Escape to the Movies: You Are Wrong About Spider-Man 3

Crimsonmonkeywar

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And that's my cue that you and I have nothing in common, which is okay. I still like to read reviews of people that have polarizing opinions, but know I know how seriously I can take your opinion when it comes to my own preferences.
 

RJ Dalton

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I dunno, I can buy some of your points. Peter dirty-dancing down the streets I bought for basically the reason you said; the symbiote can't make Peter cool because Peter doesn't know what cool is and the symbiote is an alien. The Jazz club scene was a mess, though. Didn't do what needed to be done for the narrative at that point.
I do think the birth of the Sandman was one of the best sequences of the entire three movies, and the overall approach to the Sandman isn't bad, but the whole "I'm trying to save my daughter" motivation basically gets no satisfying resolution whatsoever because it was only thrown in to make Sandman seem sympathetic and thus no thought was actually put into where that should have gone. That's a really bad writing flaw for any story based medium.
Harry Osborn getting amnesia so that we can remind the audience why Harry was once Peter's friend was a really stupid idea. A better approach would have been to have Harry actually try to forgive Peter after finding out that his father was the Green Goblin. Then you have Mary Jane being worried about Peter's behavior once the symbiote starts to take over, so she goes to Harry for help and Peter, hyped up on the testosterone boost from the symbiote, decides MJ is cheating on him, so he goes and beats up his best friend. That would have been a much better build-up to him becoming like his father. It would have required them to actually do Harry as the second Green Goblin in a fourth film, but that would have been the better approach anyway.

Spider-Man 3 wasn't really a decent but flawed movie. It was a bad movie with several redeeming parts. But it was still better than these Amazing Spider-Man movies, because ASM as a film series has no soul. They are mechanical in writing, design and direction, with none of the little touches that made the first two Spider-Man movies into the enjoyable movies they are (despite their flaws), and that gave SM3 some scenes worth watching.
 

sketch_zeppelin

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FINALLY!!!! AFTER YEARS OF SAYING IT, SOMEBODY THAT MATTERS AGREES WITH ME!!!! Emo Peter, to me, was the best part of that movie. He's a dork and in his minds eye, that is what he thinks cool is. And every time I say that people just look at me like I'm a fool.

Bob you were spot on with this vid and continue to justify my trust in you as a film critic.
 

Silk_Sk

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Thank you moviebob! I was told I was crazy for liking SpiderMan 3 when it came out. Laughed at. I eventually put a lid on that feeling and started agreeing with them but could never truly stop enjoying it. Thank you for justifying that feeling.
 

daibakuha

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Raesvelg said:
ASM-2's reception is so far actually notably better than Spider-Man 3's, of course. And given Bob's penchant for declaring the original Spider-Man films as being better simply because of the dearth of comparable material at the time, the fact that we're now living in The Age of Marvel would tend to undermine his hatred of the ASM films.
It's actually not.

Spider-Man 3 has a 59 on metacritic:

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/spider-man-3

ASM2:

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-amazing-spider-man-2

is sitting on a 53.


RT SM3:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spiderman_3/

Which has a 63% which is actually a fresh rating

ASM2 on the other hand:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_amazing_spider_man_2/

Has a 55%.

Personally I've heard from more than one critic that ASM2 is so bad it's on Batman Forever level. Which is about the most damning thing anyone can say about a comic book film.
 

Eddie the head

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Well I like it more then most people, but I never liked 1 or 2 that much. They where Ok this was a little worse but ehh.
 

soh45400

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You are allowed to like Spider-man 3 and hate the Amazing movies but remember that Amazing is NOT going for the comics, which most people including myself haven't read, but for the excellent Specular Spider Man animated series. That alone makes it much better in my view.
Also same thing with Venom. If he is built up like in Spectacular series then he is actually very interesting.
And if I remember correctly, Peter's father did have a role in making Spider-man and Venom in that series too just like the movies.
And there may also be a generation gap issue with Bob's generation being the old nerds and ours being the new yet Bob expects Peter to be like the ones from his generation. Yes Bob you are getting too old for this.
 

