Why are the Raimi Spider Man films SO bland?

Cafe Society
#1

Does it strike anyone just how bizarrely bland and stoic not only Peter is but other characters too like Mary Jane, and hell even NYC as a whole.

Peter is blander than bland, when he is wearing Venom he shows his darkside by what was it littering and being curt on the phone?

Pater and Mary have 0 chemistry(upside down kiss aside) and that shot of them scowling across the table at each other in the coffee shop while Mary is asking Peter WTF man? Is the height of passion.

Just everything feels even blander and more American Pie ish than even Smallville which is saying something.

What was that odd “World diversity festival” or whatever in the first one with Mary J Bligh performing about?

#2

Because that’s how you perceive it.

Many other people find them entertaining.

Mileage does vary.

#3

I didn’t say they weren’t entertaining, and in fact the villain casting for the first two was PERFECT.

They just seem…to be intentionally creating a reality very unlike the Spiderman mythos that came before, and unlike Raimi’s other movies.
You see this most glaringly in Peter who is no longer a working class everyman smart ass, but some kind of almost autistic nerd. The scenes between him and Mary feel uncomfortable.

#4

I thought Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie was truly great cinema, and that he had progressively less say in the content of the two sequels (although Doc Ock and Sandman are impressively presented).

#5

Well said. The first movie is truly great.

#6

I think you should change the thread title to Spider man 3.

The first one was good.

The second one I thought was much much better and one of the best super hero movies in a while.

Third was…ho-lee shit was that terrible and they ruined my favorite comic character of all time

#7

I actually think they have a pretty fun comic booky feel to them, appropriate for the source material. I do like the new one, but the tone there feels a little forced and out of place for spidey.

#8

Yea, I thought so to. I thought Rami did a really good job of getting the feel of a comic book in a live action movie. I don’t think any of the other recent superhero films have done that.

Agree the girl that played MJ was terrible though.

#9

Ranking the Spider(-)Man movies, I’d say:

  1. Spiderman 1
  2. Tie between Spiderman 2 and Spider-Man (the new one)
  3. Spiderman 3

I actually quite enjoyed the first movie.

#10

This is me as well. I thought 2 was outstanding, but 3 left a lot to be desired. Although the performance of Sandman in 3 is one of my favorite superhero movie performances to date.

ETA: Also, I agree that Kirsten Dunst was the wrong choice to play Mary Jane. I’ve liked her in other things, but she was just wrong for that part.

#11

Nitpick: He wears the symbiote. Venom is the combination of the symbiote and Eddie. If Pete was wearing Venom this would be a WHOLE different sort of movie. :eek:
And I agree about Dunst as MJ, she was not right for the role. Though the whole MJ character was kinda off, anyway. Pete’s supposed to be the hard luck case, not MJ, she’s generally supposed to be successful at her acting/modeling career.

I’m not as down on Spider-Man 3 as most people seem to be. It’s a little cluttered, thanks to two villains and a tweener (Harry), but it’s not like it’s significantly worse than the others. Maybe drop it half a letter grade from what you’d give 1 and 2.

#12

Have to agree. The first one was good, the second one was totally awesome, and the 3rd one just sucked.

#13

I was buying Spider-Man off the racks from its first year of publication, so I know the character. I caught his origin in the Marvel Tales Annual a bit later. That story taught the lesson that we should do the right thing, by giving Peter Parker the chance to stop a burglar that he arrogantly passed up, only to have that decision rebound upon him tragically.
The first movie taught us that if we don’t risk our very lives to help someone (not just incidentally a show-biz impresario) who’s just arrogantly cheated us, that we are evil and will deservedly suffer. Goebbels himself couldn’t have designed a better campaign to condition the sheep for shearing and slaughter. I’ve boycotted the franchise since.
So if the movies have been bland since, it’s a predictable result of such a world-view.

#14

Yeah, it’s pretty Jesusy, isn’t it? Good thing you didn’t catch the weepy “I forgive you” scenes from the third movie.

#15

I thought maybe Shatner had directed 3, it was so not 1 or 2.

#16

This this? Or seconds later when the passengers carry him overhead like a messiah?

Yeah, those Raimi films were massively vanilla. I think he was overcautious at the prospect of making them weird, ala Evil Dead or Darkman, ala Burton making weird Batman movies. He played it too straight. He openly stuck to the Donner/Superman model. He even did away with having the Green Goblin be a transformation and opted for that leftover Power Rangers villain mask and suit.

#17

As a libertarian, this is actually consistent with my worldview. Stopping criminals is a public good: it doesn’t just help their current victims, but also everyone they would have persecuted or preyed upon in the future. Even if it’s too late to save a serial killer’s last victim, you can still save the next.

#18

I thought Tobey Maguire was an insipid choice for Peter Parker. Since I found him to be limp, I didn’t think the movies help up either.

#19

Tobey Maguire’s take on Spider-Man worked perfectly (if not true to the comics) in the first movie when he was getting to know his powers, and it made the first movie great. It was a feature, not a bug.

Zero chemistry with MJ is a big problem though and ruined a large chunk of the movies. And there wasn’t a pressing need for more movies using that take on the character (even though 2 was good).

#20

I’m a libertarian, too (as a Google search will demonstrate!), and he’d have been justified in negotiating a settlement, or recovering the money and just taking it–but he had no idea at the time whether he was even bulletproof. They could easily have stuck with the original scenario, but perverted the very basis of the character.