Spider-Man 3

[detourne_me]

Well I just bought my tickets tonight for Wednesday morning.
It opens tonight and alll showings with Digital sound are sold out till well into Thursday,  I got tickets for the regular experience.
My Korean co-teachers were smart and snatched up tickets a week ago for tomorrow night.
i'm so pumped!

[detourne_me]

So I watched Spidey earlier this morning...   excellent!
It did a great job of tying into the first two movies, and its just all around good.
much funnier than the first two, but some of the humour seems a little childish.
and they definately improved on the action sequences.  pure eye candy.

i'll be seeing it again when i get back to north america, and i can watch it in imax.

[lugaru]

Im glad to hear it's a little Silly, that is one of Sam Raimi's strong points and spierman does silly well, especially in the 80's - 90's where he alternated between melodrama and comedy.

Second: dude, your coming back? When do you touch down in america?

[Lycus]

This was probably my favorite of the three, good solid action, a nice wide range of emotion too. If I had one complaint (barely a spoiler), it would be that the [spoiler]"Peter thinks he's cool"[/spoiler] scenes made my eyes hurt. One addendum, I don't actually follow the comics so I can't speak to how hardcore fans will react.

It may have just been the theater I was in, but the sound did seem to chop-and-change between speakers in some early scenes. I suspect that won't be the case for others though.

[detourne_me]

i'll echo youre critique,  thought it was a bit overdone in some scenes,  but great for the plot.  reminds me of the somewhat similar scenes of transformation in the first two.

[GogglesPizanno]

The movie definitely loses some of the characterization and emotion of the previous two.
And it had too many villains, and the tone shifted quite a bit...
And yet I found it to be an incredibly entertaining disjointed over the top mess of a spectacle.

Was it the best of the films?
Not at all.
And i can understand why people may not like it -- a friend who went with me described it as "Raimi giving a big F/U to the first two films and then deconstructing them". I cant say I really agree with that...but I think I understand what he meant.

In any case for me, the sheer ridiculousness and over the top tone of the thing were exactly the reasons why I liked it.

[UnkoMan]

You know what? I have to say I liked Mary Jane in this film a lot more. Even though she is super whiney she just seemed more sympathetic this time through.

Oh.. umm... There might be :spoiler: in this post. Just saying.

Everybody I was with absolutely loved it. I loved it too. Sandman was awesome, and I'm so glad they protrayed him with such love. Venom was... well... The symbiote was scary as heck, because it's Sam Raimi, but Venom himself I thought laughable. Oh Topher... Especially that voice of his. But whatever.

What I DID like was Harry. I thought he was very nicely handled. And his weirdo costume/board actually turned out pretty cool, I've got to admit. It's just a shame they cramed all this into the one movie, since I found his change of character happening way too fast. This movie would have worked better as two, probably. As one it is a bit TOO fast. However, I enjoy that over the movie being too slow with nothing of interest happening. All in all, I found it a very enjoyable experience. It probably is my favourite of the three.

Oh, and Lycus, that paticular part had my theatre cracking up. It was pretty hilarious, I thought. But so was emoSpider-Man.

[UnfluffyBunny]

[spoiler]
that wasnt venom, that was ultimate eddie with powers, I never thought i'd say this, but the film would have been better without him, loved everything else tho [/spoiler]

[Sevenforce]

Just got back. Cinema had problems with the projector so had to swap theatres twice. Ah, Vue, my nemesis...

[spoiler]
I, sadly, have to agree with the Bunny. Cool as Venom is/was, removing that whole element would have made this movie ten times better. I'm not as much a stickler for authenticity as the bunny (:lol:) but it just seemed to introduce an element that was too much unbelievable. At least, in the movie-verse. In its own movie, that would have been Venom, to me. Eddie Brock? Check. Humiliated by Parker? Check. Black? Check. Big [expletive deleted] teeth? Check. Tendrils? Sorta check. Creepy voice? Well...it IS Topher Grace. And his voice coming from that is just plain wrong.

There was a lot of little nitpicks that really set this movie down far too much. Not as good as the first two by a long shot. Don't get me wrong, a GOOD movie, an AWESOME movie. Bruce Campbell, Yay! (though why Pete doesn't recognise him...) Flash Thompson in the funeral scene, Yay! (Nice touch, bringing in old characters) Stan Lee finally getting a line, Yay! The whole Harry aspect-except-for-cliche-amnesia-and-death...Yay!

