Spoilers Spider-man 3(take 2) Anticipation thread

So what are people planning on doing between the Official Premiere on Monday and whenever you get to see the film for yourselves? Thankfully I live somewhere where it opens on Wednesday so I'm planning on staying offline for a day and a half.
 
So what are people planning on doing between the Official Premiere on Monday and whenever you get to see the film for yourselves? Thankfully I live somewhere where it opens on Wednesday so I'm planning on staying offline for a day and a half.
I'm doing a marathon of the Raimi, Webb, and Watts films. I watched the first Raimi last night (for the first time since its initial release) and...well, let's just say my enjoyment of it has decidedly not improved. Only enjoyable because of Simmons and Dafoe chewing up the scenery...and Octavia Spencer's pre-fame cameo! :eek:
 
I'm doing a marathon of the Raimi, Webb, and Watts films. I watched the first Raimi last night (for the first time since its initial release) and...well, let's just say my enjoyment of it has decidedly not improved. Only enjoyable because of Simmons and Dafoe chewing up the scenery...and Octavia Spencer's pre-fame cameo! :eek:
I'm doing the same, and watched the first Raimi film this evening, which I don't believe I'd seen since the opening night in 2002. I was surprised to find my DVD case had an EB Games pre-owned barcode sticker; I didn't even buy it new, I must've bought it at work (I managed an EB Games store in Cary, North Carolina at the time the DVD came out).

I'm sure sure if Peter Parker was written as unsympathetic or if I was reading Tobey Maguire's documented dickishness into the role, but I really didn't like Peter here. I found him self-pitying and generally unpleasant. Maguire was playing a 17-18-year-old kid, close to a decade younger than he was, and maybe he was pitching his performance at being the "nice guy" high school kid who can't see that he's really the asshole, because that's how Peter Parker came across to me. If he hadn't been bitten by a genetically engineered Spider, it wasn't hard to imagine that this Peter would grow up to become a MAGA-hat wearing incel.

I didn't remember much about the film except the first half hour in broad strokes. I am struggling to articulate anything about the plot, because very little of it made any sense. I don't understand the motivations of Norman or the Green Goblin (who are effectively different characters), what they want, and how what they do will accomplish any conceivable end. I was struck by how reactive Peter was as a hero; he doesn't do anything to propel the plot forward, and he only defeats the Green Goblin because the Green Goblin keeps drawing him out and attacking him.

The fight scenes at the end -- the bridge and the park -- were visually incomprehensible to me, and the CGI of Spider-Man and the Green Goblin didn't convince at all.

In light of today's student debt crisis due to high school guidance counselors pushing Generation X onwards into college as the road to the middle class, a movie apparently set in 2002 having high school students talk about their futures without college (as Peter and MJ do at the trash cans) was a WTF moment for me.

Next up for me, Spider-Man 2.1, the extended cut to Spider-Man 2, which I have not previously seen. (Spider-Man 2 I've seen three times.)
 
Your far more detailed review of the film pretty much aligns with how I felt, particularly regarding Maguire's take on Peter. UGH.

I didn't know there was an extended cut of Spider-Man 2. I watched the theatrical cut tonight (I didn't see anything I didn't recognize except maybe one very weird moment with JJJ)...and honestly, I'm still not impressed. Sure, Simmons and Molina chewed the scenery wonderfully, but my gods, Maguire and Dunst continue to be awful. They really drag the whole thing down. I lost track how many scenes of just the two of them I just fast forwarded through. Would've done the same with the infamous cafe scene if it weren't for the fact I knew what was about to happen.

I found myself being more engaged by all of the cameos of pre-fame or "TV-only" (as it was back then) actors who kept cropping up than I was by the sappy Peter/MJ melodrama: Aasif Mandvi, Daniel Dae Kim, Peter McRobbie, Emily Deschanel, Joel McHale (in full douche mode!), Reed Diamond, Phil LaMarr! John Landis was apparently in the surgery scene but I didn't see him.
 
I went back and forth on Dunst's performance tonight -- was she actually awful or was she very good at playing 17 with all of the inexperience and awkwardness that implies? Or was there nothing on the script page for her to work with? Or was Sam Raimi really poor at drawing out a performance? Because I know Dunst has been capable of much more than this since she was seven. I don't know.
 
Raimi's Spider-man movies looked cool when I was younger but now they look horribly cheesy

"Noble Prize Otto! Nobel Prize!"

The campy closeups of people screaming are cringey

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