It was a killing joke wasn’t it?
I saw this over the weekend, I thought it was bad. Not just bad-bad, but awesome-bad. It was bad in such improbable and unexpected ways that it transcends itself. I loved it. It’s the most Raimiesque of the Spiderman films to date.
I loved - loved, I tell you! - Emo Parker. Peter’s such a nerd that when he becomes an asshole, he expresses it by making the girl next door bake him cookies. And the big musical number in the bar was hilarious! “The symbiote enhances your natural tendencies, like aggression. And jazz dance.”
I like how hitting Harry in the head is like a personality reset button. “I hate Spiderman, and I want to kill him!” Bonk! “You guys are my best friends!” Bonk! “I will kill you all!” Bonk! “I will save you all!” His psychiatrist should be the Fonze. Every time he has mental problems, Fonzarelli just smacks him upside the head like he’s the jukebox at Mel’s, and he’s back to normal.
Speaking of incredibly lame, how stupid was MJ in that bridge scene. Let’s see. A mutual friend of yours and Peter’s is homicidal and has superpowers, and wants you to dump your boyfriend. You know that this is a step in his ultimate plan to murder your boyfriend. And you just… go along with it? When you’re all alone out on that bridge with him, you don’t say something like, “Harry’s gone nuts again, and is trying to make me dump you to ruin your life. When I walk away, pretend to be really upset, but watch your ass! The Green Goblin is after you!”
I agree with the poster upthread who said Eddie Brock turning into Venom ought to have been the last scene in the movie. Actually, I’d have gone further than that, and have the movie end with Peter getting the black suit. Set it up somehow that he knows about the symbiote and has some idea of what it could do. Maybe it’s being studied in a government xeno-biology lab filled with dangerous experiments. Probably located in the middle of Central Park. Have MJ’s jilted beau bring it back from one of his astronaut jaunts. In the climactic fight against Sandman and Green Goblin, (who are maybe after the symbiote themselves, for whatever reason) Peter has to take the symbiote to become strong enough to defeat both villains at once. Have Spiderman 4 be about over coming the symbiote’s influence and fighting Venom.
Sandman’s farewell was pretty stupid, too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to kill your uncle, it was an accident. I did mean to kill you back there when you were tied to a girder and I was pounding on you with my fifty-foot diameter fists, but let’s not talk about that. I was only robbing banks to pay for medical treatments for my sick daughter that we haven’t seen since the first reel. Who’s still sick, apparently, so I’m going to go off and rob some more banks. See ya later!” I did like Thomas Hayden Church in the role, though, and the SFX were great. I liked Spiderman tipping sand out of his boot after their first fight.
Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that when Tobey MacGuire has to express any sort of intense emotion, like pain, or grief, or anger, he looks like he’s trying to pass a massive turd? Kind of takes away the dramatic impact of him stopping a speeding train with his body, when it looks like he’s thinking, “Damn, I shouldn’t have eaten all that cheese!”
Still. It was better than Ghost Rider.
This is what I came in to post. I saw the movie yesterday, and this was the funniest part of the whole thing. I have a vision of the writers meeting that produced it: a bunch of guys sittting around a long table, going “How the hell do we show aggression in a microscope?” “I know! We’lll have one of the cells body-slamming the other ones!”
I thought of this too- why wouldn’t MJ just go through the motions of dumping Peter but tell him what was actually happening- but didn’t the Green Goblin ( and then Harry) have enhanced hearing? I recall the Thanksgiving scene from the first film where Norman and Aunt May wander into Peter’s room looking for him, and Peter is clinging to the ceiling. A drop of his blood falls on the ground, and Norman hears it. So wouldn’t Harry have been able to hear what was going on on the bridge, since he was sitting a short distance away?
Could she have passed him a note?
“Ignore what I’m saying. Harry is forcing me to do this. He wants to kill you. Also, I’m not wearing panties.”
