will give credit to Raimi here - he swerved me, by having Dark Spider-Man do something to one of the villains in the film, yet it appears that later on in the film this isn't to be. Props to them for getting the drop on me here and surprising me.
It was also pretty cool to see Dr. Connors in there as Peter's teacher - a nice little allusion to Lizardman. Maybe we'll get him in Part 4.
MJ and Harry's "dinner date" was a pretty awful part of the film, and telegraphs where the film REALLY starts going down the toilet. The previous hour or so ranged from bearable to decent, but this telegraphs the downfall of the film - we get this terribly cheesy dance scene that is mercifully short but nonetheless more irritating than when your chips stick to the baking tray.
It was cool to see Willem Dafoe back again very briefly, though. I didn't really buy Harry's subsequent transformation back into evil much - it just seemed to be a little tick in his brain almost randomly changing his psychological tide.
MJ and Peter have more "emotional" scenes, in what felt like a scene ripped out of the OC. The acting here was pretty questionable on both Dunst's and Maguire's parts, and I found the scene to be unintentionally quite amusing.
This is followed by a scene that truly had me in hysterics - Harry and Peter have a confrontation in a cafe, and as Peter leaves, Harry gives him this awesome grin that was teetering on the edge of complete cheese but not quite falling in. It looked ridiculous, and was hilarious.
Now comes what I've heard most of the problems about - the "Saturday Night Fever homage" dance scene. What follows is just truly awful - Peter walking down the street dancing. It was supposed to be funny, and I'm sure plenty of people found it so, but it was overlong, and I personally found it unfunny. Just a terrible waste of time - there has to be a better way to show us Peter's mental state as a result of the symbiote.
I thought that the terrible dance scene was over, but no. Peter and Gwen Stacy (who was one of the better parts of the film, I might add) go to this Jazz club where MJ sings and there's a big song and dance number. Spider-Man: The Musical has well and truly taken hold. This is the point where I pretty much gave up on the film as a serious piece of work and just had a bit of fun extracting the urine out of it really.
Eddie Brock becoming Venom was a hell of a lot better than I expected. The trailers made Venom look awfully thin, but in the end I was quite impressed. Still, it's a shame that every time Eddie spoke, the Venom face receeded. They got the muscly look of Venom just right for the most part.
The final fight for the most part was pretty cool. Sandman is a huge, impressive beast that in of himself would have served as an impressive final monster, but we also have Venom. It was at this point that, combined with Venom's limited screen-time in this film, I thought that perhaps they should have left Venom for Spider-Man 4 and just had Sandman and Green Goblin 2 in this one. This rather impressive action scene is ruined a little by this irritating news reporter interspersed within the action, telling us what's going on, as though we don't know already. When one reporter uttered "is this the end of Spider-Man?", I was actually hoping that he was referring to this damned film. The true death of the scene comes when Harry throws a Pumpkin Bomb at Sandman's head, and some annoying kid shouts "Wicked cool!". Did they REALLY need to throw something so inane in there? It's more evidence that this thing wasn't even proof-read before it went into production.
A certain character biting the bullet actually caught me off guard - I quite liked this. Still, their final moments were just added to a long list of cliches, and it was again like a soap opera on crack.
Once the battle is over, the rest of the film is pretty much a big message about forgiveness. Ok, sure, it's alright to kill someone and thieve as long as a) it's sort of an accident b) you have family problems. Pfft, nice message to give to your young audience, Raimi.
The whole forgiveness thing is bolstered as the film ends on the wholly unsatisfying note of MJ and Peter making up. A pretty rubbish ending, really. I wanted it to at least end with the classic scene of Spidey swinging around New York City, reinforcing to us that "the old Spidey is back". Still, I guess that would qualify as a cliche.
Here's two other observations I made that irritated me beyond belief:
- Stan Lee's completely unnecessary cameo. He's on screen for 10 seconds and says "I guess one person really CAN make a difference. Nuff said". The "nuff said" is like he himself realises that this is totally forced and just nerd-service and Stan Lee's way of getting himself another film credit. Laughably bad.
- Spider-Man landing in front of that damn American flag. I'm not an idiot - I know that's a big patriotic message, and did Raimi really need to do this? It's just silly and unnecessary. I laughed pretty hard when I saw this - and it goes by so fast that it's almost subliminal. I mean, we're not dealing with Captain America here - and I never really thought of Spider-Man as a film to have much of an ideological or political message behind it.
