#movieflashback

I've tried a couple of times to sit through the entirety of Spider-man 3 since I first seen it in the cinemas but every time I have to either turn it off in frustration or fast forward through half the movie (usually any scene involving Mary Jane). With "Amazing Spider-man" out now and tickets booked to see it tomorrow I thought it would be a good idea to make myself sit through it again, that way Amazing will surely HAVE to be better in comparison (unless they drop the ball entirely but...here's hoping that doesn't happen) Expect by the minute reactions as they happen.

Running Commentary (Warning, quite long and you'll need a rough memory of the plot of Spider-man 3 to get the most out of it)

Good old previously on Spider-man intro sequence, it's all going well until Danny Elfman's great Spider-man score is rudely interrupted by the new guy's attempt to add something to it that just doesn't fit in with the overall mood of Elfman's fantastic score, the original still makes the hair's on the back of my neck stand up. Thankfully before the end of the title sequence it returns to classic Elfman.

I'm gonna say it, Gwen Stacey in Spider-man XXX looked more the part than Bryce Dallas Howard in Spider-man 3.

The movie starts with a lot of promise, what happens when Spider-man's life starts being good for a change, this topic isn't often explored in the comic so its something new which as someone that reads too many comics I'm happy to see. Then it starts going downhill once Kirsten Dunst starts sharing screen time with Tobey Maquire.

This is actually to me the main fault of Raimi's Spider-man trilogy, although I'm a massive MJ/Peter fan in the comics and I'm patiently waiting for them to get back together, she has no business being a co-lead in Peter Parkers story, especially at this stage in their relationship. She is a supporting player and her screen time should reflect that. Especially since Raimi MJ is a weird combination of "Girl next door" stereotype, comic Gwen and comic MJ. I know every writer has their own interpretation of characters and I'd like to think I'm open to new interpretations of my favourite characters if they're interesting. Raimi/Dunst's Mary Jane is simply not though and I do believe Kirsten Dunst gets unfairly slated for the script she was given.

Goblin Formula: Capable of turning you from nice friend to sinister and creepy in just one dose. 

What's stopping Peter from blurting out "Your father impaled himself on his glider" at any point when talking with Harry, I mean that would have taken 5 seconds to say. He says he doesn't have the time in Spider-man 2 to explain it when Harry unmasks him but it would take 5 seconds to say. Really he brought this on himself for being an idiot.

Goblin Formula: Capable of turning you from science idiot to insane criminal genius in one dose.

I do love how Thomas Hayden Church looks as Sandman, they really nailed it there. I don't even mind them adding the backstory for as much as I do love Spider-man's rogue's Gallery they can be incredibly one dimensional at times, I prefer to get in the head's of the bad guys as much as I can get in the heads of the good guys.

First symbiote appearance!

Look at what you're Aunt's wearing Peter, you woke her up just to tell her you were going to ask Mary Jane to marry you, you selfish bastard. You're not ready to get married yet.

Christopher Nolan has a rule when editing movies, every scene needs to have at least 3 important reasons to remain in the final cut, I can't even think of one reason that scene about Aunt May's proposal needs to be in there.

"Hi Pete, I'm evil now."

Oh now you tell him his father killed himself, maybe if you tried this before he went batshit crazy you wouldn't be in this mess you stupid idiot. In all honesty I actually like this fight scene, despite hating Harry's "New Goblin" get up. It's a bit of cheesy fun.

When fighting for your life, ensuring you don't lose an engagement ring should always be your highest priority.

What exactly is this random particle physics test Flint Marko stumbles into supposed to do besides be a convenient way from him to get sand related powers.

Honestly, have ANY good plots come from characters having amnesia through head trauma? Seriously it's never a good idea because it seems like something straight out of a soap opera. It's a lazy plot device and just leads to generic drama as we wait for the character to inevitably get their memory back and Harry getting it here is no exception. He even throws in the line "my best friends" just to really sell to the audience that he harbours no anger at all towards them. 

A lovely scene in which sandman tries to pull himself together.

"Try and understand how I feel" Mary Jane, police and people have called for his arrest and you get a bad review and you ask him to understand how you feel? At this point he's trying to empathise with you, before he randomly turns into a jerk.

Look, another symbiote appearance in case the audience forgot about that plot line.

When was Gwen ever a model? It's like they turned Movie Gwen into another mix between Gwen and Mary Jane. The characters where fine the way Stan Lee envisioned them dammit.

This movie actually holds up pretty well so far, particularly in stunt sequence.

"I'm the new guy" Hardly Eddie, Jameson or Robbie mentioned you in Spider-man 1, that hardly makes you the new guy if you've been involved with the paper long enough for MJ to go from waitress to broadway sensation.