I saw it this weekend. I was pretty disappointed because I really enjoyed the first two. I would say 2 was the best, then 1, then 3 far, far behind. (All IMO, of course.)
Too many villians (too many characters, period), too much stuff stuffed into it, the comedy was heavy-handed and pointless, and the Bangs of Evil were so ridiculous people actually laughed at them in the theater. (“My hair is swept back – I’m good! Now I have bangs – I’m bad!”) I wasn’t exactly waiting for it to get over, but I walked out and promptly forgot about it.
Good example of how things go bad when you try to cram everything into one movie that makes it way too long. Some smart editing might have rescued the movie by cutting out parts that are just not essential to moving the story along. I cringed at the dancing in the jazz club or Peter doing his “Saturday Night Live” strut. OK, we get it … the alien thing has changed him. Enough already. Lots of other examples. Kirsten Dunst also didn’t have one her better performances. To me, Stan Lee’s gratuitous extended cameo and “Nuff said” comment was an early sign that the movie was heading downhead from there. And it did.
Peter strutting down the street. Huh. It can’t get worse than this.
Peter doing pelvic gyrations in his fancy new suit. Ugh.
And: MJ’s singing at the beginning . . . Jonah’s desk moving a foot every time the buzzer went off . . . Peter spidey- dancing all over the jazz club – so much of it as either completely unnecessary or unnecessarily drawn out.
That part cracked me up, personally.
Other thoughts:
I liked MJ well enough in the other two movies, but she really grated on my nerves in this one. It bothered me that she refused to tell Peter she was fired and how bad she was feeling and instead settles for passive aggressive bullshit like “you have no idea how I feel right now”, yadda yadda, like, just tell Peter that you were let go and are feeling hurt and rejected instead of moping around and running to Harry instead. Good God.
And speaking of Harry…yeah, the amnesia was a convenient plot development, but it was so refreshing to see a cheerful, happy Harry that I didn’t mind it. In part one it’s all “my father hates me I’ll never be good enough MJ doesn’t love me boohoohoo” and in part two it’s all “Spiderman must pay for my father’s death oh woe is me” . I wasn’t expecting his death ( I am only slightly familiar with the comics. Most of what I know I learned reading Spidey threads here on the dope). I thought his death scene was touching.
Loved JJ Jameson, as always. Liked both Venom and the Sandman. The fight scenes were fantastic, especially the final showdown- good stuff. Loved, loved, loved Emo Peter and the Bangs of Doom. I thought it was hilarious. Sure, it was pure cheese, but it is a superhero movie.
We held off seeing it until the middle Mambolad’s birthday.
My tuppence: This film is was so disappointing that Spider-man will have to fight Godzilla, Hitler and my ex-wife in the next one to atone for it.
mm
Apologies for reviving a zombie, but I finally got to see the movie. First I was going to go with my best friend, but work interfered and he ended up going with his nephew. Then I wanted to take my nieces and my sister, but my sister and one niece didn’t want to see it so I ended up taking them to see Shrek the Third. Finally I gave up and went to see it alone, matinee showing on a Tuesday, with four other people in the whole theater.
I liked her too. I haven’t figured out yet if she has a crush on Peter, or if she’s just a really really nice girl.
Finally somebody answers that question! I spotted his name in the credits but didn’t catch who he played.
Elizabeth Banks. And from what I saw of her in these movies, I think she should have played Lois Lane in the recent Superman movie.
In the middle of this scene, immediately after Peter tells J.J.J. that he wants the staff job, the sound cut out in the theater. I had to watch the rest of the scene in silence. But strangely, it still got the point across 
I liked that part as well. During my time collecting Spider-Man comics (which started shortly after he ditched the black costume), Sandman wasn’t a major presence, so I don’t know a whole lot about him. But what little I saw of him in the comics showed a hard-luck kind of character, and I thought that was well-portrayed in the movie.
In the comics, he did indeed come down with amnesia a short while after learning that Peter was Spider-Man. The amnesia lasted much longer in the comics, of course.