Spiderman 3

As I sit here and type this I am currently the owner of over 100 Spider-Man comics. They are all neatly bagged and sitting on a shelf in plain view. I like Spider-Man and I like comic books, clearly. So I would be really insulted if someone criticized me for just not getting comics or not getting what Spider-Man is about. As if making a film just like the comic is a positive criticism. A movie is a different artistic genre than a comic book. It should be different. If all you are going to do is bring it exactly as it was on the page to the screen, what is the point? Why not just go read the page. A movie should stay true to its material but do its own thing.

I felt Spider-Man did this. It wasn't the exact story of Spider-Man's origin but it got it right in the right places. It had a great villain in Willem Dafoe and I bought into what I was shown on the screen. Spider-Man 2 was less successful. I felt Doctor Octopus was a bit one dimensional which is a shame because he was played by the brilliant Alfred Molina. He was just a crazy guy obsessed with as my friend put it "fuuuushhhionnn". James Franco was almost as whiny as Harry Potter and the film in general just pushed the limits of its own universe a bit too much.

I'm tempted to believe Sam Raimi and the entire cast and crew actually conspired to make a horrible film in hopes that no new film would be asked of them for a few years. This would allow Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst from having to reprise their roles. I'm tempted to think Raimi was actually trying to make Batman and Robin (19xx). Then years from now some new director could come along and make a return film which would blow up like Batman Begins (20xx). Although judging by the box office, if that was Raimi's goal, he failed miserably, no movie that makes 150 million in one weekend isn't going to get another sequel.

I'm not going to bother with a synopsis, I rarely do so why should this stinker be any different. I just want to say that when Peter Parker becomes a bad boy for a brief stint in the film, all I could do was think that it was very reminiscent of Superman's bad boy turn in Superman 3 after he was exposed to the pseudo-kryptonite. The bright point of that film was Richard Pryor, this film had no Richard Pryor or even a Richard Pryor-like actor.

The dramatic moments of this film were painful to sit through. The action was more so than usual cartoony and unimpressive. The love triangle is trite, the villains lack real motivation. Needless to say I hated this film.