Okay, so I know that I'm supposed to be writing about my recent experiences attending an extravagant Hindu wedding in Daytona, but something happened the other night and I feel it would be remiss of me to not try to write at least a little about it before the memory fades.
I went and saw Spider-man 3 on Wednesday with Noel, who was kind enough to indulge my comic book-geekery and come along. I had told her that it was actually about a young girl who had to choose between two lovers in Victorian England before tragically succumbing to her tuberculosis, but I don't think she really believed me. I was pretty excited; the previews looked relatively cool, and it had a bunch of characters that I was interested to see adapted to the big screen. After sitting through 3 ½ hours of film, however, my opinion had drastically changed.
It's a shitty movie. The plot is nonsensical and cheesy, there are too many characters jammed in just for the sake of having more CGI effects, and all of the actors look like they're phoning in their performances as quickly as possible so that they can get back to their trailers and have gigantic money fights with the cash they've been paid. It's terrible. To show you why, I reconstructed the movie as best that I can, and the sad thing is that I don't even have to really be funny; I can just write down what actually happened and it will look ridiculous.
The movie begins with Peter Parker loving life. The city adores Spider-man, his girlfriend is singing on Broadway and has amazing tits, and even Aunt May has been less incontinent than usual. The only specter on the horizon is a chance encounter with his former best friend, Harry Osborn, who blames Spider-man for the death of his father, the villainous Green Goblin. Quickly brushing off Harry's grim insistence that he's going to kill him and that he knows his secret identity, Peter chooses to ignore this totally realistic threat and happily skips off to contemplate proposing marriage to Mary-Jane. Everything's great.
But across town, there's action afoot! It's two-bit criminal Flint Marko, played by that guy from Sideways! He's on the run from the law, and after briefly stopping to visit his sick daughter (complete with nighttime oxygen mask for maximum sympathy) to assure her that he'll get the money for her treatment no matter what, the audience is convinced enough that he's not really a bad guy to maybe feel sorry for him. Remember that! It kind of becomes a not very relevant plot point later on.
So it's the middle of the night, and Marko is slowly jogging away from the police officers chasing him. According to a radio transmission from the police chief, he's escaped to someplace called "the marshes", and while I'm not that familiar with New York City, I'm fairly sure there are no outlying swampland for criminals to hide in, unless you count New Jersey. He staggers up to a chainlink fence, and after pausing to catch one of the attack dogs that have been sent after him, he stares at it stupidly for a few moments before punching it in the face and hopping the fence. He takes a few steps, only to plunge down into a gigantic hole that he somehow missed directly in front of him. He hits the sand-covered ground with a thud, and then gets to his feet to gaze wonderingly around at the strange, enormous metal arms that he also somehow didn't notice suspended above him. The scene cuts to the inside of a scientific control center, where one important looking guy in a white coat asks another important looking guy in a white coat something about "the particle accelerator". Then a woman, who is far too hot to have anything at all to do with science, leans over to say something about the "molecular deconstructor", noting that the "silica target has increased in mass." Scientist #1 assures her that "it's only a bird", and will "fly away once we start it up." So the audience can now assume that this is the device that Marko is currently staring at, and that based on their dialogue and the fact that they want to test a machine that can destroy molecules at 3 in the morning, the people who are about to turn it on are insane.
The machine thrums to life, and the giant arms begin to slowly oscillate around him. His facial expressions during all of this kind of remind me of a cow chewing it's cud; he doesn't seem especially concerned that he's fallen into the middle of some kind of huge machine designed for obliterating sand particles and run by maniacs, and only makes a half-hearted attempt to jump out of it after the arms are moving around him so fast the human eye can't see them, which works about as well as you'd expect. Long story short, his body is destroyed and reconstituted as living sand the next day, with the added bonus that he's somehow able to perfectly recreate the color and consistency of the ridiculously ugly shirt he was wearing during his unfortunate accident. He then lumbers off to try and save his daughter by using his newfound powers in stupid ways to rob banks.
