Saw it last night at a press screening, I'm not a comic book reader, possibly never read a Spiderman Comic in my life, loved the first movie...thought the 2nd was great too....the 3rd?....
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Guys, it's average. To say the best, it's mediocre at worst. There's just WAY to many characters, and the problem with that is you're forced into "intercutting" between stories between all these new elements, and while that CAN work, because of SO MANY new additions and little to no time spent on Sandmans motives towards wanting Spidey dead (it's like, he has 1 fight with him...and somehow the connection is made that to get his daughter well again, he has to kill Spidey? WTF?)
Spiderman going bad, yup...works just fine. He ends up "killing" two characters, but obviously as we're 3/4 of the way through this movie, we not only know they're BOTH not dead, we don't care enough about 1 of them for it to matter. Plus we've seen the trailers...
The irony is, when he "comes back" from being bad, he essentially causes someone elses death. I mean, for all his intents on avenging "uncle ben" in this film, he certainly does more harm than good...I guess thats the whole "power with responsibility thing"
The Good bits?
The Dancing scene is great, not NEARLY as bad as it was made out to be, it works really well...the Harry/Peter feud at the start, the whole set up...brilliant, and well excecuted...not quite the resolution near the end, the tacked on Butler-saves-the-day-minor-character-exposition moment seems SOOO un thought out and was elicited a "groan" from the the entire (full) audience. I can't see people loving this film like the last 2 to be honest.
Sandman's "Birth" (the one and only great CG moment of the movie) just looked fantastic. Pitty you just didn't care about the character...nice CG and nice music (get to that in a moment) and although there were no words spoken, and the guy had no facial features....you just felt his confusement and "sadness" and what had happened. Those pesky molecular funky...machine things in the middle of a "swamp?!!" however....odd
The Bad Bits?
Music, heinous. Can't begin to tell you how horrid the score is. No emotion, just Danny Elfmans "theme" over and over again...sounds like the same 15mins of score from the last movie were just cut in here and there...most of the dramatic moments were actually enhanced by silence, which was a nice touch...but the sore was shit. Can't remember who composed it. Utterly forgettable. Worse than the overblown X3 score
Venom. Character arc, was soooo rushed it was insane....the whole premise between the black goo stuff and finding it's way to Peters house was so ridiculous...it"was almost comical. Then the whole Bell Tower sequence just comes out of nowhere...just really odd pacing with all these action scenes intercut inbetween the GREAT love story and the Harry/Peter story...Eddie Brock, was great...Topher nailed it, pretty much out-acted Tobey off the screen, but the Venom schtick, waste of time...and I would've rather had more Sandman motive...
Sandman is no Joker, no Doc Ock and certainly no worthy opponent for Spiderman. At one point in the movie Spiderman/Peter does the 'look slightly to the left of the camera and wink in his eye and say...' "Where do all these guys COME from?" cue NO audience reaction and groaning....as we KNOW it's a comic book movie, but thanks Spiderman for reminding us of the ridiculous premise of Sandman. His motives are odd, the whole subplot with his kid just DOESN'T make sense as Spiderman ISN'T stopping him from saving his daughters life, he IS stopping him from killing people and robbing banks for sure...but that just doesn't work, the fact he waits RIGHT until the last dying moments of the movie (after Peter has already confronted him about Uncle Ben) to tell him oh yeah, by the way...was an accident...sorry mate....was just ridiculous...if I had "accidently" killed someone, I'd tell them straight up...especially if they had super powers?!!
So yeah, it's Return of the Jedi, Batman Forever and Back to the Future 3 for Spiderman fans, I won't see it again. If I'd paid to see it, I'd be very dissappointed. I can't see comic book fans loving this at all, especially if they have a vested interest in Sandman...not so much Venom, as he's utterly forgettable and bites it so quick (I guess?) save CG costs kinda made the whole "black goo is unstoppable and makes Peter go bad" thing ridiculous....
Harry/Peter storyline was the standout, the love story was outstanding....the first hour of the movie right up until the whole "key to the city" crap was really good stuff...but yeah, this is definatly "Batman Forever" for the Spiderman movies...it's hollow, too many characters and of all the options they had to create some more motive and drama for Spiderman, they took the ONE half-decent duel-motived character we've had for 3 films in Harry Osbourne, and have him killed off by some black CG 15minute waste-a-thon of a character who's Yin to Peters Yang as a photographer was WAY more interesting than what ILM can bash out in between "pirates" flicks.
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Rating? 5.5/10
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