Author's Notes
Hey everyone...excuse the indulgence but I thought it might be prudent - since I reposted this specifically because the real movie was released - to post an addendum with my response to the movie itself.
Except I can't, without sounding egomaniacal...aaaagh...
Oh what the hell - I thought my script was better. There. I said it. I just watched Spiderman 3 there a couple of hours ago and right now the movie is fre...well, I was gonna say fresh in my head, but I don't know that's the right phrase. Because quite a lot of it, to be honest, stank.
I'll be honest, I read reviews of movies prior to seeing them, and this was no exception. So I was privy to the early buzz which said that this installment of the Spiderman franchise (I wish everyone would stop calling it a "trilogy" - does anyone seriously expect movies which gross this much $$$$ to stop anytime soon???) wasn't up to the high standards of its predecessors.
I wasn't a huge fan of Spiderman 2. I thought the movie climaxed too early and I thought the romance stuff was hugely overblown and quite badly scripted - the "I'm standing at your doorway" MJ speech to Peter blew my mind with its lameness. But compared to Spiderman 3, I'm prepared to overlook the second movie's flaws. Because it at least it had heart. It had coherency.
Where to begin on what was wrong with S3?
Plot contrivances. Every movie needs them, doubtlessly. But none need to be as downright lazy and absurd as those I've just witnessed. In my script, I had John Jameson and his space shuttle crew encounter the symbiote on an asteroid. It overwhelmed the crew and Jameson was intent on destroying the shuttle to end the threat, only for his Dad - desperate to save his life and make a hell of a story into the bargain - to realise he had to make a deal with Spiderman to try to bring the shuttle down safely. And so we had the space shuttle landing in the middle of New York, and a symbiote-infected zombie transferring Venom to Spidey through a bite.
Now, I'm not saying that's not a fairly unlikely set of circumstances, but c'mon...surely to God it's better than "Hey I know. Let's have a meteor with the symbiote land thirty feet from NY's only known superhero and attach to his bike. End of story."
Harry's amnesia. They may as well have ran a prologue Star Wars style which said "look, we're kinda regretting our decision now to have Harry unmask Pete in the last movie - so here's a way we can push the reset button for an hour or so and stretch out the running time of this one". I can see no other point. Harry's journey of revenge was, I thought, easily compelling enough to make him the main villain of S3 - which he was in my script, surpassed only by Black Suit Spidey himself (more on that later).
Speaking of stretching the running time - figure this: apparently I've just watched the most expensive movie ever made. Silly money has been chucked at this picture. And yet for what seemed like wayyyyy too much of my time I was sitting there watching uninspired dreck like MJ's career woes (who cares???), more of Aunt May's dewy-eyed remembrances (I'm not against these, I just wish they'd been trimmed a little) and most damningly of all, the whole MJ-Harry-Pete triangle subplot which was utter, utter rubbish. I chose to tackle that particular point by having Harry's realisation that MJ and Pete are an item be his catalyst to transform to the Goblin. I can't believe Sam Raimi missed that opportunity and instead favoured clock-expanding silliness of MJ and Harry dancing whilst cooking. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Speaking of Harry's transformation to the Goblin (I'm on a roll now) - had everyone forgotten that Norman Osborn, whilst not exactly father of the year, was a decent man until his experimentation with the green vapour? It was what was within that gas that triggered his schizophrenic decline into Goblin-hood. Harry seems to slide into villainy with all his marbles intact, and come back from it after a heart-to-heart with Mr Conveniently-Timed Speech Butler Fella none the worse for wear mentally.
Eddie Brock and Venom - again, I'm gonna seem biased here, but I thought this would have been handled a lot better if we'd had only the build-up to the belltower scene in this movie and had Venom held back for a movie all his own. Venom is amazing. He's the dark Spidey, the antithesis, the nemesis, everything Spiderman is and everything he isn't, and yet what fascinated me (and what I would have explored had I ever written a sequel to my script) was that he still protected the innocent, albeit violently - his vendetta extended only to Spiderman. Amazing premise for a villain, and yet his role in this movie comprised of what boils down to an extended cameo. Absolutely heartbreaking, all the more so because I thought Topher Grace was very good in the role - he would have made a great Venom, had he been given more screen time.
Instead, we had Sandman's story sprinkled liberally throughout. Can't fault THC's performance too much - thought he was perfectly fine - but Sandman isn't a compelling villain to me, and absolutely Raimi and co. thought so too - hence the "sick daughter" motivation tacked on. I also have a problem with Sandman's powers - they're too undefined, and too potentially powerful to make an effective villain. He might have done okay as a villain if he'd been given centre stage alone (I doubt it) but he wasn't; he was shunted aside every few minutes to make way for the clamouring crowd of subplots the movie was trying to bottleneck throughout - and yet, despite this gridlock of plotlines, somehow the movie felt far too often that not a lot was happening I cared about. I don't know if anyone else felt the same way.
I could write a little more but I think I've covered the important stuff. As I say I might come across as egotistical but I do honestly believe my script would have made a more compelling movie - I thought mine had a little less in the way of unlikely plot and a little more time spent on properly showing us the effect of the symbiote on Peter beyond him doing song and dance numbers in a jazz club. And what was with the symbiote becoming just a suit willing to be stored in a trunk???? This is a living breathing organism we should be talking about here. Once bonded to Pete it should never have come off; the cartoon series had it also granting Pete appearance-shifting powers, something that could have been amazingly realised on screen and something which, again, was ignored in favour of missed phone calls and hollow angst over you're-too-good-for-her-anyway-Pete and MJ's relationship.
Well that's my two...er...better make that fifty cents actually, as I seem to have rambled on somewhat. Feel free to continue to R&R and let me know if I'm talking through my ass :)