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.
—05/09/07