Last night, we went to The Bridge to see SPIDER-MAN 3. Although the theatre had been showing the movie on multiple screens round-the-clock since midnight, the 10:30 p.m. showing was packed. That augers well for a movie that has apparently been scheduled to jump to the head of a summer season packed with sequels. (The other two big #3's -- SHREK and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN -- are also scheduled to open this month.)
As for the movie, I was primed for dissapointment, based on the reviews by Kenneth Turan (for the LA Times and NPR) and Owen Glieberman (for Entertainment Weekly). Fortunately, I was disappointed in my disappointment: It was pretty damn good. In fact, the three Spidey movies have set a benchmark among superhero franchises in maintaining a high level of quality through three movies. (Remember SUPERMAN 3? Or, if your memory doesn't go back that far, last year's X-MEN III?) A large chunk of the credit must go to keeping the same visionary director (Sam Raimi) and the same excellent cast across three movies.
This, of course, is the movie where the creators broke from the previous two movies' format of one bad guy per movie (each of whom dies in the movie -- cinema villains seldom go to jail); and instead had multiple bad guys. Even revealing how many they had would be giving away good sections of the plot. Even so, the plot does not just focus on the external hero vs. villain battles (although those are some of the most spectacular ever captured on film); this is a movie about relationships in trouble. All kinds of relationships. Current boyfriends and girlfriends. Past boyfriends and girlfriends. Guy-guy friendships. Guy-guy-girl friendships. Work rivalries. Even a broken relationship between a guy and a black puddle of goo from outer space. (Hell hath no fury like a symbiote scorned.)
It also features Peter Parker (Toby Maguire) either out of costume, or wearing it like a pair of power underwear, through several conflicts -- both emotional and physical. Even when he's in the Spidey-suit, the director finds every excuse to either rip his hood off or tear it open. Part of it is his desire to focus on that expressive hounddog-puppy face of Maguire. But I can also see the logic in staging some of the battles in civilian clothes: A scene of two guys whaling the tar out of each other feels a lot more personal when they're clad in mufti than when they're wearing face-concealing masks.
The movie loses some of the benefits the previous two drew from having a single villain, who could be developed in depth. The second one also had the asset of a screenplay by Michael Chabon. The lack of these assets no doubt set off a lot of the critics who loved the first two. But I still walked away feeling I had received my umpteen dollars (The Bridge's tickets are expensive) worth.
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