Meanwhile! Peter is zipping around town on his gay little motorscooter whistling about how rainbows make him happy or something when suddenly, out of nowhere, a mysterious stranger riding a flying snowboard swoops in and throws him into a wall! Wow! Peter looks up, his dazed eyes filled with confusion. Who could this mysterious stranger be? How could he know Peter Parker's barely kept secret identity of the amazing Spider-Man? Oh, right. It's Harry Osborn, that guy from like an hour ago who totally told Peter that he hated him and wanted to kill him, and had not only the means but also the motive and opportunity to do so! He even screams "You knew this was coming, Pete!!", because even though everyone in the audience knew about two movies ago that Harry would want revenge, the thought never seemed to occur to Peter. They battle around in the sky and across rooftops for a while, and I have to say, as bad as this movies dialogue and plot are, the special effects are awesome. The fight comes to an abrupt conclusion after Peter uses some of his spider-webbing to clothesline Harry and knock him off of his radically evil snowboard, and despite the fact that he had previously survived being punched face first through the glass plating of like sixteen buildings, the 100 foot fall seemed to really fuck him up. Peter freaks out and dashes over to his unmoving friend, tries to give him CPR, and the next thing you know, Harry's being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. After a few tense hours, the doctor comes out, and instead of asking Peter why his friend was knocked unconscious while dressed like some kind of techno-bondage freak, just explains that Harry will be fine and is only suffering from a minor case of amnesia; specifically the type of amnesia regarding the possible identities of any superheroes he happens to know and any involvement they might have had in the death of his father.
This is a stupid plot twist, because now everything can go back to being hunky-dory between Pete, MJ and Harry, but whatever. It actually happened in the comics on multiple occasions, so I'm willing to let it slide. What I couldn't stand, however, is the way that James Franco, the actor who plays Harry, decided to interpret the personality shift. For the next 45 minutes, every time he opened his mouth I wanted to jump into the screen and shove a pencil through his eye. He apparently took the direction "okay, act like you're friends with everybody again" to mean "act like you've had a stroke to the portion of your brain that doesn't cause you to talk like a lobotomy patient on ecstasy." This is an actual sample of his dialogue:
Peter: "Hey there, Harry, how are you feeling? That bump on your head getting better?"
Harry: "Gosh, buddy, you know what? It sure is! Boy, things sure are swell!"
Peter: "That's great."
Harry: "Hey, you know what else is great??"
Peter: "What's that?"
Harry: "PUPPIES! Yeah, they're so cute, I think that God himself must have made them out of sunbeams and happiness. Hey, you guys want to come back to my place? We can drink hot chocolate and wear fuzzy pajamas and have a smiling contest! I bet I'll win! Ha ha ha!"
Seriously, it was horrible. And things don't seem to be getting any better. First, Peter pisses off MJ by making out with hot new blonde love interest Gwen Stacy at a parade in Spider-man's honor before rushing off to get his ass handed to him by Flint Marko, who's been remaining inconspicuous by flying around the city in the form of a giant sandstorm cloud. Then, he gets shot down trying to propose in a hilariously unfunny scene in which he's apparently completely oblivious to the fact that MJ is jealous, although seeing as how he never seemed to even consider that Harry might want him dead, this is actually kind of believable. Finally, to cap it all off, he and Aunt May are called down to the police station to be informed that the guy the cops thought killed his Uncle Ben actually didn't. It was some other guy. Oops! Our bad! And who was that other guy, you ask? Why, Flint Marko, who Peter had just fought that very afternoon and was now running around as an unstoppable sand monster! What are the odds!
Peter goes back to his tiny apartment to brood and wait for Marko to strike again, but thoughts of burning revenge make him sleepy after about an hour and he decides to take a nap. While he's sleeping, the sinister black blob of space goo that hitched a ride on his moped at the beginning of the move crawls all over his body, and the next thing he knows he wakes up outside wearing a black version of his costume that seems to enhance his abilities. I didn't mention the space goo before because literally, that's how it got there. He was hanging out in the park with MJ, a comet fell from the sky, and then space goo crawled out of it and jumped onto his bike. That's it. That's all you get. Peter's surprisingly unconcerned about the fact that his costume is suddenly made out of alien semen and makes him black out, and just decides to investigate a suspicious trail of sand that's crawling of its own accord through a set a bank doors that have been torn from their hinges. I swear, that Spider-man has a deductive mind like a steel trap. On his way in, he's accosted by Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace, a hotshot new photographer who's trying to take Peter's job at the Daily Bugle. Displaying the negative influence the black suit is already having on him, he throws Brocks camera into a wall and totally breaks it, before saying "Nyah!" and then swinging off.