But, as most good movies, they tried to fit FAR too much into too short a time. Short? Did I say short? I meant monstrously long (Yeah, yeah, 15 minutes more than usual. Tell that to my bladder ;) ) If they'd focused on Sandman, with the Harry sidenote, then this movie would have been excellent. But, with Venom mixed in, and especially that suit and its effects (OMG MY EYES KILL THE JOHN TRAVOLTA EMO!) it drags it out unnecessarily long. And how many endings? After Harry died, I got out of my seat. Then funeral scene. Got out of seat. Jazz time...Forgot to get out. Lord of the Rings has a lot to answer for. Got growled at by angry frat boys whod sat and laughed all. the. way. through. But thats another story.

I'm not surprised this is the most expensive movie since King Kong. I mean, wow. Major flashiness. Loved the fight scenes. Loved pretty much everything except that alien.
[/spoiler]

To sum up - Too much in too little time. Remove Venom = happy happy.

Now...off to get ready for London. Woo. Kill me...

[Jakew]

I'm in agreement. I thought the film juggled the character fairly well up until rushed scene where Venom bumps into Sandman into the alleyway. Then the quality of the film seemed to slide and things started to bug me, like:

:spoiler: :spoiler: :spoiler: :spoiler: :spoiler:

* Harry's butler.
* The comic-y webbing that Venom created when MJ was held hostage.
* The increasingly simplistic dialogue
* The rushed resolution of the Sandman's plot
* Harry's sudden transformation into a super-hero and his corny dialogue
* Why did Venom need the Sandman to kill Spider-man anyway? Just in case Spidey fell on the ground?

Also, Gwen and Captain Stacy were essentially throw-away parts with fairly well-known actors playing the roles (what was the point of that)?

Ideally, the film should have focused on Harry and the Sandman (perhaps Harry could have set Peter up to fight Sandman, has a change of heart, battles Sandman himself, then conks out from effects of the Goblin Gas on his heart), and ended with Eddie Brock in the church with the symbiote dripping towards him.

On the plus side, the action sequences were fantastic, Sandman was magnificient (the way he brought himself together by 'tensing' his body was amazing), it was never boring, and I enjoyed evil disco Peter (at that point I realised Raimi wasn't taking the movie very seriously ... perhaps a bit of rebellion at the forced inclusion of Venom?).

[bredon7777]

Well, here's something I never thought I'd have to say about a Spider-Man movie:

I was deeply, deeply dissapointed.  I was also very frustrated, because what they got right- they got SO right.  But I detected the influence of The Fantastic Four all over this movie and not in a good way- they committed every sin the FF movie committed (Badly shot battle scenes;character moments that should be played straight played for laughter; dragging out unfunny and unnecessary jokes for too long; time that shouldve been spent advancing PLOT and STORY with ACTION wasted on cheap, stupid setups.) and it hurt worse here, because I don't expect that level of hackery from Raimi.

And then they added insult to injury because everytime they did something wrong they would follow it up with something so right, so perfect, that I would say "Oh, that was just an aberration; the rest of the movie will be excellent"- only to be let down again and again and again.

Follow me into the spoiler section, True Believer- if you DARE:

[spoiler]

Ok, lets get the stuff I didn't mind out of the way first: 
I knew they couldn't have Reed figure out about the Symboites vulnerability to sound.  I thought  theyd have professor Connors do it, but I can live with Spidey working it out on his own.

While it was painfully obvious that Bryce Dallas Howard was shoehorned into the movie as a warning to Kristen Dunst ("Yeah sweetie, you go ahead and drop out of #4, we can replace you without even breaking a sweat") I thought she was excellent as Gwen (both in terms of looks and acting job) and would have no objection to her replacing MJ as Petes gf.

I would've prefered both a funky voice and Venom referrring to himself as "we" when he wasn't indulging Topher Graces need for face time (By the way -somebody needs to sit these folks down and force them to watch V for Vendetta until they get it through their heads that it is perfectly possible to do a phenomenal acting job while being in a mask the whole darn time!!!), but overall, I thought he was fine.  Not anywhere close to the excellence that was Thomas Hayden Church as Sandman, but there's a reason one of them is Oscar nominated and one isnt.

