Even when I was sitting in the theater, along with my friends, waiting for the show to begin, I couldn't believe I was gonna watch the worldwide premiere of "Spiderman 3" and add to it the fact that I was gonna watch it a whole 12 hours before its release in the US (all thanks to the time zones). Ever since that, I had wanted to blog about it, but partly due to the lack of an internet connection until Sunday and wholly due to my laziness until now, I couldn't. But better be late than never. So finally here it comes.The base for the previous 2 spidey movies was Peter Parker's love towards Mary Jane and the various difficulties he faces in expressing it, which inevitably also included saving the damsel in distress from the bad guys in the final scene. Well, the third movie is not an exception either, save for the fact that this is grittier, darker and more intense than the first 2 installments.
The movie in itself is a fitting addition to the spiderman franchise, because this too deals with the basic complications of a normal person and the responsibilities of a person. But what makes this little less appealing than the previous 2 were that this movie tries to swallow more than it could chew.
Take for instance, the first movie. It only dealt with one problem and one bad guy for that matter. Spiderman comes to know that "with great power comes great responsibility" and he rejects Mary Jane's proposal and promises her she would always be his friend. He would be responsible if she would die at the hands of his enemies, because he is Spiderman. So he makes a responsible decision and rejects her proposal, even though he loves her very much. He also never tells Harry that his father was the Green Goblin. In the second movie, spidey learns that "everyone needs a hero to look up to" and he follows that and tries to be back as Spiderman, after he decides to hang up his suit following his failure as Peter Parker. But when he tries to, he couldn't. But when his lady love is being held captive, his will power succeeds and he gets back his powers. He also tries to infuse sense into Doc Ock and succeeds. Now Mary Jane comes to know that Peter is Spiderman and she understands everything. She takes her own decision and decides to live with Peter.
Now, what we see in the third movie is a lotta stories in one movie. Peter doesn't understand Mary Jane. Peter is swelled with revenge when he knows his uncle's killer is alive. He has his best friend Harry as the Goblin wanting to have revenge on him. An alien symbiot pervades into him and increases his vices. Peter has his new rival Eddie Brock at the Daily Bugle. The black spidey has his own jolly good time. Eddie Brock becomes the Venom. The whole city loves Spidey and it goes to his head. Peter flirts with Gwen Stacy, kisses her and MJ feels it was "to push her away". And there is also Aunt May, as usual, with her moral advices to Peter.
There may be all this kind of tangled storylines, but the movie as such is not bad. It just doesn't raise the bar. That's it. The transformation of Eddie Brock into Venom occurs all of a sudden. Venom should have been given more screen-time. The pairing up of Sandman and Venom is too cliched. According to imdb.com, Sam Raimi wanted Venom to be in Spiderman 4, but the producer Avi Arad wanted Venom to be in this movie, since the people loved Venom. This explains why Sam couldn't help but include Venom in this movie, against his wishes. It would have been one hell of a part 3 if the Venom had been in part 4 as the sole bad guy, leaving only the Sandman to be tackled by Spidey in this one and more time would have been available to show Peter dealing with his personal dilemmas. The movie has been rushed with its too many tangled complications.
But considering the movie as it is, it doesn't suck at all. The movie has drastically improved in the CGI department, the metamorphosis of Sandman being one of the best CGI ever to feature in a movie till date. It was so realistic (if you suspend your belief at how the sand in the particle accelerator enters Flint's body and attack his cells and transform him into sand). But the development from his inability to transform himself to becoming one with the sand had been very nicely implemented on screen (a la the T-1000 in "Terminator 2"). In the whole of the movie, when Sandman appears, we feel he is real, even though we know he is computer generated.
The movie shows us the importance of "choice" in our lives. We have a choice in everything and we should choose to do what is right. While this has been the general moral of part 3, there's a much better virtue at the end of the movie, which many people failed to notice. That one is of friendship, which is the purest form of any relationship in this world. No matter how you hurt your friend, it doesn't matter. It all comes down to the essence of friendship in the end. Nothing hurts you more than losing a friend. Tears would drop down any person's cheeks when you watch that scene, as they did drop down on mine. This is the most important thing in this movie, rather than the love between Peter and MJ, which is what made me love this movie more than the first two.
Spidey's web should have had a lot lesser load to bear. As Peter Parker, he can't be there at all places to help all the people he knows and satisfy them. He's just as much human as you and me. Hey, but unfortunately for us he's Spiderman too - he can take care of himself and the people around him, come what may. That's why he is a superhero and thats what makes him different from all of us. As long as he's Spiderman, we don't have to worry about the web getting tangled, because he can get himself out of anything. Thats how the movie is.
Over and out!!!
