Better Review Granted

Grandma: Shut up girl. You just think you so smart cos you can read.

"CB4"

Duggle is one Blogger I have a lot of time for. Since he said my review of Spider-Man 3 in the previous post was a little lacking, I thought I would indulge him and give me greater review here. That, and poker wise all I have to talk about it more bad beats so this is better.

For those of you who haven't seen the movie, I'm probably going to be giving most of it away below. So please don't read any further, and go download the movie from some file sharing site. Then come back and read and you'll see how much you agree.

Fortunately, I am not 100% up to date on the exact happenings of the comic book around this time in Peter's life, so the inconsistencies there are of no bother to me. I know they made some, but in the end they have to as this is a different medium and it is required for most of the time. As long as they don't change the characters too much – like say changing a giant robot looking planet eating alien into a cloud – then I'm not going to be one to complain.

In my last post I made reference to the "get out of gaol free cards" used in the movie (note: gaol is how we spell jail in Australia). There was two glaring examples of this in the movie:

1 – When Harry Osborn is knocked unconscious, and he remembers nothing of the past few weeks…or years as it happens. Pretty fucking convenient there. He remembers that he is no longer with Mary Jane, but forgot that his dad is dead. Oh, and the whole "must kill Peter" thing is forgotten. Very convenient.

2 – Again with Harry Osborn, when he refuses to join Spidey against Venom and Sandman, and then his Butler pipes up with the knowledge that his father was killed his own glider, definitely. Ok, where the hell has he been all these years with this info? And what, is he a former CSI agent or something, an expert on wounds that can tell instantly what caused the cuts – and how? Pretty easy way to switch Harry's mind around.

More than anything else, these were the two points of the script I had the most problem with. It looked like a very lazy way to get the script from one point to another.

The action sequences for the most of it are pretty awesome, and in the end that is what this movie is all about. The disappointing this is that wasn't what the other two movies were solely about. They had more, and this one didn't.

I thought James Franco was probably the strongest performance of the main actors in the first two movies. Maybe this stood out a bit more for me because I am not a fan of Tobey Maguire (though he was perfect in the first) or Kirsten Dunst (she still sucks). But when he adopted the "New Goblin" outfit, he looked like a Teen Titan or something. He just didn't have the look of a fully grown super hero like the original Green Goblin. Ok, so his character is obviously younger, but he is supposed to be competing against the others who gave off a stronger impression. Not his fault as much as a fault in the costume I guess, or just the decision to have him as "The New Goblin". Either way, it was detrimental to the overall score of the movie for me.

Peter Parker trying to be cool went on for far too long, and was annoying more than it was funny, or anything else. Although when he asked the skinny Russian girl to go make some cookies with nuts in them, that was a better execution of the new Peter Parker.

The death scene for Harry was a little bit corny, though this does reflect slightly the comic book version of this scene (dialogue wise anyway). I was expecting it to freeze and then run some cheesy theme music like a 80's family TV show, where everyone remains best friends no matter that they took some radioactive gas and tried to use thermo nuclear gadgets to get you killed.

Kirsten Dunst sucks, did I mention that already? Bryce Dallas Howard did ok, though there were some scenes where if it was snowing there would have been no way to see her. By the way, did her father and boyfriend seem a little too comfortable watching her falling to her death? Even excited perhaps?

Finally, the Sandman. Such a shame, because I am a fan of Thomas Haden Church, but he was a bit stiff in this one. In his finale, he just sorts of explains himself to Spider-Man, all is forgiven and then he flies away. Couldn't he have explained all this to our web slinging hero earlier and not destroyed half the city – which was taking his eyes of his true goal being money for his daughter's illness. And Spidey forgives him apparently, and lets him fly off into the moonlight – to keep on robbing places I guess? Even though now Spidey knows he really means well, hasn't he already smacked a few cops around and maybe has a court date to look forward to? You'd think he would get at least community service or a sentence equal to Paris Hilton.

So yeah, the original 2 had similar plot holes and problems, but none of them were as glaring obvious as the ones in the third installment. In the end, the action scenes are good and I'm sure it will shift plenty of toys, but disappointment was the first thing on our minds when we walked out of the movie theater. That's not good.