I really thought I was going to be intensley irritated by them retconning it so that it was Sandman who killed Uncle Ben, but they handled it really well- and the scene between Spidey and Flint near the end of the movie was one of the standout scenes.

I would've liked Flint to have a bit more control over his abilities.

Now the things that irritated me:
Nowhere near enough action.  The battles they had were done really well (except for the first one- what the heck was up with the camera?  I haven't come that close to losing my lunch in a theater since The Blair Witch Project.  The team-up battle at the end, easily my favorite battle in the series, though).  spider-man is supposed to be an action movie with some character development, not some soppy character piece with just a tinge of action.

Character moments that should be played straight played for laughter- I understand that you want to show the effect the suit has on Peter(making him more agressive, etc). You don't show this by that idiotic sidewalk strut sequence (especially to non-comics fans- there were murmurs of "what the hell is he doing" everywhere around where we were sitting).  And you don't compound your error by letting the joke stretch on way after it had ceased to become funny. 5-10 seconds of the sidewalk scene (well ok it was never gonna be funny), might have been tolerable.  Nearly a full minute was cringe inducing and time that could've been spent much better elsewhere; such as the Peter/Harry fight. When Pete catches the Goblin Bomb, whips it back at Harry and walks away without looking back- THAT is how you properly show the effect the symboite is having on him.

Speaking of stupid jokes that got dragged on too long- does anyone ACTUALLY believe that JJJ would allow an intercom buzzer so loud it shakes his desk?  Buzzing him once when he was about to take the pill causing him to spill it woouldve been funny. The number of times they did it was unbeliavable and overkill.

The movie was rife with crap scenes that served little to no purpose.  This is the first time I've ever been tempted (once it comes out on DVD) to do my own cut- I could cut 25-30 minutes of unecessary fluff easily. Thats almost a half an hour that couldve and shouldve been devoted to revealing more plot and story and additional action.

Mary Jane's firing- gone. It's not her story, we don't need to see that, the mention to Harry was more than eough. Ditto for her job search. Hell, we didn't even need to see more than a few seconds of her musical number (btw, does anyone know if that was actually Kirsten singing? Cause I always thought she had a nice singing vocie, till tonight, anyway)
I've already mentioned that ridiculous sidewalk sequence- drastically reduced.
Ditto for that nonsense at the jazz bar with Pete on the piano- gone. All you need is Pete getting in MJs face and the fight.
The bits with his landlord- gone. Unnecessary.
The stupid reporter- drastically reduced.
The stupid setup with JJJ and the kid with the camera. Stupid joke at the wrong time.

I could go on and on.

How would I have improved the movie? Cut the nonsense- moved the creation of Venom up to the middle- used the extra time to expand on the symboite(better examples of how it affects Peter- why and how it bonded with Brock- the abilities it gave him) and Harry- more of his father taunting him- more action.

Now Im making it sound like I hated it and I didn't(it's certainly no Elektra). I liked it.  Maybe my expectations were too high  - I expected something as good as, if not better than #2, and what I got was around the level of X-Men III/Ghost Rider.

Not a bad movie, but nowhere as good as it couldve/should've been.
[/spoiler]

Given that its almost certainly going to shatter box office records, who do you think will be the villians in #4? I figure they've got Electro, Mysterio, Kraven and Vulture before they have to start using the silly villans.

[style]

Next up: "SINISTER SIX!" ;)


By the way I was entertained by the movie, wish they could of got someone else to play Venom. But the actor for Sandman was dead on!

[Figure Fan]

Brendon, I agree with everything you've said. Really. Spot on.

I liked it, but it should have/could have been much better. Still, I liked it.

[BentonGrey]

Well, I'm rather surprised by the disappointment I'm hearing here.  I thought it was FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC!  Seriously, I thought it was really great, and all the things people have been complaining about, like the 'strutting' and stuff like that, I found hilarious.  Yeah it was goofy, but that's part of Rami's style, does no one remember the similar part from the second one?  Anyroad, I do think it could have been better, but that's always true.  It was a great movie, really compelling, and I thought that just about everything was handled really well.

