Spiderman 3

Was really looking forward to this movie. Actually, I was looking forward to the months of May, June and July. Other than Spiderman 3, there's Shrek 3, Pirates of the Carribean 3, Harry Potter 5 & Transformers, just to name a few! So Spiderman 3 kinda starts the entire summer movie craze.

With expectations running high, I guess you could say that it would be very hard for Spidey3 to meet them. And I think Spidey3 falls short in some areas but does meet up to the expected standards in others.

Marvel decided to give the fanboys everything. And nowadays, I am coming to the realization that more doesn't always mean better. In this case, I don't know how wise it was to have three villains in the story: Sandman, Venom & Green Goblin's son. While attempts were made to flesh out the backgrounds/characters, it was quite a rush job and you never really feel for the poor Sandman and his conflicts. Venom is supposed to be quite terrifying. But other than a few cheap shocks (you know, the sudden face grabs-jump out at you moments) and the snarly teeth pics, venom doesn't really do much more. And Green Goblin's son? Well, nothing new and interesting here. He puts on his father's costume and tries to kill Spidey for killing his dad.

The story also tries too hard to be dramatic. So much so that at times, it almost feels like watching a soap opera. It has too many coincidental moments. You know, spidey is happy, wants to propose, girl gets into bad luck, wants to tell spidey, spidey is overly excited, doesn't hear, girl gets upset, spidey gets bad news, girl comes over, spidey brushes her off, AWWWWW.... heartbreak. And the director/writer does this pretty often in this movie. So after a while, it just felt poorly directed.

OK, I'm not saying Spidey3 is a bad movie. Actually, despite the above, I still enjoyed the movie. I guess I just wished it was even better. I liked some of the action sequences. Pretty well choreographed. Effects were very good too. The scene where Sandman is born and how he tries to take his first step is very well done. (Unfortunately, after that, the effects crew decided to emulate the sand storms in Mummy Returns, so it got kinda cheesy). Venom also looked pretty good. There were some nice lighthearted moments in the movie. Peter Parker turning to the bad side (when he wore the black costume) was quite hilarious. But the thing is, it almost felt out of place coz it stared feeling very b-gradey at that point.

I think I liked Spidey 2 best. But it would be a tough fight between spidey 1 and 3. Spidey 1 had a sucky villain but it had the privilege of introducing spiderman to us. Spidey 3 had much much more action and 3 villains, but the whole movie didn't seem to gel as well.

Haha, but regardless of wat I say, I'm pretty sure half (if not all) of Singapore would probably go watch it. Have fun!