Spider-Man 3 contains elements that every fan-boy has been hoping for, and several they haven’t. It takes the best and worst elements from the first two outings, combining them into one over-long movie that relies too heavily on CGI magic and not enough on pacing and story.
The new film picks up where the last one wrapped up. All is right in the world of Peter Parker. His heroic exploits as Spider-Man are being trumpeted in the press and his soon-to-be-fiancé MJ (Kirsten Dunst) has landed a starring role in a Broadway play. Soon, though, things turn sour. MJ has trouble dealing with Spider-Man’s newfound fame; his old friend (and son of the Green Goblin) Harry (James Franco) tries to kill him; he must battle a new foe, a molecularly challenged escaped convict known as the Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church) while, on a more mortal plane, fighting to keep his job. On top of this a black, gooey creature from outer space has attached itself to his DNA, changing him from super hero to super heel.
Director Sam Raimi has created a tangled web; a slick but sluggish movie that brings the wow factor with several impressive action sequences, but fails when it focuses on the characters. Raimi pads the 2 ½ hour movie with long shots of MJ and Peter staring soulfully at one another with dewy eyes. He loves those shots like Pete Doherty loves cocaine, but they slow the movie’s momentum to a crawl.
The section of the movie that deals with Peter Parker’s dark side almost feels like it was dropped in from another, rather silly, film. Spurned by MJ, unemployed and profoundly bitter, Parker—like Superman and Batman before him—explores the flip side of his do-gooder personality. This amounts to flicking his hair across his forehead in a way that makes him look more like Garth Brooks’ faux rock singer Chris Gaines than a badass and ogling at women, a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Playing his transformation into a cad for laughs diminishes the importance of Parker’s examination of his dark side.
Fans can look forward to state-of-the-art action sequences—one in which an office building is destroyed by an out-of-control crane is spectacular—but may find some other aspects of the story—MJ’s two musical numbers, Parker’s ridiculous bad boy nightclub behavior and Aunt May’ (Rosemary Harris) matronly presence—harder to swallow.
To decipher what’s wrong with Spider-Man 3 all we have to do is look back at movie history. Sequels with the number 3 in the title rarely hold up, particularly when their predecessors are highly regarded.
Godfather 1 and 2. Yes please. Number 3? Not so much.
Batman, Batman Returns and Batman Forever? Yes, yes and no thanks.
X-Men 3? I hope it is their last stand.
In movie terms the third time often isn’t a charm. By the third time around expectations are often impossibly high, so filmmakers feel the need to kick it up a notch. In most cases it doesn’t work—less really is more—and you end up with something like Spider-Man 3, a movie that feels bloated by too many subplots, too many villains and too many characters.
I’m always wary of movies based on comic books. There have been good ones – Ghost World, Batman, Blade – but the track record is not good. Spider-man is one of the good ones, maybe even one of the great ones. Director Sam Raimi hit the right balance between action and story, between reality and fantasy. Raimi has a steady hand with story – just rent A Simple Plan if you’re not convinced – and knows about action and special effects from his Evil Dead days. He has crafted an old fashioned super-hero movie that made me nostalgic for the days of Christopher Reeves as Superman. I would quibble with the decision to put a Green Goblin mask on Willem Dafoe. Why cover up his expressive face with a cheesy looking mask? Dafoe could have been more effective and twice as scary had we been able to actually see his face. Tobey McGuire nails the socially inept Peter Parker, putting a human face on the superhero that is very charming. This one’s a winner that is sure to spawn a web-full of sequels.
When New Girl star Zooey Deschanel was two years old she watched The Wizard of Oz every day. “I had a hard time understanding that I couldn’t go into the film,” she said, “because it felt so real to me.”
She’s not alone. It is one of the most watched and universally adored Hollywood films ever and the L. Frank Baum book it’s based on has been called “America’s greatest and best-loved home grown fairytale.”
“We always say the age range for The Wizard of Oz is from fetal to fatal,” jokes Oz expert John Fricke.
This weekend Disney hopes to add to the legacy of the original film with Oz the Great and Powerful, a Sam Raimi directed prequel starring James Franco and Mila Kunis. Ever wondered why the wicked witch was so wicked? Or how the wizard became the wizard? With a click of its ruby slippers this movie fills in the blanks.
It’s not the first movie to try and woo an audience based on the goodwill of Oz and its citizens.
According to the Wonderful Wiki of Oz there are dozens of movies featuring Dorothy, Toto and friends, dating back to almost the turn of the last century.
1910’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the first Baum book to hit the screen. The film was made after the author’s stage show, Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, had failed, leaving him in the hole. To settle his debt with the Selig Polyscope Company he gave them the rights to his best-known work. The result is a thirteen-minute short that sees Dorothy and Toto (played by a child in a dog suit) ride a haystack to the magical world of Oz.
Almost seven decades later two very different musicals were inspired by the Oz folks.
20th Century Oz is a 1976 Australian rock musical that reimagines the classic story set in 1970s Australia.
Two years later director Sidney Lumet adapted the Broadway hit The Wiz for the screen, casting Motown superstars Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow. Although it was, at the time, the most expensive film musical ever made, it wasn’t a hit in theatres.
Oz may be the most American of stories, but that hasn’t prevented foreign adaptations. Ayşecik ve Sihirli Cüceler Rüyalar Ülkesinde is a Turkish retelling of the tale, starring a girl named Ayşa who has adventures with Korkuluk the Scarecrow.
In Drag Me to Hell director Sam (Spiderman) Raimi returns to his horror roots, reviving a dormant fright genre — the curse film.
There was a time on the big screen when old crones and evil wizards terrorized movie goers with spells, and I don’t mean the cute and cuddly curse of Shrek, I mean heavy hexes like the Maloika and Voodoo juju.
In 1996 a film based on a novel from Stephen King’s alter ego Richard Bachman called Thinner offered a supernatural alternative to Weight Watchers. The story centred on Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke), a sleazebag lawyer charged with vehicular manslaughter after running down an old woman.
The obese legal wiz beats the charge in court, but a far worse verdict awaits him outside the courtroom. Minutes after he is set free a 106-year-old gypsy named Tadzu Lemke (Michael Constantine) touches him, whispering the word “thinner” in his ear.
From then on, Halleck sheds pounds faster than you can say “Jenny Craig.” Using all his lawyerly skills of persuasion he convinces Lemke to lift the curse, but the resolution has tragic consequences for those around him.
A different kind of curse was unleashed in the 2003 Japanese J-Horror film Ju-on: The Grudge. The movie is only occasionally scary, but the idea of a curse, born of great violence, that continues to grow like a virus and visit terror on everyone who comes into contact with it, is undeniably creepy.
Probably the only curse film to be deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States National Film Registry is Walt Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast. The story begins with an old beggar woman asking a handsome but spoiled prince for shelter against the bitter cold.
Repulsed by her appearance he refuses her request and payment of a rose. She warns the prince not to judge people by their appearances but he is unmoved. Unmoved, that is until she lays the kavorka on him, turning him into a hideous beast.
The curse, she says, can only be lifted if “he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return” by the time his twenty-first birthday came around and the last petal of woman’s enchanted rose fell to the ground.
Despite their differences in topic and setting these movies all boil down to one universal theme: Lack of respect has consequences. Think of that the next time a 106 year-old witch asks for a favour.
