Emo Spidey

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2007)

The writing sucked. C'mon Sam Raimi, give the damned screenplay and writing to someone else. You are an excellent director, but your writing sucks. Where was venom? WHY DIDN'T HE TALK LIKE VENOM? Venom had a bit part, when in the comic he was central. I guess cramming 2 and a half villains ("New" Goblin doesn't count as a whole villain of course) in a feature-length film would require a bit of choppiness to the flow, which was what happened. A sad event to a character here, anger there.
And what was with spidey in the symbiote suit? He looked like an emo kid. Ahh... isn't darkness and anger metal's realm? I may be nit-piking but emo kids usually spend a lot of the time tear-dropping, and not kicking all sorts of ass and being belligerent. Am I really that out of touch with kids these days? *sigh*
By the way, Tobey McGuire did a fantastic job of acting out the anger and in-your-face attitude that comes with Evil Spidey. Well played, indeed. Whoever painted his face up and combed his hair and picked out his clothes should be shot. Repeatedly.
I guess I'm just disappointed that the movie doesn't capture that same feeling of the human condition the first one did, and to a lesser extent, the second. I remember having feelings like parker did all the time when I was younger, dealing with all this crap at once.
Now it appears that on top of all that he has an alien suit and a sandman to deal with. And, of course, what would a Spider-Man Movie be without a bunch of Mary Jane drama. What a load.
The effects were pretty decent, I had the pleasure of not watching it in the theater (this strips movies of their "shock" value of the effects). Without 200 decibel, bass-heavy sounds you can really pay attention to the overall feel of the effects. Hooray for higher poly counts. Great. Whatever. The sand looks like sand. And, in many places, moves a lot like it. Whoopity-doo. Venom's spaztic and evil movements were pretty neat in my opinion, I'd like to attribute that to art directors and story board artists, and Todd McFarlane of course.
Overall, comic book movies are reverting to the bland, cheesy, boring, cardboard crap the 80s vomited forth. Where's Dolph Lundgren? I can't wait for Transformers from Michael Bay, it might just be the knife in the coffin that sends the comic book movies back into hibernation just as the punishers and supermans did in the 80s.
Christopher Nolan, we need you now!