SPIDER-MAN 3: Where Do All These Guys Come From?

Special Note: The paperback version of ATOMIC REACTIONS: MARVEL COMICS ON FILM is now available for purchase at Amazon. Taken from my reviews here, MARVEL COMICS ON FILM contains every single one of my Marvel reviews, and covers every single instance of Marvel Comics on film.

 

 

Spider-Man 3 (2007) – Directed by Sam Raimi – Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, James Cromwell, Rosemary Harris, J. K. Simmons, Bill Nunn, Elizabeth Banks, Dylan Baker, Cliff Robertson, Stan Lee, Bruce Campbell, and Willem Dafoe.

After creating one of the very best superhero movies of all time with SPIDER-MAN 2, Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Company come back to deliver one of the all-time stinkers.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment where SPIDER-MAN 3 turns to crud because there’s no one singular moment. The film starts off perfectly fine for a few scenes and then … then Harry shows up as the Goblin in Black to kill Spidey, gets amnesia, and … well, before the film is over, we’ve got Assh*le Peter dancing at a club with Gwen Stacy to rub it in Mary Jane’s face and …

How does this crap make it onto the screen?

It’s amazing to me that this film franchise could go so amazingly off track in one film’s time. Almost as amazing as the fact that Topher Grace is no more than the fifth or sixth dumbest thing in the film. As the saying goes, you have to work godd*amn hard to be this awful.

It’s the slow, gradual fall that makes SPIDER-MAN 3 stand out. When the film opens, we’ve got Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) on Broadway, Harry Osborn (James Franco) plotting his revenge against Peter/Spidey (Tobey Maguire), and Peter thinking of asking MJ for her hand in marriage. Of course, things can’t stay good because we need some dramatic conflict to justify all that popcorn and Diet Coke we’ve shelled out for, and so Sam Raimi decides to dump all manner of nonsense into Peter’s life.

First, we’ve got the Harry Osborn/The New Goblin (honestly, that’s what the credits call him – the New Goblin …) subplot coming down on Peter. They have a rather lame fight across the city. Harry’s changed the Goblin Glider from something that looks bad-ass into something that looks like the X Games’ ugliest snowboard. Pete ends up knocking Harry for a loop and his best friend goes crashing to the Earth. He ends up in the hospital where he gets a Plot Contrivance in the form of short term amnesia. I know, right? It’s a total convenience the film comes up with so it doesn’t have to deal with Harry being mad at Peter for the first hour of the film. It’s lame and it’s terrible but we’re still barely 20 minutes in, and SPIDER-MAN 2 is still ringing in my head, so I’m willing to give the film this bit of hack in the hopes it improves.

Astonishingly, it doesn’t.

Without knowing what else to do with Mary Jane, Raimi knocks her back down to square one. She gets fired from her Broadway gig because all the critics hate her, and the only job she can get is a singer-slash-waitress at a jazz club. Of course, she doesn’t tell Peter about this because he’s all, “Don’t let critics get you down, MJ. I know what that’s like, because the papers hate Spider-Man and blah blah blah.” The real reason MJ doesn’t tell Peter, of course, is that no one ever tells anyone anything in these Raimi SPIDER-MAN movies until after all possible damage has been done.

With Harry’s revenge quest sidelined, we’ve got room for the other two villainous subplots: the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and the Venom symbiote.

Well, kinda. The Venom symbiote crashes to Earth, hitches a ride home with Peter and MJ, and then waits around for half the freaking movie to make its move. I almost forget about him but then there’s some weird shot of the symbiote lurking around Peter’s crummy apartment. Speaking of which – if Peter is all about making responsible choices, why didn’t he move back in with Aunt May and put his rent towards her keeping her house?

The Sandman plot is more promising as Flint Marko is a crook trying to raise money so his daughter can have surgery. It’s a strong angle. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t do anything with it. It’s almost like they picked this back story because they don’t think Church can act without a blank look of dumbness on his face. Which is not true because I’ve seen Wings. Yup, a Wings reference because they asked Church to provide more acting there than they do here.

