Spider-Man 2 has often been cited as the best superhero movie ever made (personally, I still have a soft spot for Superman I), so I suppose it was inevitable that 3 was going to be a bit of a come-down. Fortunately, it wasn’t the brutal one that it could have been (I’m looking at you, X-Men 3…), but it definitely came off as a film in need of another script revision.
- The Meteor: Peter and Mary Jane enjoy a nice, romantic moment on a giant web that probably took six hours or so to meticulously craft. Just then, a mysterious, oozing meteor (containing the symbiote that will overtake Peter’s life) lands just feet away. Huh? Is this a 50s monster movie all of a sudden? Seriously, folks, that is some laaaazy screenwriting there. I can think of two options that would have worked better: Peter’s a science genius, right? Couldn’t he have created the substance in his lab, which would have the added benefit of beefing up his relationship with “lab partner†Gwen Stacy. Gwen was a huge part of the comics, but here her character is paper-thin. (Frankly, I think she should have been killed off in some accident tied to Pete’s black-costumed negligence. Spider-Man is nothing if not driven by guilt, and this sort of thing would tie into Gwen’s comic roots, where she dies by the Goblin’s hand. Or… Mary Jane’s fiancé in the second film was an astronaut (and Jonah’s son). Why not have him bring the creature back from space? Then Spider-Man either has to save the damaged shuttle as it returns, critically damaged, to earth, or he has to fight a symbiote-powered astronaut who also happens to be his girlfriend’s ex-fiancé.
- The Jazz Club Dance Sequence: This whole scene felt like a transplant from the first Eddie Murphy Nutty Professor movie. Since when does Peter play the piano? And are we to believe that one of the symbiote’s powers is enhancement of dancing ability? I understand they were trying to add some much-needed humor to the film, but the all-dancing, all-piano-playing Spider-Man was simply too much to take. Couldn’t this have been just a simple Peter/Gwen slow dance, with him eyeing MJ the whole time?
- Maguire’s Hair: Speaking of humor (albeit the unintentional kind), am I to believe they spent $250 million on this puppy, and not a single cent on hair stylists? The “dark” Peter looked like a reject from an emo band. I laughed every single time I saw his awful, awful “dark” haircut, particularly when he stops to style it in the alley for the first time.
The Length: Spider-Man 3 was, really, two movies packed into one, and it felt like it. Unfortunately, the side effect of ten pounds of plot stuffed into a five-pound bag was that character development went out the window. Mary Jane behaves erratically, Gwen Stacy is two-dimensional, and Harry Osborn’s magical amnesia made him seem like he was auditioning for Days of Our Lives. The filmmakers needed to decide what story they were telling and focus on it. (As I understand it, this was really motivated by two conflicting desires: the need to fit the Venom character into the mix, and the stars’ contracts, which expire with this film. I suspect that, if they had thought they could get Maguire, Dunst, and the rest back for another go-around, that they would have made this two movies, but they couldn’t, so they had to pack it all in one film.) Venom or Sandman, which is it going to be, guys?- The Coincidences: I’ve already mentioned the worst offender, but there were simply too many inexplicably lucky coincidences to be believed. (I think most screenwriting gurus say that you can get away with one, maybe two, without the audience getting peeved.) Eddie Brock just happens to be at the church where Peter is fighting the symbiote? Why not have Eddie following Spidey, trying to get a picture? Gwen Stacy happens to be at the same restaurant on the night that Pete is going to propose? She’s his lab partner and a model in mortal danger? I could go on, but basically, this is just lazy writing, the kind of stuff that they teach screenwriting students on day one, right after margins.
Oddly enough, all of this didn’t add up to a terrible movie, just a much weaker one than it could have been. On the upside, though, maybe the filmmakers and cast will want to come back and make a stronger Spidey 4…
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admin said
May 25 2007 @ 4:31 pm
Great Post Pratick
Richard said
May 25 2007 @ 4:52 pm
I agree with just about everything except #5. Yeah, it was too concidental, but Eddie Brock praying to God to kill Peter Parker had an unexpected poignancy that really helped further the character along – the fact that Eddie Brock, a religious man, goes to church to ask for such a thing.
I agree with you about Gwen – is modelling the only position avaliable for women in the Spider-Man universe? Couldn’t she just as easily have been his lab partner and kept it at that.
Doug said
May 26 2007 @ 7:02 am
Good post. Spidey 3 wasn’t bad, but these big problems could have easily been avoided. Hell, I thought they were going out of their way in the last movie to set up the John Jameson astronaut thing just so they could introduce the symbiote in a similar way to the original comic. To have that sitting out there and then to do it as clumsily as they did in 3 is hard to figure out.
Unfortunately, I think Spidey 3 is not going to age well when it hits DVD and cable. These flaws are going to seem much worse with repeated viewings.
Workfaster said
May 27 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Not that I disagree with the above suggestions, but I think you missed the obvious one. How about if they actually explained what happened when Harry swooped in on MJ unexpectedly and forced (?) her to break up with Peter? That was either bad editing, storywriting, or both.
grave_Wounds said
May 29 2007 @ 2:35 pm
just to let you know that both #1 (the cymbiote coming from a crashed metior) and #5 (Brock being in the church at the same time) are true to the original comics, and please remember that this is a film BASED on the comics, they have to stay true to somethings,otherwise theyre main audience (readers of the comics) would actully be annoyed.
frankiejr said
May 30 2007 @ 5:00 pm
Personally, I thought the prime example of lazy screenwriting in this film was what got Harry to realize Peter was telling the truth. The butler? They could have cut both the Jazz scene & the “Evil Peter” montage in half and given at least a couple more minutes to that part of the plot.
Richard Pulfer said
May 30 2007 @ 5:35 pm
First up, I TOTALLY agree with you frankie. The “FYI your father died from his own blade” from the butler was totally lazy and unworthy. In the comics that moment never happened. Harry chose to protect Peter without even knowing Spider-Man wasn’t responsible for his dad’s death!
I think that’s true to an extent, grave-wounds. You can’t give up good story in order to be true to the comics, but most comics have good story, so that’s not too much of a worry. I think Eddie Brock was following Spider-Man to the church for a story when the symbiote fell, if I remember right. But the symbiote’s origins were far more complicated in the comics than a simple meteor – it actually was found in the Secret Wars, when Spider-Man’s costume was damaged and in need of repair. Compared to a story of intergalatic beings and omnipotent aliens, the meteor works a lot better – but there is a third option. In Ultimate, Eddie and Peter were childhood friends, and their parents respectively working on a suit which strengthed the immunities of cancer paitents – it of course became Venom. I could see this storyline working in relation to a conflict between Eddie and Harry – one that didn’t appear in the comics could have been greatly enhanced.
Doug said
May 30 2007 @ 6:29 pm
Just to let you know that the symbiote did not come from a crashed meteor. It initially came from a machine on the world where the Secret War versus the Beyonder was fought.
So, I’ll just be here waiting for that Secret Wars movie. Hope it comes soon.
ak said
June 4 2007 @ 1:22 pm
piece of crap the film was sick
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Rishabh parakh said
July 14 2009 @ 10:48 pm
why did the symbiote neglected peple