Overall, the film was a big disappointment. It'll no doubt do extremely well at the box office, and blind fanboys will love it regardless of its glaring errors, but as someone able to remove themself from the fan-service (even as a big Spider-Man fan myself, although I'm more of a Batman guy at heart), I can really see that this is a truly troubled and problematic film. I'm not really bothered about a fourth now, although at least there's NO CHANCE it'll be worse than this. Not a chance.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer.
It has to be said that I left my cinema last Friday pretty disappointed at what Sam Raimi had cooked up. I initially had high hopes for this film, although the astronomical amounts of hype did worry me, and the fact that the film's Rotten Tomatoes rating has steadily dropped from 80% to 61% (considering Spider-Man 1 had 90% and 2 had 93%) wasn't too encouraging. I heard a lot of bad things about the film in the days before its release, and I have to say that most of these things were glaring errors that I can't believe nade it past the draft stage of the script. I loved the first two films, and what we get here is an ultimately unsatisfying endeavour that somewhat mires what could have been a superb trilogy had it not been for this extremely troubled film.
The film starts nicely - the opening credits treat us to Danny Elfman's opening theme from the previous films, and we are reminded of the events of those films. I had goosebumps at this point, and I was actually thinking "Y'know, this could be pretty damn good". However, as soon as the next scene begins, the film begins to go to pieces in a singing scene that appears dubbed to the point of parody.
Next we have Venom's introduction, which was about as understated as you can get. I shan't go into the specifics of it, but it wasn't quite the introduction I was expecting, really.
Still, we have Sandman's introduction also, which I liked for the most part. They really screwed the pooch by giving him certain emotional motivations, though - I just want a villain that's pure evil and isn't either doing their acts involuntarily or has some sort of sympathetic motivation that makes it apparently fine to kill people and thieve...The circumstances under which he changes is also pretty convoluted. Still, I'll roll with it as the actual transformation was pretty impressive, and looked appropriately disturbing.
The opening fight scene comes up next, and here's where I really started having problems with the film. This fight is just a huge blurry mess - CGI and shaky camera work is just used to the point of irritation, and some of the time it was difficult to tell what was going on. It really detracted from the scene and I didn't like what had the potential to be an excellent fight.
And what's with MJ in this film!? She's such a self-absorbed, needy little biddy! Most of her screen time is spent whining about how Peter never has time for her, or how their kiss now has no meaning. It's terrible writing, and just unsatisfying to watch.
We have the Sandman's first fight scene next, which I thought was pretty cool. They really got the feel of the Sandman right, I think, although why they used CGI filing cabinets in the climactic part of the fight I have no idea. Is it really cheaper to make a rendering of one than just throw one out of a building? Pfft.
I liked how Eddie Brock was handled in this film - he was a git, but a likeable one. I liked how he tried to upstage Peter several times, and kudos to Topher Grace for doing the role justice.
It was great to see JK Simmons back as J Jonah Jameson also - he was one of the better parts of the first two films, and again he shines through here. He's appropriately funny (in light of some of the terribly cheesy humour in these films) and crafty - I love it. Also, Bruce Campbell's cameo was pretty hilarious, and one of the better scenes of the film.
Soon enough we're told a piece of information regarding events from the first film, and how what we believed to be was in fact not true. Let's just say it's an incredibly ham-fisted way for us to care more about Spider-Man taking down the antagonists of the film. This just felt tacked on to the point of ridiculousness, and not even the excellent James Cromwell (playing the informing policeman) could save this scene from causing me to shake my head in disbelief.
Everyone's seen in trailers how the symbiote takes over Spider-Man, and this is one of the better parts of the film - seeing Dark Spider-Man wander around New York City tearing things up. I will give credit to Raimi here - he swerved me, by having Dark Spider-Man do something to one of the villains in the film, yet it appears that later on in the film this isn't to be. Props to them for getting the drop on me here and surprising me.
It was also pretty cool to see Dr. Connors in there as Peter's teacher - a nice little allusion to Lizardman. Maybe we'll get him in Part 4.
MJ and Harry's "dinner date" was a pretty awful part of the film, and telegraphs where the film REALLY starts going down the toilet. The previous hour or so ranged from bearable to decent, but this telegraphs the downfall of the film - we get this terribly cheesy dance scene that is mercifully short but nonetheless more irritating than when your chips stick to the baking tray.
