The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Friday, May 04, 2007

Review: Spider-Man 3 (Charlie's Take)

SPOILERS AHOY!

3 is a hard number to reach without something going wrong somewhere. When you get to a third film, trilogy or not, you start to wonder whether it’ll keep matching up, or whether this is when it’ll all fall down, especially with the demands of the modern audience who like every sequel to be bigger and more expensive than the last. Will this be the moment when the seams rip? Or will it be business as usual?

Spider-Man 3 has a lot of plot threads, so much so that I’m having trouble writing a synopsis. Maybe I’ll try listing the characters:

Peter/Spidey – Wants to marry Mary Jane, the city loves him, but he comes upon a black goo that makes him wear eyeliner and listen to My Chemical Romance.

Mary Jane – Terrible actress (the character, ahem), kicked off Broadway, thinks Peter doesn’t have any idea what she’s going through.

Aunt May – Old and Yoda-esque.

Flint Marko/The Sandman – Daughter is ill, he robs banks to get the money to make her better. Loves stripy T-shirts.

Eddie Brock/Venom – Competing photographer for the Daily Bugle. Doesn’t like Peter. LOVES the symbiote.

Harry Osborn – Still hates Spidey. Is running around in his dad’s gear. Loves doing James Dean impressions.

I think you get the picture. So we’re finally on part 3 of the Spidey saga, with Sam Raimi again taking the reigns, and also co-writing the script with part-time screenwriter/part-time emergency surgeon, brother Ivan Raimi, as well as Alvin Sargent who wrote Spider-Man 2. So it’s a Raimi picture through and through, and it shows. But that isn’t always a good thing.

Let’s talk about the good. Once again, the double talents of Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi are at the forefront. Maguire is as good as ever, and pulls off some pretty awkward dialogue with true aplomb. Raimi’s direction is – as usual – very assured, showing he really has kept his creative side, and especially his love for odd decisons (I speak mainly of the Black Goo POV shot) that shouldn’t come off but do.

The action is unbelievable. This is real breathtaking stuff, and it’s easily the most accomplished of the three films, especially when it comes to the final showdown. The animation work is sensational, and that leads me into my next point: Venom. While I’d like to have seen a bit more of him, he was just a joy to behold. The creature design, the attitude, everything just came together brilliantly, and he’s probably my fondest memory of the picture.

More plaudits go to the Sandman, or at least Thomas Haden Church’s performance and the effects. There was a certain comic purity about the way he was created – I can’t remember if it was like the comics – and the beauty at seeing him jump a fence that had a sign saying “WARNING: PARTICLE TESTING FACILITY” attached to it warmed my heart. The effects, well I don’t want to waffle on cause it’s really fucking boring, they were great. Harry, as well, was great. I wasn’t sure at first with the whole extreme snowboarder/ninja look, but that storyline turned out really well. Franco is a fine actor, and probably should’ve been Anakin Skywalker.

But this is where it starts to turn for me. I see where they were going, that they wanted to make this the big final fight for Peter’s soul and the final emphasis on revenge and ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ but it’s just so fucking overwrought. And when it should be getting more serious, there are some utterly misplaced scenes of comedy that just tear you out of the picture and make you bellow ‘WTF’ at the screen. Peter’s vengeance storyline was well-created, but then everything got so much that by the end it felt like a bad piece of meat sitting in your stomach unable to be digested, but finally moved only by the sweet dessert of the final rumble.

It just seemed, well, so inconsistent. The whole section where Peter walks through the streets doing his comedy James Brown routine made me scream with frustration. It was just ludicrous. And then the Anchorman scene in the Jazz Bar, which led to the one great point in that scene, where Peter schizos out on MJ.

MJ herself, well I’ve gone through this with so many people. The role seems terribly written, Dunst seems completely wrong for it and it hurts it because I cannot see how Peter can fall for her. On the flipside, Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy, like her comic book incarnation, didn’t really do much but still came out smokin’ hot. Funny how that is.

I’m in two minds on the whole Flint Marko backstory. The end scene between Flint and Peter is the best acted scene in the film, and brilliantly done. Yet a part of me wonders if it was really necessary to have the whole ill-daughter stuff, because perhaps it would have made Peter’s forgiveness a little more powerful? Have Flint still feel bad, have Peter forgive him and then turn him over to the cops and maybe have Doc Conners hook up some sand-containment prison thing. I dunno, I just sometimes like my villains to be bad for the sake of being bad. I think that’s why I like Venom, because he’s bad and makes no apologies for it.

It just seems like the flick needed some restraint, or at least a clear view of where it was going. I think it had the makings of a stunning film, but somewhere in the translation something got lost, and I never really felt much emotion which has always been one of the biggest successes of the films previously, maybe because it did seem so dragged out and so patently in your face.

Technically, the film was fine. I don’t know how long it was (two hours fifteen maybe?) but it breezed along, and I had a lot of fun watching it. The music was pretty bad, like Chris Young was doing Danny Elfman just fine until he needed new themes and suddenly everything went topsy-turvy. But I did enjoy watching it, especially the ending, which is as close as we’ll get to Spidey and his Amazing Friends on the big screen. But when I stepped out of the theater, I felt very little, only this middling little feeling in the pit of my stomach. And it makes me sad, because it could have been truly great. But it’s a fun silly popcorn flick, I dunno, maybe it’s my fault for wanting more? Answers on a postcard...