May 16, 2007

Spider-Man 3 - $2

Spider-Man 3 is going to make a lot of money. It is an action packed movie with amazing special effects which will appeal to a young audience.


Unfortunately Spider-Man 3 is not a good movie. It is in fact terrible. The 3rd installment in this series is a massive disappointment in comparison to the far superior 1st and 2nd movies of this same series.

The action is good, of that there is little doubt. The director is the same person who directed 1 and 2 and the action sequences are again amazing, the pace is fast and is likely the main reason so many people have already gone to see this movie. Though it could be said that there is also really nothing new here.

What went wrong then you ask? Basically everything else. The love story of Peter Parker and MJ is awkward and I found myself a little bit pleased when it wasn't working out during the movie. The dialogue in Spider-Man 3 is truly awful, cheesy jokes and lame one liners dominate a script that is devoid of the quality character development and tension that the first 2 movies contained. The villains in this movie were underdeveloped, we were left to guess how they were able to do most of what they could do and their hatred of Spider-Man was not believable to me.

The most glaring problem with Spider-Man 3 however is the major plot line. A living black sludge that falls from space attaches itself to Parker's scooter and later to his Spidey suit; this sludge (as Parker's chemistry teacher explains) increases the aggression of its host when it attaches itself to something. That's all we're told about it really. When Spider-Man is affected by this material he turns black and becomes more vengeful. Parker however basically turns into a bigger nerd with nicer clothes and a new hairdo.

There is a scene where the post-black-sludge Parker goes shopping and takes a girl to a Jazz club, this scene was intended (I believe) to show that Parker has become cooler and darker since the affect of the space sludge. I can say in no uncertain terms that this was the worst series of scenes I've witnessed in a movie since Crawlers. The cringingly bad acting was only eclipsed by the terrible writing in this part of the movie. At one point I leaned over to my wife, who I was at the movie with, and said "is this really happening?"

Overall it was painfully obvious that Spider-Man 3 was written by a new team of writers and not by the successful team which wrote 1 and 2.

If you are a big Spider-Man fan you may want to check this out anyway but I adamantly put Spider-Man 3 on my 'Don't Watch It' list and give it a value of $2.

6 comments:

Sheamus the... said...

I think i am the only guy in the world who likes the jazz club scene. I also loved the sandman so much.

Tony Tanti said...

I could see liking the Sandman, his character was interesting but I felt like this movie assumed its viewers all knew more about how his powers worked as they were never really explained. I was left wondering why he could be 40 stories tall in one scene and a normal size in another.

As for the jazz club scene, I could barely keep my eyes open, I was actually embarassed for the actors. Glad someone liked it though. :)

Jon Coutts said...

i am starting to realize that sheamus likes everything.

this was a horrific movie. on my blog i gave it one star out of five and that was only out of deference to my friends and relatives who like the spiderman enterprise.

this was such a waste of 6 dollars. i saw it on cheap night and am so glad.

you are dead on in your criticism of this movie. i haven't seen one and two and probably won't now.

this was awful. i can't even believe you said the action scenes were amazing. the first 15 minutes of the last bond movie were better than anything in this movie and he doesn't even have super powers.

what a deplorable insult to the audience this was.

the jazz club scene actually did put me to sleep. i'm not even lying. so i can't criticize it except to say that putting someone to sleep who is normally awake at that time is definitely NOT a good sign. especially since this would normally be a scene i would appreciate (a non "action" scene).

i feel bad for my brother in law, who loves Spiderman, because I wanted to like this movie for his sake. i like my brother in law, but this movie sucked.

they would have been better off with one villain, no love triangle, and just give us a better sense of what is going on.

i will likely never see spiderman 4 if they make it. never.

i want my six dollars and 2 long hours back.

Tony Tanti said...

Jon, best, comment, ever.

In Sheamus' defense, if you check out his blog you'll see he doesn't like everything though the more I think about it I can't believe anyone liked Spider Man 3 unless they are 13 years old.

I did still like the classic Spidey swinging through the buildings stuff, that's what I mean by liking the action.

Otherwise an awful movie though, good for you for going on cheap night, we got $3 off thanks to a purchase of Pizza Pops but I still felt ripped off.

Sheamus the... said...

...he can only be as big as how much sand was around him...when he was building size it was because he was in that huge sand yard where they make brick or concrete...like when he was in the truck it was full of sand...

Jon Coutts said...

i actually got that part with the sand dude and it did make sense and i was actually fairly impressed that they didn't insult us by having some guy in the crowd yell out "He's growing in size because he found some more sand!" or something clearly dubbed in like that.

the sand guy was the only part i liked actually. partly because i could remember him in sideways and it made me chuckle.