What Went Wrong?Less is more.
Spiderman 3 could have realistically been spun into three separate films. Every new character introduced here was radically underdeveloped and surprisingly contradictory. In the films opening scenes, Marko assures his wife and child that he’s a “good person.” A notion the audience actually believes until Marko gladly succumbs to the desire to murder Peter Parker. Why not delve into the heartache of his daughter’s sickness to help humanize a monster?
Eddie Brock – sleazy wimp or psychotic killer? Brock’s transformation into super-villain is jarring, and the religious overtones are downright insulting. Would losing one’s job really drive a man to pure evil?
Why has Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s relationship devolved into a non-communitive nightmare? What happened to MJ’s love struck eyes realizing that her everyday hero and superhero were one in the same? Throughout the film the couple seems as if they’ve been dating for a few weeks. Why the sudden change in MJ’s career ambitions. Why break Peter’s character arch from the second film? Having redeemed himself from selfishness in
Spiderman 2, Peter Parker is no longer a selfless hero, but again, a bit of a selfish jerk.
What was Gwen Stacy’s purpose? Stacy’s character was seemingly introduced to advance any area of the plot that didn’t advance logically on it’s own. And for comic book fans, Stacy’s inclusion could be construed as downright confusing. (In the comics, Gwen Stacy was Peter Parker’s first true love and friend of Mary Jane. An encounter with the Green Goblin leaves Stacy dead).
Why have all of the film’s tertiary characters (J.J. Jameson, Betty Brant, etc.) been reduced to overt and childish slapstick reminiscent of Jar-Jar Binks? The subtle wit of the earlier films has been replaced with cheap laughs mixed with uncomfortable melodrama.
Harry Osborn (James Franco) offers the only real character development, as both a maniacal villain and forgetful goofball (the amnesiac Osborn resembles Matthew Broderick’s rendition of Ferris Bueller feigning sickness to his parents). Alas, Osborn’s character pulls an inexplicable one-eighty at the end of the film in laughable, campy style.
Spiderman 3 often plays out more like Robert Rodriguez’s
Planet Terror, ripe with camp, plot deficiencies, and what feels like several missing reels. However, Rodriguez’s grind house salute was cheap, intentional, and without the expectations of a powerhouse superhero franchise. What happened here – that’s a different story entirely.
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