William Chong

I’d firstly like to say that I enjoyed the first two Spiderman movies. So I expected to watch a decent movie last night.

Now that I got that out of the way… I didn’t like Spiderman 3. Here’s a couple of standout points from the movie:

• a lot of plot points were explained by 30-second scenes.
• Peter Parker doesn’t go evil, he goes emo (no, they’re not the same).
• MJ (Kirsten Dunst) suddenly becomes frail and vulnerable in Spiderman 3. Yet again has to portray the “damsel-in-distress”. I know it’s a comic-book story, but please.
• Eyeliner on Toby Maguire. ‘Nuff said.
• Cliche. Cut and paste answers to conflicts.
• Though I’m glad they resolved Peter Parker’s inner conflict re: his uncle’s murder. That means there’ll be nothing to base another Spiderman movie off.

I’d say at least half of the story arose from very deus ex machina circumstances (e.g. James Franco becoming a good guy because his butler suddenly speaks up). Director Sam Raimi seemed to enjoy putting in action sequences, which were very polished.

One of the main things I was looking forward to was to see Toby Maguire actually act evil. In the story a symbiote (poorly explained plot point) binds to him and should’ve caused his character to be evil. However, all you got was a emo-haircut, cringe-worthy playboy antics and showing MJ up by playing on the piano. Perhaps it was intentional to make the point that nerdy people can’t turn evil… but then again, Raimi had the potential to really craft out a vicious side of Spiderman/Peter Parker. The end result was more comedy and cheese. I’m not sure whether it’s the script or the directing, but one/both of them definitely needed improving.

I’d rate the cringe-ness of some scenes to be nearly as bad as Legally Blonde 2, the Family Stone and anything from the Wayan Brothers. For a 2 1/2 hour film, there was a good 5 minutes of Peter Parker doing hip-thrusts in the streets of NYC; really long-winded sympathy-seeking expositions for the main villains; 10 minutes of “will-she, won’t she” scenes where a lot of time was wasted with shots of MJ looking out the window, Peter looking in, turning away, looking back and forth, etc etc; cheesy lines like “this pie tastes goooooood”. And a swinging Spiderman into his final battle suddenly does so past a huge American flag. Intense patriotism? ech.

Lots of things not up to scratch… so not very happy even though it cost $10 to watch it. Spiderman 3 would be about the same as Batman and Robin, in terms of depth and campiness. The first two were more concise and resonant.

Anyways. I appreciated other films more. C-.