About Heroes

Well, my first official post! I feel like I’ve been officially ‘cousined’ into the Aboutheroes family! Woo! I have posting abilities! Aaaaanyway, I was fortunate enough to get into a press screening for Spider-Man 3 on April 18. It’s really hard to do this, in all honesty, but I must in order to try and help you through the trials and tribulations coming your way in two short weeks.

To start, I’ll just say that I was super excited to see this movie. I knew in my heart like 2 years ago that this would be the movie where my favorite comic character (Venom) would debut. As of Comicon 06, my hopes and dreams came true. We were gonna have a movie with Venom. Time passed and soon they released the trailer for the movie, and I dropped my nerdsticle (the equivalent of coming into true nerdhood in nerd terminology, much like having a first crush when you’re a teenager). Then we saw some Venom footage here and there and the hype started and I bought the slurpee cup and before I knew it, I was caught up in the whirlwind of Spidey 3 mania. This is a dangerous place for any movie. I encourage you to do the following whenever you find yourself in a situation like I have. If ever you find yourself in a spot where the movie you’re about to see is something you’re dead certain you’re gonna love, please stop and imagine what it would be like if it sucked complete ass, just so that if it ever actually does happen, you’re prepared. As you might have guessed by now, this happened with me. This movie was, in a word, disappointing. It was a bit of a rollercoaster, with a lot of ups and downs until about 75% of the way through, when finally, the movie lost me. But I’m getting ahead of myself already. Let me just do a brief over view and then we can get into the nitty gritty gripes ‘o’ mine.

The movie starts with Spidey on top of the world. Everyone in New York loves him, including MJ, who he plans on proposing to in the near future. The only thing going against Peter in the beginning of the movie is the fact that Harry is pissed and crazing up on the Goblin-Juice. Well any Spidey fan worth his weight in protective boards knows that if Spidey’s loving life, he’s about to get the rug pulled out from underneath him and fall into a pit of angsty self-loathing shit. The only thing is, usually it’s because some outside influence dicks with his life, not himself just being a complete fucktard. Forgive me if I’m a little vague in this review, but I want to make it as spoiler-free as possible, with only a few examples of the depravity this movie displays just to give you an idea of what you’re in store for. Sandman gets thrown into the mix as well, but honestly, aside from some weird movie-verse retconning of the uncle Ben death-story, it’s of no importance. Really, this movie was a complete clusterfuck. I’ll give you the break-down of what happened. Sam Raimi said “Yeah, I wanna do Spidey 3, and I wanna have Sandman be the villain!” and fans RAVED that they wanted Venom, so he met them halfway by having both and wrapping up the Peter / Harry relationship.

Each story (Sandman aside, in my own humble opinion) is a complete story in and of itself, but they decided to dice them all up and make them one big story. There’s Sandman, who’s made into a villain with a heart of gold, Harry, who’s spends half his screen-time literally acting like he’s mentally challenged, but still, the meat of the story lies with Harry on this venture. And finally, at the end of the movie, Sam Raimi effectively walks on screen and pulls Venom right out of his ass-hole, smiles at the audience, and mouths the words “I hope you’re all happy.” Eddie Brock is a douchebag paparazzi who gets what’s coming to him here and there, but never really has any reason to get homicidal, but does anyway. The Venom / Sandman team-up (you knew it would happen, don’t call spoiler on me about that) is retarded. I hoped it would fall along the lines of ‘Hey, I see you’re beating the crap out of Spider-Man! I hate Spider-Man! I’ll help!’ Sadly, it falls under the lame, tired, age-old villain team-up that was more along the lines of ‘Hey, I’ve been looking for you. Let’s beat up Spidey’ followed by an ‘Ok.’ LAAAAAAME. All the while, Parker is being an Emo Dickface. The costume makes him do some CRAAAAAZY shit, and I’m not talking almost killing Firelord here, I’m talking Song and Dance sequence all while being an insane asshole and blowing up Harry’s face (that part’s in the trailers, so it doesn’t count as a spoiler), I shit thee not. There’s a ton of other moments where Pete’s acting ‘out of character’ because of the black costume, but goddamn if it didn’t just make me want to scratch my eyes out. There’s a difference between a guy being a little more impulsive / violent than he usually is, and the same guy being a complete inconsiderate asshole acting like he’s a fucking pimp straight out of a 70’s blacksploitation movie with a 50’s ‘cool guy’ personality twist and awful emo hair to top it off.

The whole movie felt like a disjointed limb that kinda fell off the previous Spidey Movies, that had all the same genetic properties of it’s host, but a weird personality disorder / autism thing going on. Suffice to say, plot-wise, this thing is a motherfucking Frankenstein with bits and pieces here and there where you know where the stories begin and end, but it feels like there’s a lot of vital organs left out of the thing, and maybe a few animal parts mixed in just to try and thicken it up a bit. I tell you all of this with two hopes in my mind. One, I want to prepare you for what I think will be a disappointment for just about any Spidey fans out there, and I want to lower your expectations a lot in an attempt to get you more tuned to the type of movie you’re going to see instead of expecting another movie of the same caliber of the first two films.

Here’s the part where after giving you the bad news (and for me, there’s a lot), I give you the good news as a consolation prize. The movie has sweet action sequences. The special effects are pretty stellar and they helped carry the movie a lot farther than it should have gone. Venom looks freaking amazing. Sandman (especially the scene where he first realizes he’s made of sand) is stunning, and the Glider action is excellent. The web-slinging is like it always was, fun. My advice to you is to bite your lip through the sillyness of the story and just fill up as much as you can on the action scenes and special effects. Sorry to kill any dreams you might have had, but this movie falls short of it’s predecessors. It’s still worth seeing though, if you’re anything like me. Just prepare yourself and walk in with low expectations. Unless you're Spider-Ben, in which case, nothing I say or do will stop you from drooling all over this movie. The rest of you might want to do what I did and run home and dive into your Ultimate Spider-Man bins to make you feel better.

In summary, all you need to know are the following words / phrases: Emo hair. Song and Dance sequence. 3 plots mashed up in one. Cool action scenes and special effects. Douchebag. Butthole. Sorry. C-