Sunday, May 6, 2007

Short Spiderman 3 review and other notes of interest (Some spoilers ahead!)

I went to see Spiderman 3 at the IMAX theater at Easton today, and maybe I had sort of a mental benchmark set too high, but I came out sort of disappointed since this movie didn't wow me like the first two did. As Catnipped has pointed out, there were so many things going on in this movie between two villians, the conflict between Peter and Harry, and the strained relationship between Mary Jane and Peter that you felt sort of rushed watching all of these plots progress. Although the action scenes were really cool, there were times I felt that the action was going so fast and furious (especially in the first fight between Spiderman and Green Goblin Jr.) that I couldn't really process what was going on. Maybe they intended it to be that way, but I felt that sort of detracted from the action scenes. Also, the "singing" by Kirsten Dunst looked pretty fake :(

In sort of a strange fashion, this movie was sort of like the 2nd movie, only with everything sort of inverted.

Point (SM2): Peter Parker starts off sort of depressed being Spiderman and gets more emotionally stable as the movie progresses.
Counterpoint (SM3): Peter Parker starts of happy being Spiderman and goes down being angry and vengeful as the movie progresses.

Point (SM2): Peter Parker and Mary Jane start off with a rocky relationship but get closer as the movie progresses.
Counterpoint (SM3): Peter Parker starts with Mary Jane happily in a relationship but slowly separate from each other (although they do make up at the end).

Point (SM2): The villain (Doc Octopus) has selfish intention for being evil.
Counterpoint (SM3): One of the villains (Sandman) has sort of unselfish intentions for being evil.

Point (SM2): Media portraying Spiderman as evil.
Counterpoint (Sm3): Media portraying Spiderman as good.

If you don't agree about my point/counterpoint or if they're a bit of a stretch, feel free to flame me in the comments :P However, I must say some of the cheesy funny moments in the movie were pretty funny :)

It's sort of interesting to note that the third movie based off of superheros/comic books seems to fall flat after the second movie has receieved either equal or exceeding praise compared to the first movie.

Superman: 7.2 rating on IMDB, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes
Superman 2: 6.6 rating on IMDB, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes
Superman 3: 4.6 rating on IMDB, 23% on Rotten Tomatoes

Batman: 7.5 rating on IMDB, 72% on Rotten Tomatoes
Batman Returns: 6.7 rating on IMDB, 80% on Rotten Tomatoes
Batman Forever: 5.4 rating on IMDB, 43% on Rotten Tomatoes

X-men: 7.3 rating on IMDB, 79% on Rotten Tomatoes
X2: 7.9 rating on IMDB, 87% on Rotten Tomatoes
X-men: The Last Stand: 7.1 rating on IMDB, 57% on Rotten Tomatoes

As for the Spiderman series...
Spiderman: 7.4 rating on IMDB, 90% on Rotten Tomatoes
Spiderman 2: 7.8 rating on IMDB, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes
Spiderman 3: 7.3 rating on IMDB, currently 62% on Rotten Tomatoes

So Spiderman 3 was semi-disappointing, but that's not going to (initially) stop moviegoers as it set a new one-day opening record of 59 million dollars. However, this record might not hold as there're a whole slew of summer movies coming out that could challenge it such as Shrek the Third (May 18th), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (May 25th), Transformers (July 4th), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (July 14th), and The Simpsons Movie (July 27th). Of those, I'm really looking foward to the new Pirates movie and hope it doesn't suffer the 3rd movie jinx that Spiderman has fallen into.

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