Spiderman 3

[owlectomy]

Everyone's going to think I'm silly for wanting more depth and characterization in a Spiderman movie, but I watch it for the prettyboy angst and the romance. (I can never parse the action scenes right, and if anything the problem was worse this time around). The first two movies did a good job of tying the angst, the romance, and the action all together, even if it was contrived--I can forgive that in a popcorn movie. In this case, it was all over the place, and the movie's themes were all at cross-purposes with each other.

Because Peter Parker was acting like an idiot for a good 3/4 of the movie, I ended up identifying with Mary Jane, hence-- I spent most of the movie feeling annoyed, impatient, and vaguely embarrassed. And everything was taken to be resolved at the end of the movie, when really, it wasn't at all. (Would've been a better movie if she'd broken up with him because he was acting like an idiot--it was almost to the point where she'd have been truly justified-- rather than the lame "I must pretend I don't love you to spare your life!" which is such a cliche at this point.)

It was just too much testosterone. I can't really identify with sexual jealousy and vengefulness as motives. And-- I thought the movie was maybe, in one of its drafts, trying to be "A Wizard of Earthsea," but it didn't follow through very well, and I would've liked it better if it hadn't gotten my hopes up.

I will say that Topher Grace (aka That Kid From That 70s Show) was surprisingly good playing against type. And a good casting call if you consider that he's essentially playing a shadow-self to Spiderman (or he would have, if this had been a better movie) and his character on That 70s Show is much like Peter Parker-- nerdy and lovable with an unfortunate tendency to be about as sensitive as a box of rocks.


Would've been a relatively good popcorn movie if the first two movies hadn't gone and gotten my hopes up.