My only real critque was:

[spoiler]Harry didn't really need to die, story wise.  There was too much time between his redemption and his death for it to have the impact they were going for, so it was unecessary, and somewhat out of place.  I don't think it took that much away from the movie, although my wife swore that she'd never watch it again because it made her so sad.  ;)  Still, I really LIKED the over the top buddy feel of their last fight, and I thought that Harry was handled SOO well this movie, even including the 'cliched' bump on the head thing.  I think that was a great device that really worked. [/spoiler]

The final fight was absolutely visually astounding, I mean, REALLY amazing, and I loved the hopeless, heroic nature of the first part of it.  There's nothing more moving than a last stand.  Ahh, this movie was REALLY worth the wait, and I'm deffinetly going to see it again.

[BatWing]

i watched it last night and it was freakin awsome man :thumbup:
harry!!

[bearded]

i did like the movie a lot.   the action scenes were way to fast for me, i couldn't really tell what was going on in the fights.[spoiler]no way harry is dead.  did peter even check his pulse?  harry sort of turned his head and closed his eyes.  and parker started crying.  again.  even in the real world, that's not necessarily dead.  but, ok, it was a symbolic death.  in the movies, he's surely just regenerating.
[/spoiler]

[thalaw2]

I just happened to be back in the US this week and I caught this yesterday at the matinee (it's good to be on vacation).  I wasn't very impressed with the story.  I'm guessing from Eddie's comments about Spidey being too chubby was a nod to the change in animators, but it's just a guess.

the effects were awesome and I like that they reversed the roles of MJ and Peter...Spidey in the spotlight while MJ was was...infamous.  The movie also had some great laughs.  JJ's dialogue was much better than it was in SPM2.

I thought MJ and Stacy weren't too attractive.  Dunst really looked worn out to me by comparison to the first two films.

I don't remember the symbiote ever being "red kyrptonite."  It made for great humor though. 

Overall this was a very good movie but I didn't get into it like I was able to during the first two.  In fact it seemed the audience was happy that it was over.  People started clapping a good 5 minutes before the movie was over and sighed when they saw more was left.  No one stuck around for closing credits.  There just wasn't enough build up to Spidiey's battles...there was no real evil villian talk to build up to the last battle.  I don't understand why Sandman would help Venom and I didn't see any power increase from the new suit.  The movie tried to do too much, but did it much better than Batman Forever.

The F4 trailer was cool.  That Sue Richards.....ooohhhh mama!

[Talavar]

One sentence review of Spider-man 3: There was just too much.

Details follow...
[Spoiler]
Too many villains: I'm not quite agreeing that the movie should have had Sandman instead of Venom, but it definitely should have had one or the other, not both.  I thought Topher Grace did a good job of playing Eddie Brock as a sort of Bizarro-Peter Parker, which I can live with as a change.  Harry as Goblin jr. would have worked with either since we've already had a lot of character development for him in 1 & 2, but there just wasn't time enough or attention enough, & Sandman & Venom both felt rushed.  Sandman's retconn as the actual murderer of Uncle Ben added nothing really, and Sandman's storyline got no resolution.  Venom, who I don't believe was ever called that in the film, got some development time as Eddie, then he got the symbiote and went instantly to "hey Sandman, I read the script & know what's motivating you.  Let's team up & kill Spider-man!"

Too many storylines:  we had MJ & Peter's rocky relationship, Peter's brush with his emo-side, Harry's revenge/redemption, Sandman's crimespree to fund his daughter's medical treatments, and Eddie Brock's arrival & fall from grace.  Most of these didn't receive enough time or focus to properly develop or resolve them.  I don't think Harry's storyline was well-handled either.  When he was bumped on the head, he seemed way happier & unlike himself from even the beginning of the Spider-man 1.  Then he got his memory back & took such joy in messing with Peter (sidenote: MJ knows Peter is Spider-man, so why does she just roll over & do what Harry says, instead of telling Pete?).  When Emo-Spidey beat the crap out of him and gave him some straight-talk, he deserved it.  He understandably turns Pete's request for help down, what with the arse-kicking, daddy-issues and the disfigurement, but then his freakin' butler tells him the same thing Pete's been saying for 2 movies, and he just is Pete's best friend again, willing to sacrifice himself for Peter?  I don't buy it.

