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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    Its all personal opinion. I know its just me and a couple of other village idiots around here who enjoy Spider-Man 3. Its a great movie, to me, and the arc for Harry is closed in that movie, like it or not. Harry in the comics was a troubled guy, he had issues with trust all around. Distrust for MJ was high on that scale, too. during Romita. So was jealousy for Peter. The arc for Peter and MJ is rocky and left hanging, but is still part of an arc. That it wasn't closed up, to me, just indicates that things were left open for more movies.

    hey at least Raimi had an interest. He also had good gut instincts. Just because people didn't like something does make it bad in an objective way.
    That's fair. And you aren't a village idiot for liking Spider-Man 3. I for one happen to think that Raimi's The Gift is terrific, and people hate that one generally. And I also love the Star Wars prequels and think they are legitimately great. That's probably more disreputable an opinion than being nice to SM-3.

    I do think that Spider-Man 3 did some kind of number on Raimi. After he made that, he directed just two more movies. He's done some work producing recently, including Crawl, but he hasn't directed a single movie since 2013 (when Oz the Great and Powerful, with...sigh...James Franco, bombed). And not a really good movie since Drag me to Hell in 2009.

  2. #32
    Fantastic Member mikelmcknight72's Avatar
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    For me, the first and second were great. They got far more right than not. Maguire was good, but he was my least favorite as Peter. He played Peter too whiny for my tastes, and they had him a little too prone to tears. Holland is definitely my favorite, though Garfield did a fine job too. I'll eventually pick up 1 & 2 on blu ray. If I find a good deal on the trilogy as a set, I'll own the third as well.

  3. #33
    Mighty Member Zeitgeist's Avatar
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    Spider-Man 1 was good, a solid 7. Laid some great groundwork.
    Spider-Man 2 still holds up for my money as the best Spider-Man film made and generally just one of the best of the whole superhero genre. 10/10, every available thumb, all my stars.
    Spider-Man 3 is a cautionary tale of studio meddling rather than just focusing on telling a well-balanced comprehensive story, which Sony still haven't seemed to learned a lesson from in regards to solo live action properties. An anti-climatic ending to the trilogy, which would have been served a lot better if they just removed an awkwardly inserted Venom, basically.
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  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zeitgeist View Post
    Spider-Man 3 is a cautionary tale of studio meddling rather than just focusing on telling a well-balanced comprehensive story, which Sony still haven't seemed to learned a lesson from in regards to solo live action properties. An anti-climatic ending to the trilogy, which would have been served a lot better if they just removed an awkwardly inserted Venom, basically.
    So sandman being Uncle Ben’s killer was alright with you?

  5. #35
    Astonishing Member David Walton's Avatar
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    Something people tend to forget: the reviews for Spider-Man 3 were actually decent. The consensus was that the franchise was starting to show it's age but it was still a fun film.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Walton View Post
    Something people tend to forget: the reviews for Spider-Man 3 were actually decent. The consensus was that the franchise was starting to show it's age but it was still a fun film.
    Initial reviews were good, yeah, and if you see it in a single setting, it's enjoyable in the moment but once you start thinking about the film as a whole, both in terms of characterisation, style, and casting, as well as in the overall context of the trilogy, then it falls apart.

    Spider-Man 3 is definitely a Raimi movie and has his touch, so visually it's still interesting. VFX-wise, the Sandman effects are excellent. Some of the symbiote stuff is cool looking, and still holds up all these years. It's got some cool moments so I understand why people want to like this movie.

  7. #37
    Astonishing Member David Walton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Initial reviews were good, yeah, and if you see it in a single setting, it's enjoyable in the moment but once you start thinking about the film as a whole, both in terms of characterisation, style, and casting, as well as in the overall context of the trilogy, then it falls apart.

    Spider-Man 3 is definitely a Raimi movie and has his touch, so visually it's still interesting. VFX-wise, the Sandman effects are excellent. Some of the symbiote stuff is cool looking, and still holds up all these years. It's got some cool moments so I understand why people want to like this movie.
    It's an enjoyable film. It fails to fully live up to the promise of the Harry/Peter conflict set up in SM2, but you get at least some payoff for that arc. The scene where Peter, Harry and MJ all make peace with their failures is poignant, and that shot of Peter and MJ watching the sun rise from atop the construction site is a beautiful bittersweet moment.

