Spider-Man 3
Directed by Sam Raimi
It’s 12:21 A.M. on Friday morning, May 4, and at last the words “Feature Presentation” appear on the movie theater screen. The movie was supposed to begin at 12:01 A.M., but of course there were 20 minutes of previews. No matter that we’re there after midnight in order to witness the first public viewing of Spider-Man 3, which ought to spare us the endless onslaught of coming attractions. We are still forced to sit through trailers for Rush Hour 3 (it’s set in Paris!) and The Bourne Ultimatum (the amnesiac special agent recovers his identity!) and five or six other movies made specifically to cater to the tastes of males between the ages of 12 and 24.
This is Hollywood’s preferred target audience and the only reliable source of in-theater moviegoers left in America, and since Hollywood hopes every one of those moviegoers will be seeing Spider-Man 3 by the end of next weekend, it is going to take advantage of its captive audience no matter the time.
A baby burbles and coos. Yes, someone has brought a six-month-old to a midnight showing of Spider-Man 3. I briefly consider calling Children’s Services on my cell phone, but my guess is that the parent thinks he’s doing something special for the young one to bring him to this historic first showing of a movie that will show up on the TNT cable channel every two weeks by the time the baby is six.
During the brief gap between the “Feature Presentation” logo and the beginning of the movie, the screen goes black. “Peter Parker!” a young man shouts, invoking the name of Spider-Man’s alter ego. “Yeah!” someone else responds. But there isn’t much energy to their call-and-response. This doesn’t feel like one of those electric moviegoing experiences that has its audience buzzing with prospective excitement.
The audience seems, oddly, more dutiful than thrilled. Its members are doing what they believe they are supposed to do. They are greeting the third film in the most successful superhero movie series in motion-picture history just as they greeted the arrival of the first Spider-Man movie five years ago. Their attendance tonight indicates that they are grateful consumers. The two previous Spider-Man pictures were exceptionally good and emotionally satisfying popcorn movies–the sequel, especially–and the series has earned their support.
It also indicates they are lemmings. Sony Pictures needs them to line up and do their part to create the impression that the movie is such a monster hit people simply have to see it–and see it again and again. Sony has ponied up as much as $350 million to make and market Spider-Man 3. It is the most expensive movie ever, the first to top the cost of 1963’s Cleopatra in constant dollars. (Cleopatra is the source of the greatest movie-set anecdote ever, though it might be apocryphal. Filming went on so long at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, the story goes, that somewhere around the ninth month a minor actress supposedly demanded, “Who do I have to sleep with to get off this picture?”)
Even though preopening surveys revealed that an astounding number of moviegoers were aware that Spider-Man 3 was coming soon, Sony has broken the bank advertising it. It can’t afford to take chances. This movie must have the biggest opening weekend in movie history–outdoing Pirates of the Caribbean 2‘s $135 million—or the negative buzz will begin spreading outward from the blogs to Entertainment Tonight and then drift into the common conversation and infect its box office future like a deadly virus.
Despite reports earlier in the week that the movie is doing huge business outside the United States, Sony has reason for concern. The prerelease reviews haven’t been very good, in distinct contrast to the justifiably enthusiastic reception for Spider-Man 2, easily the best entry in the superhero genre.
Director Sam Raimi and his co-screenwriters Alvin Sargent and Ivan Raimi have decided that Spider-Man 3 will have more of everything. The first two movies had one villain each. Spider-Man 3 has three, and has two fight scenes with each villain and a climactic battle that involves all of them. That’s seven fight scenes in all. That’s a lot of fight scenes.
The first two movies both had a scene in which a woman falls through the air and is caught by Spider-Man. Spider-Man 3 has two such scenes. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) mooned over the beauteous Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) in the first two. Here he moons over Mary Jane, has a fling with his college lab partner, and flirts with two other potential love interests.
There’s so much plot and incident in Spider-Man 3 that it’s kind of a miracle it only lasts two hours and 20 minutes. Several of the superhero battles are really stunning, particularly one in which Spider-Man goes at it with a villain made of sand in an underground grotto filled with subway tunnels and tracks. And yet the movie is enchanting and memorable in the manner of its predecessors when it gets quiet, loopy, and silly.
There’s a wonderful bit straight out of 1930s screwball comedy in which Peter Parker must deal with an officious French maître d’ (played by the peerlessly lantern-jawed character actor Bruce Campbell). A sequence during which Peter turns into a vainglorious jerk is similarly delightful. The emotional kick in the Spider-Man series is that no matter what feats of strength Spider-Man performs, Peter Parker is still a goofy, nerdy boy. He’s lovable not because he’s a hero but because, at root, he is and will always be an awkward teenager.
Alas, there’s nowhere near enough of the goofy stuff, and too much conflicted superhero stuff, and the audience at this midnight show feels it. Peter Parker cries at the end of the movie’s climactic scene, and my fellow moviegoers respond not with empathy but with mocking laughter. Nobody was laughing at Peter Parker during the first two Spider-Mans.
Spider-Man 3 gets the job done. It’s a decent piece of work, and it has one superb performance (by Thomas Haden Church as a mournful crook). But as the crowd files out at 2:41 A.M., I don’t get the sense they’ll be in line at midnight for Spider-Man 4.
John Podhoretz, columnist for the New York Post, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD‘s movie critic.
