Spider-Man 3

Twenty things I learned while watching Spider-man 3 (spoilers!):

1.) Extended jazz dance sequences are best left to actual musicals.

2.) To become evil/cool, all one has to do is style one’s hair like Pete Wentz and not get enough sleep.

3.) Evil/cool people walk down the street doing that “guns pointing at you” hand gesture, which means Dave Coulier is evil/cool (well, that’s half right).

4.) Being assertive and exposing frauds are the actions of an evil person.

5.) Topher Grace not only looks more like the comic Peter Parker, but he can actually crack one-liners, and I think he might have made a better Spider-Man.

6.) Tobey Maguire crying is funny (judging from the audience reaction whenever it happened at the super-packed showing I attended).

7.) Sandman is invincible and just decides to be defeated, at which point he gets off scot-free since, well, no one can stop him.

8.) The butler should be tried for war crimes. “Oh, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you…forgot all about it until now. Well, that’s senility for you!” (Courtesy of Stone.)

9.) Amnesia can come and go as needed by weak storytelling.

10.) This guy directed A Simple Plan?

11.) A scientist who is shown a living black blob creature with apparent intelligence and the ability to move quickly across any surface will only be mildly impressed. He will also study said creature at the behest of a student without contacting any other authority.

12.) The best special effects in the movie were not the Sandman or Venom, but the way they made Bryce Dallas Howard, who in real life looks nothing like the comic Gwen Stacy, look exactly like the comic Gwen Stacy.

13.) A portrait of Willem Dafoe is even creepier than he is in person.

14.) The arrival of an evil symbiotic alien attached to a meteorite and the transformation of a man into living sand can happen on the same night.

15.) Also, when a superhero is removing said alien from his body in a belltower in one of the largest cities in the world, his sworn enemy, completely by coincidence, will be standing directly below him.

16.) Mary Jane’s hair always looks fantastic. (That one’s from Kate.)

17.) If you fall asleep and wake up hanging from a building wearing a brand-new suit you didn’t make, this won’t strike you as something to be worried about.

18.) When your boyfriend is a superhero and has repeatedly beaten the snot out of several powerful supervillains, you will nonetheless take the threats against him by a small-time supervillain seriously and break your boyfriend’s heart.

19.) Giant cranes can go out of control and smash into buildings apparently made of plywood that just happen to be the exact spot where the daughter of the chief of police (and Peter’s classmate) is shooting a commercial while said chief of police as well as her boyfriend, who is a rival photographer of Peter’s, show up in time to see the action.

20.) J.K. Simmons is awesome, even when doing a lame Stooges-style routine with an intercom.

Let me end with this: I am a big fan of Sam Raimi. Many of his movies, including all the Evil Dead films and A Simple Plan, are some of my all-time favorites. But this movie is like a train wreck—an awesome train wreck where no one gets hurt. It’s entertaining, but for the wrong reasons (except the action sequences, which are cool).

I enjoyed the first two Spider-Man films; they’re good fun, and pretty good movies in their own right. But somehow, the wheels went flying off the wagon with #3 here.

  1. Kate left a comment on May 9, 2007 at 10:02 am

    THIS IS EVERY BIT AS FANTASTIC AS KIKI DUNST’S HAIR.

    Also: dude, that crane was OUT. Of control!

  2. John left a comment on May 9, 2007 at 11:28 am

    I want a t-shirt with that Willem Dafoe Painting.

    re: point 19, I think it was interesting that they showed things crashing into skyscrapers in New York City and people falling out since that exact thing happened 5 1/2 years ago.

  3. Ed left a comment on May 9, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    Someone needs to make a Gwen Stacy spin-off flick stat. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Hell, I’ll settle for the dailies from that copier commercial she was filming.

  4. Ed left a comment on May 9, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    Regarding #15 – How the hell did he come up with the brilliant idea to remove the symbiote by clanging on a church bell?

    At no point in this flick did that little ball of goo display an aversion to sound but somehow Spidey figured ‘more cowbell’ ought to do it.

    Of course, that conveniently provides him with the necessary intel to annoy the hell out of Venom by clanging on metal bars later in the movie (it’s the same tatic the US pulled on Noriega several years back – only we had the decency to rock the Haggar and rid Panama of its parasite).

    Maybe if Parker was blasting Pantera versus jiving to James Brown, he would have had that monkey off his back much sooner and with far fewer bodies in its wake.

  5. Sean left a comment on May 9, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    @Ed: I don’t know, it seemed quite accidental that he banged that gong the first time.

    @JFCC: I agree with you on Topher being a better Parker than Tobey. It’s too bad we couldn’t go back in time and reverse the four roles of Peter, MJ, Eddie and Gwen. I think BDH would have made a better choice as MJ.

    #13: Very!

  6. Chief left a comment on May 9, 2007 at 8:55 pm

    Spiderman 3 went the way of the Batman franchise before Batman Begins. Too many villains!!! Too much cheese!!! C’mon first Harry wants to destroy Peters life but wait…I’m there for you buddy. I don’t mind you made me look like a freak. Peter was quite obviously listening to The Cure when he was evil, hence his “Emo/Eurotrash” look. I agree the action sequences were great but as a whole, this was a steaming pile of crap.

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