He finally confronts Marko in the dank labyrinth of subway track and drainage pipes that apparently comprise the majority of New York City's underbelly. Despite the fact that he's supposed to be really good at science, Peter doesn't seem to realize that repeatedly punching a man completely made out of sand in the face really isn't going to accomplish much. Marko finally stumbles into a puddle of water, which, about 10 minutes later, gives Peter the brilliant idea to flood the room they're fighting in by breaking one of the conveniently placed hydro-tanks scattered around the subway. This turns his enemy into a shrieking pile of wet mud, and he's eventually sucked into a sewer drain. Peter then jubilantly goes to tell his Aunt that the guy who killed her husband is dead, and is surprised when it turns out she's not really that enthusiastic about murder. This causes him to worry enough about his fluctuating mental state that he goes to visit one of his science friends, who, despite the fact that he even admits that he's a physicist and knows nothing about alien slime biology, is very assertive when he says that it exhibits "characteristics of a symbiote." Of course, the scientific method he uses to back up this nonsensical claim consists of him sticking a small piece of the goo into a jar and then poking it with a stick, so it's easy to question the veracity of his conclusion.
This is the point in the film where director Sam Raimi was obviously too busy bathing in his gigantic bathtub full of money to care what direction the movie went in, and everything quickly turns even more unwatchable than it already was. MJ, still upset about Peter's insensitivity and uncaring attitude, as well as being a humongous whore, decides to call up Harry to find a shoulder to lean on. The two of them end up, and I swear I'm not lying here, cooking omelets while dancing around to "Twist and Shout" while giggling and staring into each others eyes. The flirting quickly turns into a passionless kiss, with both of them breaking it off at around the same time and profusely apologizing to one another while awkwardly staring at the ground. MJ leaves crying, and Harry, desperate to immerse himself back into the blissful world of magical unicorns and gumdrop fairies that he had previously inhabited, takes a swift gulp of brandy. For some reason, this has the exact opposite of the intended effect, causing all of his amnesia to go away and making him see a reflection of his father in a mirror that starts screaming at him to go kill Spider-man. The scene ends with Harry's face cracking into a sinister grin of pure evil, and the audience is left in rigid anticipation to see what kind of diabolical scheme he comes up with to enact his final revenge.
And so what does he do? Does he get Peter hopped up on ecstasy and then force him to have sex with Aunt May at gunpoint while MJ watches and pleasures herself? Does he dig up Uncle Ben's corpse and wear his skull like a hat before waking Peter up by peeing in his mouth? No! No, it's sooooo much gayer than that.
The first step in his nefarious plot involves capturing MJ and then forcing her to meet Peter in a park to break up with him, telling him that they're so over and that she's met another man. That's pretty rough, and Peter is understandably upset. But wait, it gets even more evil! Harry then meets Peter for coffee, and smugly tells him that, get this….he's the other guy! Oh shit!
Really, this is the best idea that he could come up with? That's his revenge plot? Making Peter think that he stole his girlfriend? That's not a plan worthy of a criminal mastermind, that's something I did in high school to get back at whatever football dick was dating the girl that I liked. Peter, seriously pissed off and wearing his black costume, shows up at Harry's house and then, fueled by alien slime-enhanced rage, proceeds to beat the living fuck out of him. Standing over the body of his broken foe, the true nature of his evil suit comes out and he says some really mean things about how Harry's dad totally didn't love him. Ouch. Harry, enraged at these lame taunts, summons the last of his energy and throws one of his pumpkin grenades at the back of Peters head as he walks away. Peter easily dodges the attack, and then sends the bomb hurtling back to explode right next to Harry's face.
As if the fact that Peter just attempted to murder one of his closest friends wasn't indicative enough of how much the alien suit had corrupted him, he spells it out for the slower members of the audience by brushing his formerly slicked-back hair down into his eyes, making him look not so much evil as like the keytaurist from 80's musical sensation A Flock of Seagulls. What follows is one of the worst montages that have ever been filmed in the entire history of movies. With annoying disco music blaring, Peter is shown walking down the streets of New York with his collar popped up to his ears, grinning nastily and making lewd gestures at any woman that he passes. Tobey Maguire obviously has no sense of rhythm whatsoever, so the whole thing looks like he's suffering from a mild seizure instead of anything remotely cool. He then goes into a hip clothing boutique, and emerges seconds later wearing some kind of awful swing outfit that I guess is supposed to signify how immoral he's become. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then stands in the doorway of the shop and proceeds to place his hands behind his head and furiously thrust his groin around like he's trying to dislodge a rabid wolverine that's intent on devouring his genitals. This goes on for far, far longer than it has any right to, and after the first 7 minutes or so the hilarity was starting to fade and I was just getting uncomfortable.
