Spiderman 3 Better Than Amazing

[Trekker4747]

Spider-Man 3 terrible for two reasons (at least): Dancing Emo/KD Lang Spidey, and the Exposition News Channel setting up the third act. There's many, many more reasons but those or the two bigger ones, for me.

And really, I think it retroactively makes the others movies not "as good" as they were when they came out because it sort of sums up the tone of the Rami movies.

TASM was far from "perfect" and certainly has its own flaws but I think I liked the tone and how they treated the characters more, better fits in the current climate of how comic-book movies are. A bit more seriously than action scenes and villain/hero confrontation scenes that look like they were taken from a Power Rangers movies.

[DalekJim]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Spider-Man 3 terrible for two reasons (at least): Dancing Emo/KD Lang Spidey, and the Exposition News Channel setting up the third act. There's many, many more reasons but those or the two bigger ones, for me.

Those strike me as fairly minor issues compared to the laughably atrocious Harry Osborn amnesia plotline, the fact Green Goblin II is in fact aimed at an extreme sports demographic and now called "NuGoblin", Toby and Kirsten's beyond awful performances, the incomprehensible unnecessary new backstory to Uncle Ben's murder, the "dark" symbiote from the comics now turning Peter in to Austin Powers, Harry's butler's random revelation he'd been holding back for no reason and of course, Venom being built up to for the whole movie only to be killed after 5 minutes. Where he was almost always unmasked because that's how people roll in the Raimi films.

None of the aforementioned storylines fit together in any way. It's a film comprised of utterly idiotic elements clashing together and somehow making eachother more idiotic. Calling Spider-Man 3 "better than amazing" has caused Sergei Eisenstein, Ingmar Bergman, Orson Welles, John Ford and Jean Renoir to spin in their graves so fast, they're now tunneling through the Earth's crust.

[Trekker4747]

DalekJim wrote:

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Those strike me as fairly minor issues compared to the laughably atrocious Harry Osborn amnesia plotline, the fact Green Goblin II is in fact aimed at an extreme sports demographic and now called "NuGoblin", Toby and Kirsten's beyond awful performances, the incomprehensible unnecessary new backstory to Uncle Ben's murder, the "dark" symbiote from the comics now turning Peter in to Austin Powers, Harry's butler's random revelation he'd been holding back for no reason and of course, Venom being built up to for the whole movie only to be killed after 5 minutes. Where he was almost always unmasked because that's how people roll in the Raimi films.

None of the aforementioned storylines fit together in any way. It's a film comprised of utterly idiotic elements clashing together and somehow making eachother more idiotic. Calling Spider-Man 3 "better than amazing" has caused Sergei Eisenstein, Ingmar Bergman, Orson Welles, John Ford and Jean Renoir to spin in their graves so fast, they're now tunneling through the Earth's crust.

Oh, believe me, those are all on my mind. Most certainly. Ugh, I'm roll my eyes and just thinking about all of those things. There's just a lot of terrible, terrible, things in those movies. But I just hated that the climax of the movie didn't come from a progression of events throughout the move it all happened off camera and we're told the details through the most conveniently informative news cast in the history of the universe. And the actions of Spidey on the symbiont suit is just... Ugh. That movie is loaded with problems.

Eddie Brock goes into a Catholic Church and prays to God to kill Peter Parker?! Really?! Does he not know how God works?!

[Christopher]

DalekJim wrote:

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Those strike me as fairly minor issues compared to the laughably atrocious Harry Osborn amnesia plotline...

That plotline actually came directly from the comics. The problem is that in the comics, it played out over years, while here they felt the need to cram it into half an hour. It goes to show that sometimes being too faithful to the comics is a mistake in a feature film.

Where he was almost always unmasked because that's how people roll in the Raimi films.

In live-action films in general. Batman literally tore his own mask off at the climax of Batman Returns, even though there was a bad guy standing right there watching. RoboCop lost his helmet at the end of act 2 and spent the rest of the film bare-faced. Iron Man had his helmet knocked off in his climactic fight with Iron Monger. Aragorn and Legolas fought bare-faced in the LOTR movies while everyone around them had the sense to wear helmets -- ditto Mal and Zoey in the opening scenes of the Firefly pilot. Sylvester Stallone's Judge Dredd spent most of his movie barefaced even though the comics character never removed his helmet on-panel. (The recent Karl Urban Dredd is a rare exception to the norm.) And so on.

Calling Spider-Man 3 "better than amazing"...

No, the thread title means "better than Amazing," i.e. better than the film entitled The Amazing Spider-Man.

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Eddie Brock goes into a Catholic Church and prays to God to kill Peter Parker?! Really?! Does he not know how God works?!

A lot of people don't. Just recently, Kansas's House Speaker e-mailed his Republican colleagues with an exhortation to, essentially, pray for President Obama's death. And he's far from the first.

[trekkiebaggio]

Tosk wrote:

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ASM also seems to take shortcuts with certain elements, almost as if to say, "C'mon, you saw the first three, you already know the deal with this so why do we have to bother?"

Pretty much. It seemed like they had a checklist to complete in the first movie so they could get to the second movie.

