*THERE ARE A COUPLE OF SPOILERS IN THIS POST SO BE WARNED* The pure disappointment of Spider-Man 3 has been weighing on me like a lead anchor. The movie was such a lost opportunity. Yes there were some great special effects… but that doesn’t make a good movie on it’s own. And I’m sorry, but the “action” in the film, such as the fights, were inferior to the fights in the previous 2 films as well (then again it’s hard to top that Spdiey-Doc Ock fight on the train from the second film).
I was reading a nice little article over at cinimatical in which the author talked about some of the ways Spider-Man 3 could have been better. The points he brought up that I really agreed with were:
– Kill Mary Jane in the first scene of the film (Oh god yes).
– Have your villains get upset before the last twenty minutes roll around
– More J.K. Simmons and Bruce Campbell (Oh HELL YES. The lack of Simmons was appalling, and the author suggests that Campbell himself should have played Sandman. I like it (even though I’m a big Church fan)
– Cut all scenes with Aunt May
These are all great ideas, but I have a couple I’d like to add that would have made Spider-Man 3 more bearable.
1) Enough with MJ getting kidnapped!
In every single fricken film! In Spider-Man 1, Goblin kidnaps MJ and dangles her from a high place to lure in Spider-Man. In Spider-man 2 Doc Ock kidnaps MJ and dangles her from a high place to lure in Spider-Man. OH SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE, In Spider-Man 3 Venom and Sandman kidnap MJ… and guess what they do… that’s right… they dangle her from a high place to lure in Spider-Man. Good grief Raimi, change it up a bit.
2) Enough with the bloody “Life Lessons”
At least in Spider-Man 1 and 2 they were kept to a minimum. At some point Aunt May would dish out some moral lesson for Peter to learn and put us all to sleep. But in Spider-Man 3, it felt like every 10 minutes the movie had to stop so some character could express a life lesson for us all to learn.
3) We didn’t come here to see Topher Grace’s bloody face!
It’s bad enough that they didn’t focus the movie around Venom as the villain. It’s bad enough that they only gave us Venom with about 20 minutes left in the movie. But for goodness sake, if you’re only going to give us like 20 minutes of of the 1 bad guys everyone has been waiting to see… DON’T CONSTANTLY PULL VENOM’S FACE BACK TO SHOW US MORE OF TOPHER FUCKING GRACE.
4) It’s a Comic Book Movie – Don’t spend more screen time on “relationship issues” that they’ve already been through in the last 2 movies than you do on the hero fighting the bad guys.
If I had to watch one more minute of MJ being a whinning, nagging, self absorbed little slut, who also cheats on Peter after one little insignificant fight I was going to suffocate myself in my bag of popcorn. SOMEONE TELL ME WHY THE HELL MORE SCREEN TIME WAS GIVEN TO MJ STRUGGLING WITH HER CAREER DIRECTION THAN TO VENOM OR SANDMAN????
5) Better Effects
Yes, some of the stuff looked amazing! But I’m sorry, if Pirates of the Caribbean can make Davy Jones look so freaking kick ass, then the cartoon looking Spider-Man swinging around has no excuse whatsoever.
6) Throw out the “Bad Guy” formula
In every single Spider-Man movie, each of the bad guys WERE originally good guys who just had something unplanned happen to them. And then they run into Spider-Man right away. How about just a bad guy, bad guy? Why does Raimi always feel the need to give us the Origin story of each villain? Can’t a bad guy have been around since BEFORE Spider-Man?
I’ll leave it at that for now, although I can probably think of 10 more things. But I want to know your ideas. What would YOU have done to make Spider-Man 3 a better film? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
