Digitally Disillusioned

One of my favorite parts of the Spiderman franchise is Sam Raimi. I’m a longtime fan of his, and I was so happy to see him finally get some big-name, high budget Hollywood work. And for the first two films he really earned his paycheque, creating exciting popcorn-munchers that were a fun way to blow an afternoon. Sam Raimi makes fun movies. More people in Hollywood need to do that.

So I’m feeling really let down by Spiderman 3 which is a confused, misguided, and insultingly stupid third chapter in the Spiderman franchise. Spoilers ahead.

I’m not sure what was going on while the script for this movie was being drafted, but it feels incoherent. Like seventeen people each wrote a scene and someone just copied and pasted them together. Only three people have actual script credits: Sam Raimi, brother Ivan Raimi, and Alvin Sargent - scribe of utterly forgettable Richard Gere thriller Unfaithful. So I’m not sure where we can rest the blame for this one.

There is only one real problem with Spiderman 3 but it is endemic to the entire film: from scene to scene the characters are simply not the same people, let alone the same characters from the earlier movies. This creates the effect of characters who behave like idiots constantly through the film, wandering through a narrative which, in bits and pieces, isn’t really that bad. But we don’t watch movies in bits and pieces, at least not unless they are porn, so taken as a whole Spiderman 3 comes off like a trainwreck.

The relationship between Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) fails completely at having any chemistry whatsoever. Peter wants to propose to MJ, which does nothing constructive for the plot aside from giving the lovely Rosemary Harris some screen time as the ever-endearing May Parker. The trouble between MJ and Peter is a big subplot for the film, but it is made laughably bad by Peters painful ignorance. He probably doesn’t even know what her favorite colour or food is given his behaviour in this fim, and he wants to marry her? This total absence of empathy does nothing but make you wonder if Peter Parker is scripted to be developmentally disabled, as there is no way a couple could be communicating on this level and have the man feel that it would be appropriate to propose. Sure he is a nerd, but this goes well beyond that level of social clumsiness.

Of course MJ reciprocates the stupidity by deliberately keeping huge secrets from Peter. One of the plot points is how Peter is self-obsessed and prevents MJ from sharing her angst, but she really does nothing to assert herself, and instead the scene spends more time with the hilarious Bruce Campbell as the odd French maitré d rather than construct a conversation any two romantically involved people would ever have. While Bruce is probably the best thing in the film, the scene is woefully inadequate to drive the emotional angst that is the crux of this whole “battle within” subplot.

Harry Osborn (James Franco) arrives in the film filled with the wrath of a lost father and the mania of chemically induced bioengineered strength, as solely explained in Spiderman 1. The presumption is that you’ve seen the first two films, which is perhaps fair, but is also one of the canonical signs of a bad sequel: if it doesn’t make any sense on its own, it is probably (but not definitely) a bad movie. After one action sequence Harry is stricken with “short term memory loss” which means a) he will act like he is kind of drunk for the next hour, and b) he has forgotten everything we’ve ever seen happen in a Spiderman movie. I would suspect that symptomatically this is more indicative of severe brain trauma that would have him under close observation of a neurologist, but that would interfere with the plot, not to mention Francos hammy acting.

We meet Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) as the girl he is interested in is being attacked by a crane gone wild. I think we all would have preferred a crane being attacked by some Girls Gone Wild, but who wouldn’t? He is a freelance photographer trying to edge in on Parkers gig at the Daily Bugle and is devotedly snapping photographs as the girl he presumably loves is dangling from a ruined 40th story. What we note here is that Brock/Grace displays not one iota of concern regarding this situation and takes the opportunity instead to introduce himself to the damsel in distress’ father, the police chief Captain Stacey (James Cromwell). You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Aforementioned damsel is Gwen Stacey, played excellently by the lovely and frequently underused Bryce Dallas Howard. Being of course obligatory, Spiderman saves her from the villainous crane and the assorted debris one gets when a crane attacks a building, but rather that wrap up the crane scenario the movie cuts away once Gwen is saved. For all we know that damn crane is still going wild.

James Cromwell turns up again later in what must be the most spectacularly inappropriate meeting ever conducted between Police Chief and a widow of a murder victim.

At an excruciating two hours and thirty five minutes a lot of other stuff happens, so its time to go into point form.

• Parker find out some evil extraterrestrial ectoplasm followed him home from a make out session with MJ, and bonds with it to become “black” Spiderman. This makes him act like Jim Carrey in the Mask in a scene that should have inspired someone, somewhere to second guess this script.
• Eddie Brock takes pictures of this Spiderman in front of a bank the Sandman (we’ll get to him later) has just robbed, but Spidey destroys his camera. Despite the fact that flash based digital storage would probably survive the camera getting smashed, Brock turns in photoshopped images of “black” Spidey to impress J. Jonah Jameson who had asked for pictures of Spiderman being a bad, bad man. These images are published in the Bugle and we see 30 seconds of the city turning against Spiderman, with not a single soul questioning this new black getup. Is it even Spiderman? Nobody asks the obvious question because the script doesn’t let them.
• But its wrapped up within the minute. Was, you may wonder, the fraud exposed by someone from the bank reviewing the security tapes to show that Spiderman never even entered the bank? Oh, no! Of course not. Instead Jim-Carrey-as-the-Mask Parker exposes the fraud using his super new cockiness (and presumably 1337 photoshop skills), and Brock is disgraced and ruined. The public is overjoyed that Spiderman is not evil anymore.
• Eddie Brock, disgraced and ruined, turns to Jesus to ask for revenge WHICH JUST HAPPENS to be in the church Peter Parker is currently waging war with the alien ectoplasm in (don’t you dare call it a symbiote, that would imply it actually has some character). Of course earlier in the film Parker could take off the alien ectoplasm suit with no problems. But no, not now, thats not climactic. The ectoplasm falls on Brock who then, without ever establishing an identity as a villain, rushes straight into the final showdown picking up the Sandman (really, we will get to him) on the way. No, we don’t know why Brock now has razor sharp fangs.
• The final showdown features throngs of ogling city goers standing no more than 100 yards from a homicidal 10 story tall giant of sand. I swear if you look hard enough you’ll find hot dog vendors feeding a hungry crowd. I think screaming and running would have been closer to plausible.
• The news team in this film is the worst acting I’ve seen this year.
• The final showdown is abruptly interrupted for a lame joke where a kid fleeces Jameson for a cheap-o 35mm camera.

So, what about the Sandman? Just like Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever, Thomas Haden Church has three names in his screen credit. Also, they are both ridiculously underused but masterfully performed ancillary villains. At the end of the movie there isn’t even a resolution of the Sandman plot aside from Parkers saccharine absolution, and Sandman literally just blows off screen free and clear.
There are two kinds of bad film: films that involve no talent, and films that involve people being lazy. The first kind is actually moderately entertaining in its own sort of “look at how eager they are” way. The second kind are the sort of film you just can’t watch, the sort of film that makes you mad at the people that made it - or, if you like the people involved like I do, feel bad for the people involved. You’ll go out of the theatre thinking of the 100 ways you could have made that film better just by sitting in on the process.

And that is exactly the kind of film Spiderman 3 is. What a shame.