The writers really take J.K Simmon's Jameson so far, in Spider-man 1 and 2 he was a great take on the character that was funny with barely any effort. So for some reason they tried to go out on their way to give him entire comic relief bits. 

The subtitles on my Spider-man 3 have Stan Lee say "Enough said" rather than "Nuff said" for his cameo. Clearly someone wasn't well versed in marvel catchphrases. The cameo itself was the usual fluff cameo to be expected from Lee.

Not too fond of the way Eddie is turned into a creepy bugger, I'm ok with them taking a new look at the character and turning him into a mirror image of Peter Parker but making him into a pathetic loser isn't the way to do that.

How convenient Sandman finds a truck full of Sand to hide in/play with in New York city, very fucking convenient I must say.

"Bump me on the head" groan worthy dialogue there. Every MJ/Harry scene is pretty hard to watch.

Peter would simply not kiss Gwen like that if he was with Mary Jane, especially if Mary Jane was there watching, poor characterisation there. Especially since it's before he gets infected with venom. This is where Peter starts being a dick and when the movies starts to go downhill.

Peter's continued instance of taking his damn mask off in public in these movies is the most annoying thing.

Perhaps it's because I'm an old cynic with no sense of romance but i can't ever imagine popping the question in public, seems like a dick move on the girl.

And now they've turned Peter into a jerk, really not how you take the character given the lesson Uncle Ben taught him all those years ago when he said "With great power ...." was essentially "Don't be a jerk." I mean it'd all be easily explainable if he was already infected by this point but nope, no reason for that. It's just awful characterisation.

"Why did you kiss her Peter" thats a question we'd all like answered at this point. I mean really, what possible plot reason did the writers have for that kiss besides to force a few plot point because character wise normal Peter wouldn't do that.

Peter dreams of Flint Marko throwing his uncle out of the car and killing him for no reason. Apparently Peter Parker really think a man who's first words to him as Spider-man where "I don't want to hurt you" actually killed his uncle in cold blood for no reason.

Infection has finally set in, and I for one don't mind the black suit, despite it being different from the comics.

Seriously Peter, stop taking off your mask off in public for no reason. Someone is going to get a picture of you without the mask on one day if you keep that up and it'll be all over the place

I'm under the impression Peter's supposed to be angry, mostly because Tobey Maquire is now yelling every line of dialogue he has.

Random symbiote ability no 3: EMO FRINGE! EMO FRINGE! That will never not be hilarious

Peter's still yelling often, I'm going to assume therefore he's still angry. Not to mention he still has the fringe.

"A "guest" guest sir?" Shut up you stupid Butler and just get some food before Harry fires you already.

Mary Jane and Harry cooking to the tune of Chubby Checker, another scene which is unbearably hard to watch that I can't imagine meeting Nolan's three reasons rule.

Do Mary Jane Peter and Harry not have any friends besides each other, I mean surely they must have some friends, one's an actress and one's a freaking rich guy. They should have their fair share of suck ups.

And the Amnesia wears off, like it ALWAYS does. Still any reason to get Williem Dafoe back into the movies is fine by me. To this day I like to believe that he never died in part 1 and orchestrated the events but more on that later.

Mary Jane's first words when Harry attacked her should have been something like "Harry...what the fuck are you wearing, and how are you flying, what hell is going on? etc" I mean as far as I know Peter never told her he was an evil Super-villain.

Norman's idea of attacking the heart: Assaulting Aunt May and nearly killing Mary Jane. Harry's idea of attacking the heart: Soap opera bullshit. This is why Harry could never be taken seriously as a bad guy in this movie.

Harry asks Peter after MJ breaks up with him "How you holding up?" to which Peter responds "not good." This would be a lot more believable if he wasn't fucking SMILING at the time.

"How's the pie" "so good" and then the wink, and then he somehow disappears form the table in the time it takes a bus to pass as if the goblin formula gave him super-speed, problem being it didn't. Really silly.

Emo fringe is back! I mean seriously could they not have anyway to convey him being evil besides an emo fringe. On the plus side at least Peter worked out Harry was evil again.

Harry just stabbed Peter with a knife, it's like the writers briefly forgot Peter has fucking Spider sense that warns him of danger for fuck's sake, that should simply have not happened.

"I'm going to blow you up with a bomb peter" "Not if I blow you up first."

And we've graduated to dancing in the street, in the comic the venom symbiote drove him evil, here it just makes him into a generally unlikeable doucebag.

Random symbiote ability number 7: Fancy piano playing.

Random symbiote ability number 8: Fancy dancing.

I remember when Peter hit accidentally hit MJ in the comic, he ran away and couldn't look at her in face for weeks, it seems only fitting this is what gets him to wise the fuck up in the movie.