    Harry's confrontation with Peter at the diner and the jazz club scene feel out of place tonally, like they're part of a different film that was edited in. Yet there's a 'so bad it's almost good' quality about them that's also enjoyable on some level.

    I think maybe that's why it's reputation has diminished over time: it's the kind of film that never quite lets audiences off the hook, in the sense that it's always watchable, never irredeemably bad, but that can make it more frustrating because with a little work it could have been so much better.
    Last edited by David Walton; 02-05-2020 at 09:50 AM.

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Walton View Post
    It's an enjoyable film. It fails to fully live up to the promise of the Harry/Peter conflict set up in SM2, but you get at least some payoff for that arc. The scene where Peter, Harry and MJ all make peace with their failures is poignant, and that shot of Peter and MJ watching the sun rise from atop the construction site is a beautiful bittersweet moment.
    Agree. Wish the scenes leading up to it lifted those moments higher.

    I think maybe that's why it's reputation has diminished over time: it's the kind of film that never quite lets audiences off the hook, in the sense that it's always watchable, never irredeemably bad, but that can make it more frustrating because with a little work it could have been so much better.
    I agree. Spider-Man 3 is an example of talented people making a bad movie so it's definitely a movie that's interesting and engaging and I'll say that it's better and more interesting to see than say the mediocre and bad X-Men movies (Last Stand, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, Origins Wolverine) the weak Batman movies (Batman and Robin, Zack Snyder stuff), Superman movies (From Superman 3 onwards) and better than the weaker MCU stuff (Iron man 2, Thor 2).

    I think it was a failure of collaboration in that people had bad ideas piled on top. Introducing Venom on Sony's parts and forcing it on a guy who had no interest in that character was the major issue and the fault is equally with Sony for forcing that on Raimi and Raimi for continuing to participate on an idea he had no interest in. Then Raimi's own ideas -- i.e. retconning Sandman's origins and Peter's origins and so on -- was as bad as the studios shoehorning Venom and Gwen, as well as allowing James Franco to mug for the camera.

  9. #39
    Loony Scott Taylor's Avatar
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    As mentioned before, I find SM3 to be worth watching still after all these years. Mainly because it does manage to close the saga's character arcs in a satisfying manner. The Sandman thing is tough to live with for a comic book purist, but I think Raimi made the most of the decision. Venom was way different from the comics but he had a complete arc.

    Tonally it has some dark stuff that just doesn't land - you go from Harry's face exploding to Peter dancing in jovial fashion in the streets - Peter does a dance number and then smacks MJ - etc. Just cringy stuff!

    But, in the final analysis, it has heart.
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  10. #40
    Mighty Member Zeitgeist's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    So sandman being Uncle Ben’s killer was alright with you?
    *pulls out a giant magnifying glass, searching through my post*

    Nah, I didn't find it alright, but in the list of things I personally find wrong with the film, it's low on the list. It's definitely not an element that I find makes or breaks the overall narrative, from what I recall of the film. I was probably a bit more precious about such things back then but these days I don't find myself minding different media properties applying different interpretations to the continuity that we know from the comics - at their own risk. In this case I don't think it worked, though I can see what the writers were after, aiming to bring other threads of the film full circle, much like Harry's story.
    Last edited by Zeitgeist; 02-06-2020 at 06:35 AM.
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  11. #41
    Astonishing Member David Walton's Avatar
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    I wish they would have gone with the idea that the Osborn butler was a figment of Harry's imagination. It would have made Harry's mental state that much clearer. As it is, the butler comes across as a bit of an ass for waiting until Harry had nearly destroyed himself and the people he loved to tell him that his father's wounds were self-inflicted. Additionally, I'm not sure the butler's explanation actually lets Spidey off the hook unless you saw the way things played out. The wounds would appear the same whether Osborn himself initiated the glider accident or if Spider-Man had just taken the glider and impaled him with it. But it does make sense as a mental projection of Harry's faith in Peter.)