And then, as if the emo haircut, attempted murder, and pelvic thrusting weren't enough to convince you that Peter is heading down the dark path of iniquity, Raimi decides to hammer it in just a little bit more. Peter's science friend calls him up again to tell him that after more rigorous fake testing, he's discovered that the black goo seems to enhance certain feelings, particularly those of aggression. Thanks, Dr. Obvious. I hadn't caught on to that yet. But Raimi isn't convinced that his audience knows the black suit is evil. The American public is, after all, notorious for needing to be spoon fed even the most blatant of truths, so why not indulge their stupidity? To this end, the camera pans in for a closeup shot through a microscope, to show how the alien symbiote is acting at a molecular level. This consists of a large black dot, I guess representing one of the evil slime's cells, beating up all of the normal, small white cells around it. Thank you, Mr. Raimi. I finally understand that the costume is bad, as well as possibly racist.
Peter, however, still thinks it's great. He takes Gwen, the blonde tart he made out with earlier, to the jazz club where MJ is working as a waitress. To make MJ jealous, he hops onto the piano and plays a snazzy dance number before tapping across the bar, swinging off of a chandelier, and doing this weird little boyband routine with a chair in the middle of the dance floor. He then seductively wraps Gwen's legs around his waist and dips her slowly to the ground, all the while looking straight into a horrified MJ's eyes. Gwen, realizing she's being used like a common street whore, becomes mortified and storms out, prompting Peter to attempt a reconciliation with MJ. She, of course, is less than receptive, and an unhappy Peter takes out his aggression on one of the bouncers who tries to make him leave. As MJ attempts to pull him off of his victim, he turns around and punches her to the ground and then, horrified at what he's become, turns and runs out of the bar like a woman.
Peter finally realizes that while the suit might make it easier to talk to girls and stuff, it's really not worth it if you fly into an uncontrollable rage and beat them to a pulp before you get to have sex with them. He broods on top of a church for a while before going into the bell tower to try and remove the symbiote, but it really doesn't want to leave and fights him. Eventually, Peter is able to tear some of it off of when he accidentally stumbles into the bell, realizing that space clothing, like Chihuahuas, hate loud noises. Coincidentally, Eddie Brock is in the same church, and is praying to Jesus in the hopes He'll reach down His almighty hand and kill Peter after he revealed Brock was trying to pass off a photoshopped picture of Spider-man robbing a bank. Jesus works in mysterious ways, and responds to Brocks fervent supplication by dropping a bucketful of homicidal alien sperm onto his upturned face. Amen!
The movie's been running for a good two hours by now, and it's time for the final pointless showdown. Brock, now looking like a jacked black-suited Spider-man with a mouth full of slavering teeth, somehow finds Flint Marko and convinces him to help crush their mutually hated enemy. This, of course, makes no sense given Marko's previously misunderstood yet relatively altruistic behavior, unless he's still really pissed that Spider-man turned him into mud and flushed him down a sewer. I guess when you put it like that, it's believable. It doesn't get him any closer to curing his daughter, but I'm sure the sand that currently constitutes his body is made of at least 75% fecal matter, so I'd be angry too. They kidnap MJ and suspend the cab she's in high above the ground between two buildings, taunting Spider-man to come out and face them. Peter, despite seeing on the news that his girlfriend is in mortal peril, takes a while to actually go do anything about it. First, he pulls out his old costume and stares at it for about 10 minutes, maybe contemplating the addition of a cape. Then he goes over to Harry's house and pleads with him to help in the rescue attempt, banking on the fact that Harry will be willing to put aside their differences to rescue a girl they both love. Harry, however, turns slowly into the light, and reveals that the entire right side of his face has been horribly disfigured by Peter throwing a grenade into it earlier. Peter, once again displaying his stupidity, seems shocked by this, as if he had no idea that having an object explode right next to you could be harmful. Harry, understandably, is less than willing to help out the guy who blew off half of his face just because he tricked him into thinking he was sleeping with his girlfriend, and politely tells Peter to fuck off.
As Peter swings despondently away, nonsensical plot twist number 84 shuffles forward in the form of Harry's ancient manservant, Jeeves! I actually don't remember what his real name was, but it was typically butler-esque, like Wordsworth or Mr. Slappy or something. Jeeves then tells Harry that he's known all along that Peter had nothing to do with the death of Harry's father, because it was Jeeves himself who cleaned the late Mr. Osborn's wounds, and he was completely sure that they were caused by his own goblin flying thing! So Peter couldn't have done it, maybe! Whoa! Harry takes this shocking news surprisingly well; I know that if it had been me, the subsequent conversation would have been much different.