Grace_Omega

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Gotta say, I've seen bits and pieces of the first two of these playing on TV semi-recently and I literally couldn't watch them, they seemed so cheesy and juvenile. I liked them well enough as a kid/teen but as an adult? No thanks.

Now about the "emo Peter Parker" thing. I've heard the same defense that Bob is using from multiple quarters and I think that he is correct- it's pretty clear the intention was a comedy bit where Peter plays out his ludicrous idea of what a cool badass is. I just don't think that really works in context, because we're supposed to (as Bob said) see the black suit as a bad thing and a credible threat. But once we've watched its influence turn Peter Parker into this bizarre, strutting parody of a cool dude it's just not possible to take it, and by extension the movie, seriously any more.
 

Vausch

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I'm with Bob on this, really. I'll defend Spiderman 3 to the death because honestly, I think it works very well. Even the dance scene works for me. That is exactly my reason for why it works, that Peter is a dweeb and doesn't know "cool" because he really isn't. It's like a kid trying to act like an adult. Sure they think they know, but it's hilarious when they try to act grown up and don't know the finer details of it all.
 

RavenTail

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Raesvelg said:
Carbo said:
I hope you realize the only reason Spider-Man 4 got cancelled is because Raimi willingly withdrew from the project due to him not considering it possible to finish the movie when Sony wanted it done, and he hated every iteration of the script that the creative team was shitting out for him.
Bear in mind that Raimi also admitted that he was very disappointed with how Spider-Man 3 turned out, and he's the one who made the film. The critical reception for the third film was mixed at best, which coming off of the first two films very high ratings must have been somewhat nerve-wracking for Raimi.

While we only ever really got Raimi's side of things in that whole affair (beyond a "Raimi withdrew from Spider-Man 4 so it's cancelled" from Sony), he makes a rather telling admission in it: When he withdrew from the project, he told them to "Go ahead with your reboot, which you?ve been planning anyway."

Why would Sony want to reboot if they were satisfied with the reception of the third film?

So in my opinion, yeah, he got the boot. He felt he couldn't make a picture good enough so salvage the mess he'd made of the third film, and as such, it killed the Raimi franchise. He may declare it an amicable split, but it's also not as though Sony said "No no, you take the extra year that you need to make the movie you want" because let's be honest, they wound up taking that extra year anyway in making ASM.


Carbo said:
Being a turd isn't stopping Sony's extended plans to continue the TASM series, even after TASM2's cripplingly mediocre reception. Spider-Man 3 was still the movie that made Sony the most money out of any Spider-Man movie, and the only reason that series died is because Sony were terrible at handling a plan B.
Transformers 2 did about as well as Spider-Man 3, so obviously we can agree that being absolute garbage has little relation to box-office success. Particularly when series are involved.

ASM-2's reception is so far actually notably better than Spider-Man 3's, of course. And given Bob's penchant for declaring the original Spider-Man films as being better simply because of the dearth of comparable material at the time, the fact that we're now living in The Age of Marvel would tend to undermine his hatred of the ASM films.

As it stands, despite what I consider obvious and glaring flaws, I rather like the first two Spider-Man films. Hell, Spider-Man was one of the first three films I bought on DVD back in the day. And I haven't been interested enough in ASM to bother seeing either of them in theaters instead of just waiting for it to show up on Netflix.

But that doesn't change the fact that Spider-Man 3 was terrible, and that Bob is trying way too hard to convince people to share in his Raimi fanboyism.
Did you even watch the video? Like serious, did you? No where during it did Bob say SM3 was good. In fact he says multiple times what a mess it was and while even pointing out the good moments comments that they're not perfect either.
 

JimB

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Ashoten said:
Cognitive dissonance Bob.
You kind of have to explain where the cognitive dissonance is, or else this just comes off like you're saying words you've heard and that you comprehend are not complimentary but that you don't understand.

