Andy’s Rating: one notch above Liked It (8/13)
I loved Spider-Man, and I thought Spider-Man 2 was even better. It had action, drama, romance…but most importantly, it had great character development. What else can you say about a movie where Spidey is missing from the entire third of the film, and the villain is in hiding, but you are still emotionally invested in the story? But earlier in the day, before seeing Spider-Man 3, a nagging thought crept into the back of my mind: “What if Spider-Man 3 isn’t as good as the other two?” As it turns out, my Spider-Sense was right. Spider-Man 3 is not only a confused mess, but it also ruins much of the character development from the previous two movies.
First, let me get the good stuff out of the way: Visually, Spider-Man 3 is…oh, who am I kidding? Even that part isn’t good. Sure, there is a lot of action, but even then it doesn’t compare to the previous two films. Stylistically, this movie feels like it was done by a completely different director. Both the previous movies (but especially Spider-Man 2) had many of Sam Raimi’s trademark visuals: quick zooms, skewed camera angles, whip-pans, and comic-like transitions. However, there is none of that to be seen in Spider-Man 3. Danny Elfman’s themes are present, but the score itself was done by some hack. (Okay, maybe he’s not a hack, but I didn’t care enough about the music to include his name here. After two movies with music by Elfman, anyone else sounds like a hack.) The opening credits of Spider-Man 2 had a recap of the previous movie using artwork by renowned comic artist Alex Ross; 3 has still shots from the first two movies. But hey, at least the special effects were good. I liked the Sandman almost as much as I did back in 1999, when he starred in The Mummy.
So here’s the real meat of the problem: There is just too much going on in the plot. I don’t mean that the plot is complex; I mean that there are a ton of different characters all introduced at once, and you never really care about any of them. They just seem to be trotted in when convenient, then mysteriously vanish when they are no longer needed. You have the Sandman, an escaped criminal with a shady past and a possibly altruistic motive; Eddie Brock, Daily Bugle photographer and competitor to Peter Parker; Gwen Stacy, classmate of Peter Parker, daughter of the police chief, and also dating Eddie Brock (at least I think so; it was mentioned in passing in one scene, then never referenced again); and this is in addition to the regular interactions with Mary-Jane Watson and Harry Osborn. You never really get to know any of the new characters on any but the most superficial.
But even that might be excusable, because of the relationships already established from the first two films, right? Wrong. Fresh off the new relationship from the end of Spider-Man 2, Mary-Jane and Peter are happy for about two minutes of screen time. Then for no reason at all, Peter “I’ve loved her since I was a boy” Parker and Mary-Jane “He’s the one person who was always there for me” Watson suddenly can’t communicate with each other. She gets fired from her show, and then complains to Peter, “You don’t even know how I’m feeling!” But of course, that’s understandable, since she doesn’t actually tell him that she got fired. And Peter never asks so much as a “What’s wrong?”, so it’s understandable that MJ would be upset. So the first half of the movie rolls along with the two of them being mad at each other, when here in the real world, two people who cared about each other so much would have made a quick phone call and figured out the miscommunication in about ten seconds.
Note that I’m not talking about some dumb “How come women never communicate their feelings?” complaint; I’m talking about serious flaws in characterization, for the sole purpose of creating conflict and moving the plot along. (Okay, maybe that’s two purposes.) When you get this emotionally involved with these characters, it is jarring to see them behave completely irrationally. The great thing about Spider-Man 2 is that all of the conflicts there (Peter has no money, can’t tell MJ how he feels, is hated by Harry) flow naturally from the events of the first movie. They took what happened in the first movie and said, “Okay, in the real world, how would a person deal with all of this? Who would he turn to? What would he take comfort in?” But in this movie, they ask questions like, “Okay, what if Peter and Mary-Jane just stopped communicating altogether, and a symbiotic life-form came along that feeds on negative emotions, and then made Peter act like an idiot for half the movie?”
That’s another problem with the movie: The plot is centered around Peter’s “dark side” coming out, as his lust for revenge (and the aforementioned symbiote) cause him to abandon his values. During these parts of the movie, Spider-Man loses his everyman status, and the audience stops identifying with him. So he becomes the rage-fueled vigilante, and lets his aggressive tendencies take over. But even then, that would be fine. It would be a source of conflict where the audience is concerned for Peter. But instead of leaving it at “rage-fueled vigilante,” they take Peter and turn him into “emo kid who is overly confident and has started wearing eyeliner.” And he’s not even the brooding bad-boy that everyone is attracted to; he’s the goofy trying-to-be-bad–boy that everyone laughs at…except for the times when they do think he’s cool. Personally, I would have liked to see Peter as hot-tempered, and maybe looking really worn out and ragged. Mess up his hair, make his eyes a little more sunken in…something to show that this symbiote is taking its toll on him. But combing his hair down and giving him eyeliner? I’m sorry, but that just looks dumb.
So Peter is taken over by this thing, but then he starts to break free. Then suddenly, Mary-Jane breaks up with him, sending him back down into a shame spiral and back to goth-land. Meanwhile, the audience is exhausted, with no relief in sight. Peter continues down this road, and even goes to a very, very dark place that seems completely unjustifiable (I’ll leave some things for you to discover on your own), before finally breaking free of the creature’s influence. But of course, Peter and the other characters are left with the emotional scars (if not the physical ones) of Peter’s actions, and suddenly this group of characters can’t stand to be around each other, which is loads of fun for the audience to watch. Nothing like a movie where everyone hates each other to lighten the spirits.
Then a bunch of stuff happens, and a bunch of other stuff happens. The villains are vanquished, and Peter is left to clean up the emotional damage he has inflicted over the course of the movie. So what does the audience get for all this effort? They get to watch two characters (I won’t say which two) wordlessly share a moment together, and you get the feeling that maybe everything will be all right, but probably not. Oh, and then the movie ends. No feel-good fetish shots of Spider-Man swinging across the New York City skyline, where he knows that even if his life has problems, he has the sheer joy of being Spider-Man to make up for it. Instead, you have Peter Parker realizing that he has done a lot of mean crap to a lot of people over the course of the movie, and he probably won’t ever be able to make up for it. The End.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch Spider-Man 2 again, and try to forget the third movie.
