Ooooh, Ouch. Swing-and-a-Miss.

Spider Man 3 had a lot going for it before anyone set foot in the theatre. Cool villains picked out, lots of money for CG, perfect casting, and best of all, it had the coattails of Spider Man 1 and 2 to ride on. All that Sam Raimi had to do was have some lame thread tying the action scenes together, and it would be a big hit.

It is with a deep sadness that I report to you that he couldn't pull it off. Spider Man 3 is a soap opera rarely interrupted with action scenes, when it should have been the other way around. What really made the first two Spider Man movies great was the pacing; there was plenty of 'day-in-the-life-drama' in 1 and 2, but it was well balanced out with plenty of action, while Spider Man 3 drowns in its own sappiness. Spider Man cries more often than he fights anyone, and every character in the movie bursts into tears at least a dozen times. I almost cried myself, because the movie should have been much better.

At this point, I would like to shatter to a paradigm in Movies-Based-On-Comic-Books:

NEW VILLAINS DO NOT NEED TO HAVE THEIR GENESIS DURING THE MOVIE.

The creation of villains is often so contrived that it would make the movie better if they just left it out. The Batman movies should have taught us this, and the makers of the X-men movies prove that it works, but the Sam Raimi hasn't figured this one out yet. The genesis' of Sandman and the symbiotic suit known later as Venom, are so silly that you will wish they left them out and made the movie shorter.

That brings me to another paradigm-shattering point that I've brought up before, but since no one reads my blog, it never gets implemented:


MOVIES RARELY NEED TO BE OVER TWO HOURS LONG!

How about you make a movie that is one hour long, and charge half the price? This goes for all movies, but especially Spider Man 3, which forgot where the hell it came from: A Comic Book, not a Danielle Steele Novel.

While I'm at it, I will add this one:


ALL WOMEN ARE NOT HELPLESS!


I would appreciate it if we saw the 'woman dangling from a high place as bait for the superhero' LESS OFTEN. In fact, a female Super Hero (Like Dazzler? Ha! LOL! or maybe Dagger from 'Cloak and Dagger') or perhaps a female Super Villain (Belladonna? Plastique?) would be much appreciated.

By the way, my guess for one of the villains for Spider Man 4 will be The Lizard, since the character of Dr Curt Connors was introduced in 3. But, I think next time, I will wait for the reviews of 4 to come out before I go see it. If Spider Man 4 turns out to be another 3, I'll just wait for the DVD, it so I can scan past the boring parts, and cut the movie length down to a reasonable time.

I can tell you funniest part of the movie is that as Peter Parker wears the symbiotic suit for a longer period of time, it makes him look more and more like the lead singer for Panic at the Disco. Hysterical.

Blog on,
-CZ

Labels: Hollywood, movie reviews