  12. #42
    Ultimate Member WebLurker's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Walton View Post
    I wish they would have gone with the idea that the Osborn butler was a figment of Harry's imagination. It would have made Harry's mental state that much clearer. As it is, the butler comes across as a bit of an ass for waiting until Harry had nearly destroyed himself and the people he loved to tell him that his father's wounds were self-inflicted. Additionally, I'm not sure the butler's explanation actually lets Spidey off the hook unless you saw the way things played out. The wounds would appear the same whether Osborn himself initiated the glider accident or if Spider-Man had just taken the glider and impaled him with it. But it does make sense as a mental projection of Harry's faith in Peter.)
    There is that scene in SM2, where the butler seems to be trying to quietly suggest that Harry let go of his vengeance against Spider-Man ("Your father only obsessed over his work."). If the butler was never a figment, it's possible that he kept quiet originally on the grounds that telling wouldn't do any good and didn't realize until it was too late that Harry was going to become obsessed over it and take it to the levels that he did. I agree that the logic in the butler's reasoning doesn't make that much sense. As I recall, the reedited version on the trilogy BluRay set actually removes this scene entirely.
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  13. #43
    Astonishing Member David Walton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WebLurker View Post
    There is that scene in SM2, where the butler seems to be trying to quietly suggest that Harry let go of his vengeance against Spider-Man ("Your father only obsessed over his work."). If the butler was never a figment, it's possible that he kept quiet originally on the grounds that telling wouldn't do any good and didn't realize until it was too late that Harry was going to become obsessed over it and take it to the levels that he did.
    You make a good point. Perhaps I've been unfair to the butler.

    I agree that the logic in the butler's reasoning doesn't make that much sense. As I recall, the reedited version on the trilogy BluRay set actually removes this scene entirely.
    I guess after the "Osborn butler, part-time forensic scientist" spinoff got cancelled, there was no point...

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Walton View Post
    You make a good point. Perhaps I've been unfair to the butler.



    I guess after the "Osborn butler, part-time forensic scientist" spinoff got cancelled, there was no point...
    Heh. I think the situation with the butler speaks to the glaring problem across the trilogy, a problem that can be traced to Spider-Man 1...namely Harry Osborn. The decision to make Harry Osborn a central character in the three films I think was a big mistake.
    -- Because the minute they introduced that story, there was never going to be a satisfying payoff. Obviously the set-up is that Harry will become Goblin and take over from his Dad but the problem is that in any serial super-hero series the demand will lean towards new villains coming in rather than legacies of existing villains taking over. Short of introducing Harry as the leader of a Sinister Six or Sinister Twelve there wasn't anything to do with Harry as a villain. The only way would be to make Harry Osborn the arch-villain for his own movie and make him a new goblin but that would feel like a redo and palette swap of the action of the first movie and Raimi did have a real sense that each new villain brought new kinds of action scenes which Jon Watts and other MCU directors don't really get at all.
    -- There's also problems with the way they characterized Harry. Because James Franco's Harry is frankly a terrible person, and it makes zero sense why Peter and he are friends. Harry treats Peter like trash, slaps him in the second movie in a drunken rant, and is a garbage boyfriend to MJ. There's no tragedy about this guy turning bad. If they had kept the characterization of the comics...where 616 Harry was an insecure guy trying to be cooler than he was and having a lot of resentment towards Peter it might work. But now Harry is the cool dude who helped Peter in high school (which is an issue of realism because if Peter had a friend in high school, and said friend is a rich and powerful son of a rich man, that's a little hard to believe, leave alone a rich kid going to a high school for low-income kids) and they changed the character too much, and it becomes an excuse for James Franco mugging for the camera (which is basically his entire career since then). Basically they needed to have a version of Flash Thompson in place of Harry.

    Granted this is an issue with the source material since Harry Osborn never really had a satisfying place in the stories outside of showing how cool Peter had become once he hit college, and how much of a disappointment he is to Norman, adding to his midlife crisis. But basically, Harry Osborn was miscast, weak in conception, and doomed to disappointment from the get-go. And Sam Raimi backed the wrong horse there. And again in 2013 when he reteamed with Franco for Oz the Great, and that flop sunk his career as a director.

  15. #45
    Astonishing Member David Walton's Avatar
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    I liked Harry Osborn's arc, even if it didn't quite live up to its potential.

    I don't think Harry is shown to be a terrible person, at least no more so than Peter and MJ are at certain points. They've all got their baggage. Peter, as Spider-Man, kisses MJ knowing she's in a relationship with Harry, and MJ tells Peter she's in love with him at Norman's funeral. Point being they all alternate between self-sacrifice and selfishness like most people (but with heightened soap opera sensibilities). Harry has a more problematic starting point in terms of his upbringing and fragile mental state, so you sometimes have to grade his actions on a curve. He's clearly trying to fight his demons and in the end he triumphs over them and finds his best possible self with Peter and MJ's help.

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