Too many characters: this is somewhat related to too many villains, but then Gwen Stacey & Capt. Stacey were both added, but were given almost nothing to do.  I think Capt. Stacey, played by James Cromwell of all people, had one or two lines, maximum.  Then there was Harry's weird butler coming out of nowhere as Exposition Man, as mentioned before, & Stan Lee's increasingly-obnoxious cameo.
[/spoiler]

Despite the above problems I have with the movie, I still enjoyed it.  It was better than X-Men 3 or Blade 3, but it's definitely in the same league as them, and quite a step-down from the awesome Spider-man 2.  Marvel's not having a lot of luck with 3rd entries in their franchises so far.

[BatWing]

its even better then fantastic four!

[Jakew]

Sorry, this is really petty ... but did Tobey Maguire look a little chunky in this movie? Maybe it was just time and gravity, but I thought he had a bit of double chin going on ... didn't he, Topher Grace, Sandman guy and James Franco have to get in shape for this film?

[BatWing]

i did notice that too when he was walkin "cool"

[JeyNyce]

I wanted to see the movie, but I couldn't because of family duties.  From what I'm hearing I'm getting mix reviews, but this one bothers me the most:

http://www.pcgamer.com/archives/2007/05/spider-man_3_ki.html

Is the Veede right about this?

[bearded]

as i mentioned before, parker is very weepy.  but when i go into a theater to see a comics movie, i enter a state of euphoria.  and that was the only thing that really distracted me.

[The Pwime]

Venom looked so cool, but I really, really hate how they included him.  Raimi didn't want to do Venom to begin with, and as a result he basically half-assed it.  Venom honestly should have had a movie of his own.  spider-man 3 could have been more focused on Harry and Sandman, with peter getting the suit halfway through the film perhaps, and then a spider-man 4 could have dealt with Peter's separation and Brock's bonding with it.  They just didn't develop Venom enough.  Brock gets the symbiote, and a few scenes later he magically knows how to swing perfectly on webs and create massive nets.  I mean, if the symbiote granted Brock this knowledge from its stint with Spidey, they could have at least shown him figuring it out.

Bah.  And they couldn't just "defeat" Venom, they had to actually kill him and the symbiote to prevent any further appearances by Venom.

[bearded]

Bah.  And they couldn't just "defeat" Venom, they had to actually kill him and the symbiote to prevent any further appearances by Venom.

i do have to agree with that.  harry, maybe dead, probably not.  just healing.  got the goblin gas to do that.  but you can see brock's skeleton in the explosion.
i suppose there might be more of the symbiote floating around tho.

[XStream]

Saw Spider-Man 3 last night, and I loved it.  I hadn't read much online about how Raimi felt about Venom, but I can totally see how he was reluctant to use Venom in this movie.  I enjoyed Venom.  I thought Topher was a good anti-Peter, and I was extremely relieved that "Venom" didn't look ridiculous.  However, I agree that the Venom storyline could have been a whole different movie.  My one complaint was this, "They have got to STOP killing off the villians at the end of the movie!"  I think X-Men has been the only movie that has kept the super-villian alive to be used later (Although I am not sure if Doom died in the FF movie or not...Let's hope so).

Definately a good movie.  I liked it better than the first two. 

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

(Although I am not sure if Doom died in the FF movie or not...Let's hope so).

Nope, Doom is back, in a more traditional style, in the second movie, trying to steal the Surfer's powers.

[BatWing]

did anyone get free spider man comics at the theatres?
i did!

[Pyroclasm]

Saw Spider-man 3.  Was not disappointed in the least.  It was fantastic. I don't understand where the bitterness is coming from.  Most of our group thought it was as good, if not better, than the 2 previous installments.  If you'd like you can read The Movie Boy's Review: 3.5 of 4 stars.

[Jakew]

re: killing Venom. I thought the fact that Peter gave Dr Connors a piece of the symbiote to do ... well, absolutely nothing with ("it makes its host more aggressive" no sh it!) kept the door open for a Venom/Carnage appearance in future films.