Recently, I re-watched the Spider-Man Trilogy on Blu-ray. Despite my opinion of the first movie dropping steadily over the past 6 years, and my belief from Day One that the last movie is shit, I went into these movies with an open mind. I left with even less respect for them than I used to have.
SPIDER-MAN plays like a kids movie. It's goofy and slapstick. The origin is boring. The villain is a cartoon of Hannah-Barbera proportions. It's a series of cringe-inducing moments stacked one on top of the other. Anything that may have been cool about this turd can also be found in...
SPIDER-MAN 2, which actually holds up really well. I think the key to this movie's success is the use of Mary Jane. That relationship totally works here. It's a really weird choice to end the movie on a shot of her in general, and that shot in particular. But it says a lot about the movie, and I absolutely love it. It's the reason why I was so looking forward to...
SPIDER-MAN 3. I should've known what a dark path we were on when this movie started with a montage of still photos from the previous movies instead of Alex Ross' interpretation of those scenes. It was all downhill from there.
The thing that amazes me, what compels me to bitch about this on the internet, is how astoundingly bad that movie really is. How can so many smart people make so many bad choices? How can the Mary Jane storyline be turned into the most cliche cliche in the history of cliches? How can a script be so ineptly written that the only way to get from Point A to Point B to Point C is by coincidence? What's with the retroactive continuity? Doesn't it cheapen Spider-Man's origin in favor of some lame-ass villain's? What's with the way the movie is hacked together without any sense of rhythm as soon as Spidey gets his black suit? The list goes on and on. It's a huge piece of shit. It's not worth watching. I've been duped into seeing it three times now. There will not be a fourth.
What is it with comic movie trilogies? SPIDER-MAN 2, BLADE II, X2, THE DARK KNIGHT... Why are the second movies so awesome, and the third movies so bad? I can understand origin stories being boring, but shouldn't the third movies be better? After all, they have a stronger base to build on.
Oh well, here's hoping that SHADOW OF THE BAT will live up to its predecessors, and that SPIDER-MAN 4 will be short...
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