It’s a shame because Church is a good actor and the Sandman angle is a good one. But all we get is a touching scene where his wife (Theresa Russell) kicks him out of their apartment when he comes to visit after he busts out of jail. Then he gets turned into the Sandman. Then he robs bank trucks and fights with Spider-Man.

The fight scenes are all rather lame, especially compared to the fantastic fight scenes in SPIDER-MAN 2. Part of it is the choice of villain – the Sandman is made of sand so Peter keeps fighting blowing rocks. Sometimes the rocks are really tall. Sometimes the rocks are really small. Sometimes the rocks make Spider-Man fall. Sometimes the rocks are like punching a wall. And almost always the rocks just don’t work.

There’s even another villainous subplot with Peter’s new rival photographer at the Bugle, Eddie Brock (Topher Grace). Grace was perfectly fine on That ’70s Show, playing a likable dweeb who gets the hot girl who’s way out of his league to go out with him, but he’s awful as the total jerk. Every scene he’s in until Peter busts him for being a photography fraud is full of, “Hey guys, I’m ACTING!”

When Venom finally makes his move and turns Spidey’s suit black, it’s done just to make Peter transform into Assh*le Peter, and it’s painful and tedious to watch.

It does, however, lead to the one of the two genuinely nice scenes in the movie. Peter is still living in the same apartment, and he’s got the same landlord, Mr. Ditkovitch (Elya Baskin). Mr. Ditkovitch is always giving Peter a hard time about being late with his rent, and when he starts in again this time around, Peter explodes at him, telling him he’ll get his rent money after he fixes the gosh darn door. Peter storms into his apartment and Ditkovitch’s daughter Ursula (Mageina Tovah) says that wasn’t a nice thing for him to do, but Ditkovitch actually stands up for Peter. “He’s a nice boy,” he says. “There must be something bothering him.” It’s a really nice moment to see that the landlord has genuine affection for Peter and is willing to cut him some slack.

Of course, it makes Peter’s decision to use Ursula later in the movie for milk and cookies seem all the more scummy. Which is maybe the point. Well, great, I still don’t want to watch it.

The other genuinely nice moment in the film comes from Bernard, the Osborn butler (played by John Paxton, father of Bill). He’s been lurking in the background, but now, after Peter comes to Harry for help and Harry tells him to go pound sand (get it?), Bernard steps in and plays Alfred, telling Harry he loved his father and he loves him and he’s seen lots of stuff in this house and that Peter definitely did not kill Norman.

This leads to Harry donning the New Goblin costume and going to help Peter fight the Sandman/Venom duo. It’s another silly fight and as thanks for doing the right thing and helping Peter, Harry dies.

Shoulda stayed home, Harry.

Peter ends up reconciling with MJ, though he never comes out and says, “Sorry for smacking you in the face,” but it’s a quiet, dour end to the film. We go through all this nonsense and all this melodrama, and this is how Raimi chooses to end his trilogy? With a funeral for Harry and a limp hug in a jazz bar?

Ugh, ugh, a thousand ughs. SPIDER-MAN 3 starts off strong and becomes nearly unbearable to watch. It’s painful and tedious, full of dumb moments and forced melodrama. There’s too many villains and not enough time devoted to them. There’s Peter acting like a dick (even before the symbiote latches onto him), and MJ regressing, and Harry with amnesia. It’s all so … so tough to watch. There’s no sense of fun or real dramatic conflict. Everything feels forced and lame.

And until Avengers came along, it was the highest grossing Marvel movie.

Go figure. It’s a terrible movie but it brought in the big cake, so … congratulations? It’s the one Spider-Man movie I’ve never bought and the one Spider-Man movie I have no intention of buying.

