Thursday, May 10, 2007

Spiderman 3, or, Why Mrs. Dude loves irony

We went to see Spiderman 3 last night.

I liked it a smidge less than Spiderman 2, but I did like it. The special effects seemed much less fake than Spiderman 2, which is strange because some of the stuff they did was clearly done in front of a Green Screen.

Kirsten Dunst's nipples didn't make an appearance this time. I'm not sure if The Dude was sad about that or not. I was certainly relieved. I mean, you'd hope that they've got a SAG card and are getting a fair wage. Maybe if Dunst refuses to do Spiderman 4, her nipples will agree to make an appearance.

Tobey Maguire didn't do as right by Peter Parker as he did in Spiderman 2. Maybe it was because I spent most of the middle portion of the movie laughing that I didn't see him being true to Parker's emotions. Emo Tobey Maguire is funny stuff. You know how Johnny Depp modeled his Jack Sparrow after Keith Richards? I think that Tobey Maguire modeled his emo Spiderman after Pete Wentz. He was certainly rocking Wentz's eyeliner and pretty emo bangs.

My one big complaint with this movie (and really all the rest of them, too) is that it had a pacing problem. They spent a lot of time in the exposition and then had a mess to tidy up in the last half hour. I ended up wondering if this is because, in comics, you have an infinite amount of time to set the stage in a thoughtful and nuanced way that you simply don't have in movies.

Overall, I liked it. I was fun and fluffy. You should go see it and laugh at emo Spiderman.

As an aside, James Cromwell is in this movie. Cromwell has been in everything from Six Feet Under to Revenge of the Nerds to L.A. Confidential. It's staggering how many things he's been in. I know him best as Farmer Hoggett in Babe. The Dude couldn't figure out where he knew him from. We talked about it on the way home and he said that Cromwell was probably in something iconic and that he'd probably be mad at himself for not knowing it when he saw his IMDB profile. All of the sudden, The Dude turns to me and says "He was Jack's dad on 24!" I replied "something iconic, huh?"

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