As for the review itself...okay, fine, I will grant that the movie technically competent. The characters and their actions make sense, the plot is a plot, all that. Its pieces work. My complaint is that they work to make something I don't want. I have an extremely low tolerance for embarrassment, so low that I don't like to watch people on screens doing embarrassing things, and this movie has way too much embarrassment for me to feel comfortable watching it. Between that and Raimi's nauseating love of melodrama, just about the only scene I like is Harry and MJ in the kitchen, which I like because I'm pretty sure it's just the two of them improvving the entire thing and riding on James Franco's charisma.

I know I've argued a lot against fans of the Webb series, but that's mostly been because I think their arguments are bad. If someone had pointed to Spider-Man 3 and said, "I don't care if that movie is technically competent, I think it's boring and would prefer to watch a movie that's less competent but at least entertaining," then I'd have nothing to say because I feel the same way. If nothing else, a bad movie lets me invent my own fun. A boring movie, though...there's nothing I can do with that.

(Oh wait, I forgot the scene of Eddie Brock crying in the church. I also love that scene. Not the whole thing, not the utter bullshit of him deciding it's weird to hear church bells ringing in a church and then developing super vision so he can see Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but watching his face crumble and then shore up again as he tries to contain the pain and the humiliation he's endured is a fine piece of acting, and one I'm glad I've seen.)
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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Spiderman 3 is one of those movies where I'll admit that it's flawed but still think it gets way more hate than it deserves, especially because most of the hatred is leveled squarely at a 5 minute segment of the 2 and a half hour runtime.
 

pandorum

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Movie Bobs' Rami fanboy is showing. The amazing spider man films are more in-line with the the cartoon that was on fox kids from back in the day. Which is unanimously the best cartoon for spider man. TBF the new spider films are so much better.
 

Raesvelg

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daibakuha said:
It's actually not.
There's an interesting divide in both of those cases between reception from critics and reception from the audience.

If you do that, then the numbers flip, drastically. 7.8 user score on MT for ASM2 vs SM3's 6.1, similarly 77% positive vs 51% positive on RT.

I tend to put more weight on audience reactions than critical reactions, given that no matter how shitty a movie is to critics, if the audience enjoys it people will watch it. Hence the existence of the Transformers franchise.
 

bobdole1979

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yeah Spiderman 3 had a really stupid plot and bad characters. Amazing Spiderman 2 had a stupid plot but really amazing characters.
 

coheedswicked

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Dandres said:
Called it, and in 20 years we will be talking about how the ASM's are better than what has come out in the next bunch of Spider reboots. Nostalgia raises the appraisal value of everything.
Idk... everyone still pretty much hates the Shumacher Batman movies. Once the Amazing Spider-man gets to the point of embarrassing itself on par with the "bat nipples" (and it definitely will)... no one will touch Spider-man for 10-15 years then hopefully we'll get a really great Spider-man film. A film that can finally capture all the aspects of the character. What I always loved about Spider-man in the comics is how human he was. He has real-world, relatable problems like girls, money, etc (which ASM completely fails to capture), as well as super-villians to face. And while he faces super vilians he tires to what he thinks a super hero should be: fair, just, using his powers responsibly, like Captain America (or Superman) but often he lets his emotions and the heat of the moment get to him. On multiple occasions he has thrown caution to the wind and has nearly beat some villains to death in the midst of rage (and this wasn't even in the 90's when every hero was doing this, this was in the 60's). Spider-man (imo) was Stan Lee's best written character.
 

Raesvelg

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RavenTail said:
Did you even watch the video? Like serious, did you? No where during it did Bob say SM3 was good. In fact he says multiple times what a mess it was and while even pointing out the good moments comments that they're not perfect either.
Did you even read what I wrote? Like serious, did you? No where during it did I say that Bob said the film was good. What I dispute is his assertion that the film is not bad. And before you try to say that he never said such a thing, from Bob's own mouth and I quote: "In fact, I'd say it's not bad period."
 

daibakuha

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Raesvelg said:
There's an interesting divide in both of those cases between reception from critics and reception from the audience.