JOHN CARTER: Of Mars

John Carter (2012) – Directed by Andrew Stanton – Starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Willem Dafoe, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, Thomas Haden Church, David Schwimmer, Jon Favreau, and Art Malik.

It will be years before we have a true assessment of JOHN CARTER. Right now, in the final throes of its theatrical run, the film is caught between the media doomsayers who were quick to decry Disney’s $250 million production an epic bomb and a branch of sci-fi fandom who’ve rushed to counter the media’s negative over-reaction with an equally strong positive push, heralding JOHN CARTER as some kind of all-time epic that people are missing because Disney’s marketing arm created a bad marketing campaign and delivered limp trailers.

I’m not here to think for anyone when it comes to their enjoyment of this movie. The whole world is free to love JOHN CARTER or hate JOHN CARTER. I am here simply to tell you what I think of the film, which is this:

I’m rather confounded about the reaction of both camps: JOHN CARTER is certainly a disappointment in terms of its American box office performance, but when one takes the international haul into account the film has already made back its $250 million budget. You can be a disappointment with that kind of net (studios make films to make lots of money, not barely make back their production costs), but you really can’t ask, as Entertainment Weekly did, “How big of a box office bomb is JOHN CARTER?” unless you’ve either got some kind of ax to grind or are committed to a false narrative.

For those who have insisted to me that this film is a wondrous cinematic achievement, I’m at a loss, as well. JOHN CARTER is a good film that at times is a very good film but at others is a beautiful looking mess. Director Andrew Stanton is helming a live action movie for the first time and while he gets all the shots he needs, his storytelling abilities that served him so well in WALL-E and Finding Nemo have abandoned him here. (Stanton also reportedly had much to do with the marketing campaign, so if you’re inclined to praise his film you should be willing to dog his marketing sensibilities.)

Watching JOHN CARTER is a bit like listening to a band of talented musicians play a familiar song for the first time together – it’s a little rough at the start but once they feel each other out, it comes together for a strong finish. I have to admit, though, that as enjoyable as the John Carter/Deja Thoris (Taylor Kitsch/Lynn Collins) relationship is to watch, as good as the action sequences are, as much humor as there is in the film, and as truly wondrous a creation as Woola is, JOHN CARTER is too often akin to the film’s white apes: a large, lumbering, loud beast without a proper sense of refinement.

In both WALL-E and Finding Nemo, Stanton kept his story focused on a one-on-one relationship and let the adventure build around that relationship and let his plot push forward because of that relationship. Such is not the case in JOHN CARTER. Stanton attempts no less than 4 of these one-on-one partnerships: John and Tars Tarkas (Willen Dafoe), John and Sola (Samantha Morton), John and Woola, and John and Deja. This is a heck of a lot of one-on-one bonding for a guy who insists throughout the over-long opening sequence that he just wants to be left alone.

JOHN CARTER’s biggest failure is that it spends too much time with the pre-Mars sequence. Admittedly, this time spent is rewarded at the end of the film, as CARTER uses John’s death in 1881 as a highly effective framing device, but as a result of spending so much time in the present, three of the relationships in the center of the film (with Tars Tarkas, Sola, and Woola) suffer from under-development.

The movie opens in 1881. Edgar “Ned” Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara) is called to his Uncle John’s funeral at his estate in Richmond. John Carter was a very rich man and died suddenly and Edgar gets everything and there’s a journal and we flash back to John’s adventures in the west looking for gold and dear lord would you please get to freaking Mars already!

It goes on and on and on, and it’s not bad but it’s not going anywhere, either. We get a funny bit when John has been captured by Colonel Powell (Bryan Cranston) and John continually tries to escape, but it doesn’t go anywhere significant. I get that it’s establishing that John is a man who’s not interested in fighting anymore, which makes his decision to help Deja a bigger deal, but really, the only part of John’s pre-Mars life that we absolutely need to see is covered during flashbacks on Barsoom when we see his dead wife and child. Everything else is just eating up time I’d rather Stanton had spent on Mars, establishing and building relationship with Tars Tarkas, Sola, and Woola.

