Spidey le Trois

My review got lost somewhere in the jet-lag/unpacking continuum.

Let's see: Spider-man 3

Alternate title: Mary-Jane Watson's horrible, awful, rotten, no-good, very bad day.

Seriously, nothing good happens to MJ in this movie, which is made even worse by the fact that Spidey is enjoying the height of his popularity and fame.

I thought it was a good movie. I enjoyed it. It's very much popcorn/summer fare. It's great as long as you don't think about it too much. I think it suffered because they introduced so many new characters along with trying to continue all the old characters, and as a consequence, no one's character gets a chance to develop or really shine.

Too many character my dear Mr. Raimi, too many characters.

For example, they introduce Gwen Stacey as a possible alternate love interest. Which is pretty weird this late in the game, since Peter wants to marry MJ. So anyway, Gwen Stacey is brought in, makes some awkward rescue/jealousy scenes, and survives her theaterical debut, which is more than the comic book Gwen can say.

Evil black space goo falls in a park and goes after Peter, turning him into evil Peter, who's pretty much a big jerk. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Evil Peter goes on for "I'm a bad boy" swagger down the street, and all the women give him these horrifying/pitying looks because, at the end of the day, Peter is still a nerd.

The new Goblin shows up, they fight, he gets a convenient bump on the head and becomes nice.

Sandman shows up, screws around with the origin story (WHAT?!! Don't think about it) gets turned into Sandman, fights with Spidey.

Goblin recovers form his head bump, they fight again.

Peter turns into a jerk, realizes "Hey! I'm a big jerk!" then gives up his spiffy new suit (venom) which falls onto the dweeby kid from the 70s show (Nuts I can't remember the guy's name)

Dweeby kid turns into Venom, fights Spidey.

They all have a great big fight at the end, with everyone fighting everyone else.

Somewhere in there MJ gets kidnapped/threatened a bunch of times, and Aunt May has a really long boring speech about something or other.

Spiderman's mask is constantly getting stolen, burned or ripped up, thereby allowing Tobey MacGuire to widen his eyes in horror, or sneer condenscendingly, or make a happy "Look Ice Cream!" face and other such facial shenanigans. I suppose it's hard to emote through a mask. However, it does make his whole "secret identity" thing a little hard to believe. Is there anyone at the end of the movie who doesn't know who Spidey is?

Oh yeah, Aunt May.


***I know Geo has a rebuttal for the "emote through a mask" argument, but he'll just have to post it himself. And if he doesn't. . .I win!****


So, in summary, the fight scenes are really cool, the inbetween stuff not so much. It's a fun way to spend a summer afternoon.