If you do that, then the numbers flip, drastically. 7.8 user score on MT for ASM2 vs SM3's 6.1, similarly 77% positive vs 51% positive on RT.

I tend to put more weight on audience reactions than critical reactions, given that no matter how shitty a movie is to critics, if the audience enjoys it people will watch it. Hence the existence of the Transformers franchise.
More people have seen Spider-Man 3 than ASM2. SM3 is also more readily available for consumption. User reviews are meaningless because most people are idiots. Hence the transformers franchise.
 

PH3NOmenon

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I'm glad to finally hear my thoughts on black-suit peter given voice. That scene is exactly what it needed to be. Socially awkward penguin Peter Parker, high on black alien goop, living out his own fantasy and interpretation of being cool.

I always enjoyed black-suit spidey. Not Venom as a character, though the Venom and Carnage art-style is sweet, but the whole addiction hook? That always worked for me.

It's still an irredeemably bad movie though.
 

Something Amyss

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Kumagawa Misogi said:
Also Spiderman in comics has been around for 52 years with Peter Parker being a wuss for less than 20 years of that.
This is part of what really gets me. My dad is a huuuuuuuge Spidey nerd. I mean, he had other comics, but his Spider-Collection was huge by the time I was born, and so on top of reading contemporary 80s Spider-Man, I also got to read a bunch of the classic comics. Nothing quite as vintage as an original Amazing Fantasy 15, but I got to see not only pretty early Spider-Man, but also the evolution of Peter and his alter-ego.

Parker wasn't really a wuss for very long. He was still an insecure, nerdy, kid with problems, but it didn't take long for him to confront his bully to the point he was no longer getting beat up, and then they eventually would become buddies. People complained about Garfield's Peter as a "jock," but by college, he was incredibly fit and made no effort to hide it. And that's decades of comics right there. Well before Venom came on the scene.

Apparently, Raimi was trying to be true to a very few number of comic years, and by that metric, he wasn't really all that successful, either.

Zhukov said:
I'm so cool and independently minded that I didn't like any of the Sam Raimi Spiderman movies.
I hated them first!

...Well, by the metric of the video I am apparently an emo hipster, so the line fits. >.>

I hope no problem with "emotion," but these movies were camp as hell. Some of the scenes could have been swapped with 60s Batman scenes and I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

But these were hailed as life-changing movies. I mean, the CG was fun back before it became dated, and the movies aren't without merit, but...wot.

Ashoten said:
Cognitive dissonance Bob. You know all about that so I am surprised at you for your ongoing crusade against this new spider man.
Maybe he's auditioning for J Jonah Jameson?

One of the stranger things is hearing how these movies (Amazing) make him "tired" then listening to him weave in another rant about them.

Symion said:
Looks like Bob has re-joined the Movie Defense Force.

Welcome back to the fold.
Or swapped places with Jim. Jim's latest was....Interesting.

Dandres said:
Called it, and in 20 years we will be talking about how the ASM's are better than what has come out in the next bunch of Spider reboots. Nostalgia raises the appraisal value of everything.
Well, not us. Nostalgia tends to lock people in place. That's why Tom Baker is such a favourite in the Doctor Who circles. He was the first one they were exposed to. And then again for Dave Tennant[footnote]Yes, Eccleston was the first New Who Doctor, but he was also short-lived and more people seem to count Tennant as their first[/footnote] (to the point that Who fans looked for any reason to hate Smith, even for things done on Tennant's run and in Classic Who).

Tobey was terrible as Spider-Man, but he was big in a major version, so....

punipunipyo said:
this new hipster-parker is lame...
So is it official? Has "hipster" lost all meaning now? I mean, he's a bit of a dickhe,d but come on....