Danger, spoilers, sort of, ahead. So director Sam Raimi got me thinking this time. The beautiful thing about trilogies, quadrogies, quintogies, sextogies is the loyalty in your viewer, and how you can bring them with you on some strange journeys. What were the best and worst things about Spiderman 3? Well, Topher Grace was definitely the best thing as the bitter and feral Venom, sporting the mask and a wicked set of teeth (when the mask is off, the teeth are the normal crazy Venom from the comic books with the jaw that is basically his head on a hinge. (Topher Grace and his character, in my opinion, carry the film.) The worst part of the film is the tired love triangle between Peter, MJ, and Harry, which in turn pretty much renders their characters in the film mildly annoying through much of the film. Maybe if we get rid of MJ and Harry, we can have a truly dark and interesting storyline.
The strangest thing about Spiderman 3 is the fact that apparently Sam Raimi wanted to remake the Mask (the one with Jim Carey). Between the recurring themes of good ego vs. bad ego (during which we are witness to several song and dance numbers and a goth Tobey Mcguire reminiscent of circa 1992 Trent Reznor), the similarities are pretty nutty. Peter Parker ends up fighting the mask, tugging it off himself, the mask finds the “bad” guy and makes him more bad, there are the afforementioned song and dance numbers, and the list goes on. The biggest difference is that Spiderman’s mask invokes the spirit of some alien from space, rather than an island version of Loki.
The other terribly odd thing about the film is the introduction of the Butler ex Machina. The dotty old butler of Harry’s is summoned twice in the film. The first time he is invoked to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which isn’t terribly influential to the course of the story; however, the second time, the butler is invoked with in a sudden burst of clarity to confirm to Harry that his father (Willem Defoe as Papa Osborn aka Green Goblin) was actually killed by self-inflicted wounds, not by Spiderman, thus allowing Harry to once again befriend his old buddy, and seriously affecting the story. Behold, the Butler ex Machina.
Oh yeh, keep on the lookout for Spiderman on Ice, the musical.