Instead, all three of these relationships are rushed and under-developed. The movie provides little evidence of Tars Tarkas and John bonding. We’re just starting to get to know them when the armies of Helium and Zodanga show up and John goes bounding off to save/impress Deja, which is almost immediately followed by Tars helping John, Sola, and Deja escape out the back of his tent to save them from Tars Hajus (Thomas Haden Church). The whole sequence with the Tharks feels like a series of greatest hits instead of a developed story; it’s like we’re getting all the emotional beats without getting any of the emotional foundation that makes those emotional beats resonate.

For instance, there’s no proper build-up of Sola and John bonding, and no proper introduction of Woola.

It’s a shame because Woola is simply awesome. A kind of big Martian dog, Woola is super fast and super loyal to John but he just appears out of nowhere and he’s continually used as an afterthought or side bit instead of having a real relationship develop.

Once John, Sola, Deja, and Woola hit the road, however, things start to come together, driven by the Therns. The Therns are bald guys in robes who can change shape and manipulate life on Mars. They’ve christened Sab Than (Dominic West) as the man to lead Barsoom into a new era, and Sab Than is determined to marry Deja in order to unite Barsoom’s two main cities. The Thern leader Matai Shang (Mark Strong) is always around Sab, and with Sab we finally get a villain in the film that gives John’s stories – his quest to get home and his desire for Deja – some real weight to it.

John saves the day in a big fight scene that breaks up Sab and Deja’s wedding, but Shang gets the last word as he banishes John back to Earth after John has foolishly discarded his special interplanetary teleportation medallion. John’s exile leads to the best part of the film, as we see, in flashback, John’s 10-year search for another medallion on Earth, which leads to him using his faked death to get a Thern to show up so he can kill him and steal the Thern’s medallion in order to go back to Barsoom.

JOHN CARTER keeps getting better and that’s a commendable accomplishment, but the pacing and emphasis in the first half really cripples the film for me. The acting here is solid but completely interchangeable; Kitsch, Collins, Strong, West, and James Purefoy are all good but with the exception of Collins you could pull them out and drop any other actor in their range into this role and it wouldn’t change anything. That’s not to say they aren’t good, but I didn’t find any of them to be all that memorable.

What is evident throughout the film, however, is that every single frame of JOHN CARTER feels lovingly put together by Stanton and the actors, and that makes me root for the film. Kitsch is very limited as an actor, but you can see him giving everything in his performance and when Collins speaks of Barsoom I feel like she’s talking about a very real place. I want JOHN CARTER to be a magnificent and epic achievement, but it just never advances to that level. For all of the problems in the first half, it does become a highly enjoyable film in its final half, even if it does cram too much stuff into too small a space. Where the first half of the film takes forever to get going, the back half needs a few more narrative pauses. Maybe there’s a 3 or 4 hour cut of this film that we’ll get to see someday that will give everything its proper time and space and the relationships between John and the various Tharks will develop a bit more organically.

As I mentioned, I’m not here to question your love of JOHN CARTER, but I wonder if some of the fierce defense of this film comes from the love most of us have for Burroughs’ Barsoom novels. Those of us who like comic books and sci-fi and fantasy have seen our loves rule the box office over the last decade and it stings a bit to see JOHN CARTER called out for being derivative of other films when we know those stories are derivative of Burroughs’ fiction. For me, JOHN CARTER is an uneven film that becomes enjoyable only after John, Deja, Sola, and Woola hit the road together and after Shang kidnaps John and the deep back story of the Therns is revealed. From then on, JOHN CARTER is a really good movie about a guy coming into his own and finding a reason to live after the death of his wife. “No longer John Carter of Earth,” he tells us in narration, “but John Carter of Mars.”

Good ending. Unfortunately, it just takes too darn long to get there for me and while I want to love it, I can’t do more than like it.