Monday, May 07, 2007

Spidey Hi-Jinks

Here I am, only ever feeling cultured when I'm compared to my brother, and this weekend I went to see Spidey 3, when people such as MG have gone to Bridge To Teribithia, and the Painted Veil, where she's learnt much in the way of story and the nature of children's storytelling... which is nice.

I unfortunately chose Spidey for the pure fact that I've been waiting to see Venom in film for nigh-on 15 years, since I first caught him in Ultimate Spiderman (or was that the Amazing Spiderman? I can never remember). Anyhoo, Venom is my all-time fave Spidey baddy, so to get to see him strut his stuff across the screen, I thought, would make Spidey 3 a winner.


Except I was bitterly disappointed. Venom only appears in Act 3, and then, because of the CGI-ness of things, he's fleeting, always moving, always fighting or flying past the screen so that you can't enjoy him.

But, I could have forgiven Sam Raimi had the rest of the film been better - and don't get me wrong, story-wise Spidey was good, solid. The set up of past plotline - the Harry versus Peter and the love triangle - played out brilliantly. The backstory for the Sandman I could forgive, even if it was clear Raimi wanted us to believe he wasn't a bad-badguy, no, he was doing it for his daughter - sob sob.

Unfortunately the script wasn't awful, it was crap. The characters had more on-the-nose dialogue than an episode of Crossroads, and whilst there were no flimsy sets, the Peter Parker, I'm-getting-to-love-myself dancing in the street because-I'm-so-hot-and-the-ladies-love-me was grotesquely cheesy.

MINI-SPOILER COMING - BEWARE!

The separate subplots were drawn about each other in a cut-and-shut manner, because there was too many to fit in, and the denouement of Harry and Peter's failed friendship was unbelieveable poop because the writers realised they'd not provided any true, believeable means by which Harry might be able to realise/understand/come to terms with the fact that Norman Osbourne had killed himself, and it wasn't Spiderman after all.

And that's me wanting to like the film more than I did. Would I watch it again? Yes, but on DVD, so's I can watch Venom again - he's cool.

3 comments:

MG said...

I just had such a good time at this movie. It hit me in the right mood obviously. I felt like laughing. Venom WAS cool. Don't you worry at how easily they kill off bad guys? Luckily both DC and Marvel universes are full of costumed bad guys.

R1X said...

:) Well, at least I've got one person to back me up on considering it to be silly: George Lucas - d'oh!

esruel said...

Spidey was my fave superhero. I used to race to the shops every week to get my latest mag. Once, they put a spidey-gun in it, made of cardboard, with an elastic band for firing discs. By the time I'd figured out how it worked, the thing was in bits. Then I found out the shop had sold out, so I couldn't get another one. Part of my deprived childhood!