Jeez, it's sure lucky for Peter randomly decides to go to a church to get rid of the symbiote considering nothing up to now has given him the slightest hint that the symbiote is weak against sound.

it occurs to me now I've laughed out at this movie for the wrong reasons way too much by now. 

Writers Soundbite "Oh no, we're running out of time, we better have 2 of our bad guys randomly meet up and make an alliance for the end of movie set piece and have them kidnap Mary Jane" I mean seriously , couldn't they think up anything more original than "Big Bad kidnaps MJ" again!

You know you're desperate when you go to your friend who, the last time you seen him, you blew him up with a fucking goblin grenade.

This leads to the worst part of the movie, the butler, the guy who gets 2/3 lines a movie up to now comes out to deliver the plot turn needed. I mean Harry won't believe his best friend but his butler who has lied to him for how long? Fine. That's Just horrible horrible writing full stop, I remember this was the key moment in the cinema that made me go "fuck this." Someone told me this was supposed to be a parody of Batman and Alfred but really, it's just stupid.

Spider-man's running in front of the American flag! U.S.A U.S.A U.S.A.

Random symbiote ability number 9: They will severally fuck up your teeth somehow, or at least Eddie Brock's teeth.

Eddie: "Do you remember what you did Peter?" Why wouldn't he, I mean I'm pretty sure it's couldn't be more than a week ago in movie timeline.

Sandman has evolved into "Massive final boss sandman!" Watch as he punches Peter Parker to death with a giant sand fist.

Now Harry's fighting mask-less, as if he doesn't care about getting caught up camera. I mean when the hell did Bale's Batman EVER fight maskless? I don't think he ever did.

Another J. Jonah comic relief bit in the middle of a giant set piece.

"I like being bad" No Eddie was NEVER bad, Eddie thought of himself as a good guy, he just thought Spider-man was guilty. This isn't so much "another interpretation of the character" as someone just not getting the basics of the character right.

As silly a weakness as "Tuning Poles" are, I'm just happy that he wasn't beaten with a cigarette lighter, that was without a doubt my most hated venom moment ever.

"Oh you accidentally shot my uncle, that's so much fucking better" 

Aw Harry and Peter are best friends again, just in time to make the death extra sad.

Hey look, Gwen's turned up on screen for the first time in over 30 minutes at the funeral for Harry. I can't imagine why, I mean she didn't share a single scene with him in the entire movie. It's like the writers just wanted to say "Yes she still exists"

And the last shot is them getting back together, awwwwww.

Final Thoughts

What more is there to say that hasn't been said in the 5 years since this movie originally came out? Raimi was a big fan of Spider-man in the 60's and not a fan of Venom. We all know he was made to include him by the producers for marketing reasons. The weird part about all this is despite the fact that he was being forced to include a character he had no interest in, Sam Raimi went ahead and wrote the movie. What's odd about this you may (but would probably not) ask? He didn't have anything at all to do with the first two, so after having nothing to do with the first two why on earth would he go out of his way to write a movie featuring a character he doesn't want to write? It's an interesting point to consider but it clearly did not well. Raimi wasn't the man to bring Venom to the screen as it shows, the darkness of Venom doesn't belong in the 60's world of Spider-man and it shows.

It does however, make this movie an interesting what if. What if Stan Lee or Steve Dikto invented Venom during his run on Amazing Spider-man. Because in all honestly, it would probably be something like this.

Once you take Venom out of the picture you have the Harry issues from his amnesia plot to his soap opera idea of attacking the heart. What's especially disappointing here is Harry's plot what the over-arcing plot to the trilogy (and could have easily led to a great 4th one which I'll come to below) and to see it take a turn into such a farce is just tragic. And I'm even going to go further into the Butler being the one to save the day, that was just lazy.

Then of course you have the MJ issues which run through the trilogy, Dunst does not deserve the fault for the script turning MJ from party girl to girl next door, indeed she doe the best with what she's given. Then we have Peter acting out of character pre-mature to being infected with venom, it's tragic how soon this movie goes downhill after a relatively solid start.

What comes next?

I'm going to come out and say it, I think Raimi should have made another movie. I believe they should have brought Norman Osborn back from the dead (he never died in the comics after all thanks to the goblin formula healing factor) and had him come back for vengeance after the death of his son. It would be revealed he had orchestrated some (but not all because would be too much) events in the last 2 movies. He would then completely destroy Peter's life at a time when he had it all, something like the "Citizen Osborn" story started in Spectacular Spider-man 250. It would be using a character Raimi knows and understands and be properly dark after the failure of three.