Me: "God, can you imagine the nerve of that guy? Coming over here and asking for my help to rescue his whore of a girlfriend? That fucker burned off half of my face! And he killed my dad! God, I hate him
soooo much!"
Jeeves: "Young master, I need to tell you something."
Me: "What is it, Jeeves? Did you forget to take your pills and get trapped in the closet again?"
Jeeves: "Not today, but thank you for asking. I've seen many a strange thing in this house, sir, and I've kept my silence as a good servant should. But I wanted to tell you that I was there the night your father died. I cleaned his wounds after making out with his corpse a little, and I can tell you for a certainty that he died because he was impaled upon his own goblin glider."
Me: "Excuse me?"
Jeeves: "That's right, young master. Based on his gaping chest wounds hours after his death, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that your friend had nothing to do with it."
Me: "And you're just telling me this shit now? After the last two years of seeing me obsess over the fact that I thought my best friend killed my dad?! Jesus! You just sat there and didn't say anything while you watched me spend hours making a flying snowboard and grenades that look like pumpkins so that I could finally enact my revenge?! Oh, and hey, you know when else this information might have been useful? Right before I made Pete think that I stole his woman and he BLEW HALF OF MY FUCKING HEAD OFF!!! What the hell is wrong with you?!
Jeeves: "Master, I…"
Me: "Jeeves, you are
so fired."
Man, that was a stupid scene. Anyway, Peter has gone off to fight the unstoppable sand mutant Marko and evil black Spider-man Brock, and is thoroughly getting his ass kicked. To be fair, the main reason that he's doing so poorly is that he constantly has to keep making sure that MJ doesn't plunge to her death, as it seems like every two seconds the webbing holding her up snaps, prompting her to scream loudly and fall a few more feet. When this movie comes out on DVD, I want to play a drinking game that involves taking a shot every time MJ shrieks during the last 45 minutes, but I'm afraid I might die of alcohol poisoning. Seriously, she doesn't stop. It's like nails grating on a chalkboard in Hell. Finally, Harry shows up in his goblin outfit, and he and Peter proceed to enact every single horrible buddy action-movie cliché in short order. Peter lovingly telling Harry that "It's good to see you, buddy" as they make up? Check. Harry telling Peter that he's "Kind of busy over here!" while facing down Marko by himself? Check. Linking arms and then swinging around to kick the opponent your friend was fighting a la Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker? Check. After about 15 minutes of flying around Marko, Harry finally remembers his Sand Monster Obliteration Missiles, which do their job and crumble Marko to dust. You might wonder why he didn't use them earlier, but don't. It'll only make your head hurt. Harry then turns to help Peter, who's being beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Brock. After a few more minutes of furious battling, Brock steals Harry's snowboard and prepares to deliver a fatal blow to Peter with its jagged edges. Things look grim for our intrepid hero, until Harry leaps out of nowhere and takes his own evil snowboard to the chest, saving Peter! Brock then unceremoniously throws Harry out of a window to crash into the ground 100 feet below them, but Peter, fueled by the rage over his friend's apparent death, gains the upper hand when he remembers that the alien slime hates loud noises. He traps Brock in a circle of steel bars, and then beats on them with another steel bar until the ringing noise is too much for the costume to bear. He pulls Brock out while the suit is going into space convulsions, and then throws a pumpkin grenade into it. Brock, not willing to lose the power and sweet revenge he was so close to obtaining, decides that his best course of action is to leap in after the bomb. This doesn't work out very well for him, and he winds up getting vaporized along with the black goo.
Whew. So, the climactic battle of good versus evil is over, with justice, as always, prevailing. Sure, there were casualties on both sides, but the important thing is that the tide of darkness that was two guys with lame vendettas against Spider-man has been averted. You'd think that the first thing Peter would do is go check on his friend who was impaled on sharp spikes and then thrown out of a building while saving his life, but no. Harry lies on the ground outside and slowly bleeds to death while Peter has a heartfelt conversation with a surprisingly un-obliterated Marko. Marko tells him that he's not really a bad guy, just misunderstood in a giant bank-robbing sand monster kind of way. Oh, and that he did shoot his uncle, but it was totally not on purpose. Peter forgives him, and Marko drifts away on the soft summer night's breeze.
So that's it. There are a few incidental mop-up events, like Harry's funeral and Peter and MJ getting back together, but the best part of the finale is when the credits start to roll. If you're a comic book fan, you'll have to see this movie just because it's Spider-man, but if you're not, I wouldn't really bother, unless you want to go and laugh at how bad it is.