It was cool to see Willem Dafoe back again very briefly, though. I didn't really buy Harry's subsequent transformation back into evil much - it just seemed to be a little tick in his brain almost randomly changing his psychological tide.
MJ and Peter have more "emotional" scenes, in what felt like a scene ripped out of the OC. The acting here was pretty questionable on both Dunst's and Maguire's parts, and I found the scene to be unintentionally quite amusing.
This is followed by a scene that truly had me in hysterics - Harry and Peter have a confrontation in a cafe, and as Peter leaves, Harry gives him this awesome grin that was teetering on the edge of complete cheese but not quite falling in. It looked ridiculous, and was hilarious.
Now comes what I've heard most of the problems about - the "Saturday Night Fever homage" dance scene. What follows is just truly awful - Peter walking down the street dancing. It was supposed to be funny, and I'm sure plenty of people found it so, but it was overlong, and I personally found it unfunny. Just a terrible waste of time - there has to be a better way to show us Peter's mental state as a result of the symbiote.
I thought that the terrible dance scene was over, but no. Peter and Gwen Stacy (who was one of the better parts of the film, I might add) go to this Jazz club where MJ sings and there's a big song and dance number. Spider-Man: The Musical has well and truly taken hold. This is the point where I pretty much gave up on the film as a serious piece of work and just had a bit of fun extracting the urine out of it really.
Eddie Brock becoming Venom was a hell of a lot better than I expected. The trailers made Venom look awfully thin, but in the end I was quite impressed. Still, it's a shame that every time Eddie spoke, the Venom face receeded. They got the muscly look of Venom just right for the most part.
The final fight for the most part was pretty cool. Sandman is a huge, impressive beast that in of himself would have served as an impressive final monster, but we also have Venom. It was at this point that, combined with Venom's limited screen-time in this film, I thought that perhaps they should have left Venom for Spider-Man 4 and just had Sandman and Green Goblin 2 in this one. This rather impressive action scene is ruined a little by this irritating news reporter interspersed within the action, telling us what's going on, as though we don't know already. When one reporter uttered "is this the end of Spider-Man?", I was actually hoping that he was referring to this damned film. The true death of the scene comes when Harry throws a Pumpkin Bomb at Sandman's head, and some annoying kid shouts "Wicked cool!". Did they REALLY need to throw something so inane in there? It's more evidence that this thing wasn't even proof-read before it went into production.
A certain character biting the bullet actually caught me off guard - I quite liked this. Still, their final moments were just added to a long list of cliches, and it was again like a soap opera on crack.
Once the battle is over, the rest of the film is pretty much a big message about forgiveness. Ok, sure, it's alright to kill someone and thieve as long as a) it's sort of an accident b) you have family problems. Pfft, nice message to give to your young audience, Raimi.
The whole forgiveness thing is bolstered as the film ends on the wholly unsatisfying note of MJ and Peter making up. A pretty rubbish ending, really. I wanted it to at least end with the classic scene of Spidey swinging around New York City, reinforcing to us that "the old Spidey is back". Still, I guess that would qualify as a cliche.
Here's two other observations I made that irritated me beyond belief:
- Stan Lee's completely unnecessary cameo. He's on screen for 10 seconds and says "I guess one person really CAN make a difference. Nuff said". The "nuff said" is like he himself realises that this is totally forced and just nerd-service and Stan Lee's way of getting himself another film credit. Laughably bad.
- Spider-Man landing in front of that damn American flag. I'm not an idiot - I know that's a big patriotic message, and did Raimi really need to do this? It's just silly and unnecessary. I laughed pretty hard when I saw this - and it goes by so fast that it's almost subliminal. I mean, we're not dealing with Captain America here - and I never really thought of Spider-Man as a film to have much of an ideological or political message behind it.
Overall, the film was a big disappointment. It'll no doubt do extremely well at the box office, and blind fanboys will love it regardless of its glaring errors, but as someone able to remove themself from the fan-service (even as a big Spider-Man fan myself, although I'm more of a Batman guy at heart), I can really see that this is a truly troubled and problematic film. I'm not really bothered about a fourth now, although at least there's NO CHANCE it'll be worse than this. Not a chance.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer.
So, 20%?
yay gold posts are back :)
yay gold posts are back :)
I found the bit when he was walking down the street hilarious and the bit when he suddenly starts playing the piano and struts his dance moves at the club equally as funny. It was just so random. :-P
I think most preferred the cofident 'emo' parker, to the nerd of old.