Triloppointed

WARNING: The following rant may contain spoilers!!!!!!!

Over the years I’ve become quite wary when I hear about a new superhero film. There just constantly seems to be one big budget disasterpiece after the next.

Don’t get me wrong, not all comic book transfers to the big screen are a disaster, I thought Christopher Nolan did a brilliant job breathing new life into Batman, after they exploited the Dark Knight for every penny they could make. Bryan Singer gave us two great X-men films, Brett Ratner finished that trilogy well. Robert Rodriguez delivered Sin City to us right from the eyes of Frank Miller. Bryan singer returned with Superman Returns and Zack Snyder captured Frank Miller’s 300. I just don’t know where Sam Raimi went wrong, three times.

Spiderman 3 sees Tobey Maguire putting back on the tights for the movie they were calling the “darkest” of the three. If by “darkest” they meant all over the place then they were right. Spiderman 3 has all the fast-paced, high swinging special-fx sequences you’ve come to expect from the series, and the budget, but it’s also crammed full of horrible scenes straight from a really bad chick-flick, it’s got people singing, it’s got cheesiness that is way more cheesy than even the comics were, it’s got the usual American flag flying propaganda and what the hell is with the dance sequence!?

Kirsten Dunst is annoying from start to finish, although she is quite realistic at playing Mary Jane as a bad actress/singer. I don’t see why people like her, and I certainly don’t care about anything that happens to her in the film, be it her failing career, his relationship issues from going out with a superhero or whether she hits the ground everytime she’s dropped from a huge height.

James Franco is annoying as Harry Osbourne/the New Goblin. He’s annoying when he’s bent on revenging his fathers death by killing Peter Parker. He’s annoying when he looses his short-term memory and becomes a happy go-lucky guy dancing in the kitchen. He’s annoying when he eventually becomes a good guy to save the day and sacrifice himself for his friends.

Topher Grace (Eric Foreman from That 70’s Show) is really annoying as the new photographer in town, Eddie Brock. For a photographer he looks like he’s never held a camera in his life!? At least the special-fx’s make up for his acting when he eventually becomes Venom.

This is just after Peter Parker finally removes the alien entity from his body, which through the usual comicbook style of combing your hair to the other side has tranformed him to a totally changed person. Your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman becomes an asshole. Unfortunately it’s not a cool, witty, badass character like Wolverine, it’s some kind of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever kinda superhero.

Maybe it’s that the villians never have plans for world domination? All they seem to want to do is kill Peter Parker with some scheme using Mary Jane as bait, which is always just possible to web sling your way out of. Except of course the Sandman who is robbing banks to give money to his sick daughter!? Oh but wait, it turns out he’s the guy who actually killed Uncle Ben (not the rice guy), so he is a bad guy. But then there is the horrible scene at the end where he apologises and Peter forgives him.

Ok, so it’s not all bad. The special-fx are pretty cool, especially the birth of the Sandman, and the sound design on the action is also pretty cool, but none of this is new, we’ve seen and heard it all before. J.K Simmons is brilliant as Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson. Bruce “I’m a Legend” Campbell is hilarious as the restaurant Maitre d’, he’s not too good at the French accent but he’ll always steal a scene.

Of course there’s also the obligatory cameo from legendary creator Stan Lee, but that left me with a curious expression, wondering “What the fuck!?”. Overall I spent nearly two and a half hours with that expression on my face, and wondering two more things; “How much worse can this get?” and “When the hell will this end?”.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” With taking a legendary web-slinging comic icon and transferring them to the silver screen comes a trilogy of disappointments.