[Christopher]

^Good grief. Some people are complaining that the movie copied too much from the previous films, and others are complaining that it tried too hard not to cover the same ground. Just goes to show, no matter what you do, you won't please everyone.

[DalekJim]

Christopher wrote:

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^Good grief. Some people are complaining that the movie copied too much from the previous films, and others are complaining that it tried too hard not to cover the same ground. Just goes to show, no matter what you do, you won't please everyone.

Why can't all the people I talk to on my computer like the same Spider-Man movie that I do?

It's really upsetting.

[The Lensman]

The best thing about Amazing is that it gave us these.





Seriously, that stuttering shit was beyond annoying.





Amazing seemed more like it was based on the Ultimate version, while the original films felt closer to the original comics. At any rate, at least Spider-Man 3 only had Emo Pete for a bit in the film, while Amazing had Emo Pete for the whole movie.

And seriously, no one was like "WTF?! How did this goal post just get bent? What the hell hit it?" No one was in anyway fazed by that?

[Trekker4747]

I would hardly call Peter's behavior in the TAS as "emo", Peter gets called that in EM3 more over his look than anything else, anyway.

[Christopher]

The Lensman wrote:

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Amazing seemed more like it was based on the Ultimate version, while the original films felt closer to the original comics.

All the Marvel films of recent years, including Raimi's, have drawn on the Ultimate universe to some extent, particularly when it comes to elements of the originals that are somewhat dated. Both Spidey film series have replaced radioactive spiders with genetically engineered spiders, for instance.

I don't think either version is closer to the original comics. I think they both draw on different aspects. Raimi's version was closer in things like J. Jonah Jameson and the Bugle, the use of wrestling in the origin story, the Norman/Harry Osborn story arc, and the like. But there are a lot of things from the comics that were missing in Raimi's version but present in Webb's. In Raimi's version, Spidey very rarely spoke or made wisecracks while in costume, which I always found to be a major failing. In Webb's version, Spidey's a nonstop wisecracker just the way he should be. Raimi's version had the revisionist (and in my view quite silly) organic webshooters, while Webb's goes back to the classic mechanical webshooters, which are important because they highlight Peter's intelligence and inventiveness as a facet of his crimefighting. Raimi skipped over Gwen Stacy altogether for two films and retconned MJ into his first crush, and when Gwen finally did appear, she was little more than a plot device, a disservice to this deeply important part of the Spider-Man mythos. But Webb is handling Gwen in a way that's much truer to the comics and serves the character far better. Raimi barely used Flash Thompson at all, but Webb's film distilled Flash's growth in the comics from Peter's bully to his friend.

So no, it is not true that Raimi's version was closer to the comics than Webb's in any absolute sense. There are some ways Raimi's version is closer, and there are other ways that Webb's version is closer. I liked Raimi's films, but there are things that I think they got wrong, and I was very glad to see Webb get those things right.

[Servo]

Raimi incorporated elements from both the 616 and Ultimate comic universes, so in essence his films are very faithful to the books - just two different sets of books.

[kirk55555]

I liked all 3 of the Spider-Man movies, even 3. I hate Amazing, a lot. Andrew Garfield is one of the worst actors I've ever seen in a major movie (his reaction during the uncle ben death scene was so bad I was wondering how he got hired in the first place) and the horrible story/script didn't help. I'll take McGire dancing over Garfield being more wooden than a tree any day. Also, while Emma Stone was pretty much the only kind of ok actor (even though her part was still written horribly) I actually liked Dunst as MJ, and not even a half way decent actor could make Stacy anything more than annoying. The whole story of Amazing was just horrible. It is one of the worst superhero movies I've ever seen. I may hate The dark Knight more, but Amazing is just bad. Catwoman is better than Amazing, and Catwoman is horrible.

[Gaith]

Yeah, the goal post gag was OTT (borrowed from and early Smallville!) and should've been cut. But that's a minor moment in a movie full of much better ones.

Trekker4747 wrote:

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And really, I think it retroactively makes the others movies not "as good" as they were when they came out because it sort of sums up the tone of the Rami movies.

I don't agree that any movie can affect the quality of another one, but I do think you're on to a key point here , namely that SM3 has the same weaknesses of the first two: trite dialogue, clunky plotting (especially vis-a-vis villains), a thoroughly old-fashioned tone that aims for timeless charm but often feels twee and stale, a wooden, personality-free MJ, a supporting character (Harry) who's almost always more interesting than our hero, and a rather damp lead performance...

But what it didn't have was the novelty and post-9/11 goodwill of the first movie, or the compelling character arcs, superior script, engaging villain and memorable action of the second one.

As for the OP's comparison, ASM has better performances, more interesting characters, a more exciting story, more nuances and a more consistent tone than SM3. It's definitely the superior picture.

[Christopher]

Wow, a lot of difference of opinion here. Just goes to show that there's no objective standard of what's good or bad. And that is why it's good to have different interpretations of a beloved character like Spider-Man or Batman or Sherlock Holmes or whoever. That way, someone who doesn't like one version might love another -- and some of us are lucky enough to like both.

[Fist McStrongpunch]

I vastly prefer Andrew Garfield to Tobey Maguire's dopey, morose Peter Parker, but that's pretty much the only thing ASM has going for it.