The X-men series has been a series of up and downs, the first movie is a solid 3/5 comic book movie that spends so much time setting the scene that it forgets to tell a overly satisfying story within the constraints of it’s running time. X-Men 2 is an unbelievable improvement, a movie I’d give 5/5 too and rank amongst the finest Superhero movies (For the record I don’t classify the absolute masterpiece that is “The Dark Knight” as a superhero movie, I believe it transcends the genre) I’ve ever seen, heck it’s probably one of my most watched movies of all time and even Halle Berry can’t bring it down. The movie has the running time to give it’s massive cast a chance to breath and interact, contains an absolutely brilliant “coming out” scene and every character gets their chance to shine.

Then came X-men 3 (Or X-men: The Last Stand) and well..it was so bad that it led to the very first rant I ever wrote being written on Bebo (Remember Bebo?), something which I tried to dig up for this rant but I deleted my bebo when it became apparent that it was full of people pretending to be cooler than they were and the politics of “top friends” got too much for me....but back to the X-men franchise, what did the third movie do wrong?

Well things looked so promising leading up to it, the casting of Kelsey “Frasier” Grammar as Beast was pitch perfect casting, the promise of the casting of Juggernaut hinted that Charles Xavier’s back story could be hinted at and explored, there was even promise of a danger room sequence.

What did the movie do wrong? Well if we’re talking comic book guy complaints

·       Juggernaut is supposed to be Professor Xaviers brother, this wasn’t mentioned/eluded too

·       Juggernaut is not supposed to be a mutant, Leech’s power shouldn’t have worked on him

·       Juggernaut is supposed to be bigger

·       “The Phoenix” is an intergalactic force capable of destroying worlds, it IS NOT an alternate personality of Jean Grey

·       Colossus is supposed to be Russian

·       Pyslocke’s powers are wrong

·       The morlocks aren’t supposed to have tattoo’s

But that is all irrelevant, a movie can be a good movie and get the source material wrong (X-men First Class for example) so what did the movie do wrong a movie basis

Characters with no Character

All X-men movies since X3 began have been guilty of this but X3 was the one that started this absolutely disgusting habit of filling the cast with countless C and D list mutants that don’t get anything character development beyond one or two lines (usually a bad joke) and an fx shot. X2 was amazing because everyone got their chance to shine, here they just stuff the cast with C-listers just because their powers are needed on one single occasion to steer the plot where it needs to go for the purposes of the script they’ve written which is just lazy writing, like the scene in the movie where the army moves in on Magneto’s camp only to find that there’s only 1 guy (Jamie Madrox) there who made enough doubles of himself to make it look like everyone was there, this one scene was the only reason Jamie Madrox was even in the movie and it was a completely throwaway scene. Not only that but they actually fundamentally changed mutants powers from the original comic book and even invented new mutants with no personalities just to fill Magnetos army with nobodies and to have some nice “fx” shots. Even Kelsey Grammar’s beast character was given the short straw so Halle Berry could get some extra lines. It’s either that or someone is naive enough to think that some really geeky fanboy is gonna love to say their favorite character horribly misinterpreted on the big screen

Character work that makes no sense given the film series up to now

There’s a scene in this movie where Professor X just starts being a complete tool to Wolverine, hiding secrets and just generally being a twat, something that comes out of the blue considering up to that point he’s was a kind hearted grandfather practically. Cyclops suddenly turns from leader of the team to emotional wreck in-between movies (only to die off screen because he chose to follow X-men 2 director Bryan Singer to Warner Bros to do Superman Returns. One of the founding members of the X-men deserves better than an off-screen death) Jean Grey suddenly becomes a headcase etc. Everything about this movie was a rush job, and it shows.

These two crimes alone are enough to damn it but there’s still more.

Awful Unnecessary Set Pieces

A danger room fights where you can see the faint outline of a giant robot in the background through fog? Wolverine running through the woods while some guy tries to throw spikes at him? Every single action scene in this movie is more worried about looking good then being necessary or even having tension. The movie is all flash not much else. Even the big set piece of Magneto moving the golden gate bridge so his army can ascend on the island prison just goes on way too long that I was just thinking “Could they not just swim or fly over”

Twists so bad that the writers reverse them in the last 5 minutes of the movie

Along with the death of Cyclops two big things happened in this movie, Professor X died at the hands of Jean Grey and Magneto lost his powers. Two massive twists in the x-men storyline that don’t even last til the end of the movie. 10 minutes before the movie ends Magneto loses his powers, 5 minutes before the movie ends he’s playing chess in a park and  OH MY GOD HE STILL HAS HIS POWERS…then I ask what was the entire point of taking them “away” if you’re gonna give them back to him 5 minutes later, a twist’s for twists sake? Cause that that’s always a good idea. Then we have Charles Xavier killed halfway through the movie, in the scene at the end after the credits he’s back in someone else’s body. The undoing of these two twists within the same movie is at best a clear showing that the writers just wanted shock for shocks sake and at worst an example of the writers admitting their storytelling choices are so stupid that they want to undo them before you leave the cinema, either way it’s not a good sign.