Welcome to Rearview Mirror, a monthly movie column in which I re-view and then re-review a movie I have already seen under the new (and improved?) critical lens of 2022. I’m so happy you’re here.
In the 30 Rock episode “Queen of Jordan,” comic book nerd Frank explains to his former lover (and former teacher), who’s been in prison for the past decade or two, what she missed: “They kept remaking The Hulk, and it kept getting worse.”
That’s kind of how I feel about Spider-Man. Not that it’s getting “worse,” per se, but it’s getting less interesting and far less important. When I was a youth, Sam Raimi’s Spidey films were it. The upside-down kiss in the first inspired imitators. The soundtrack to the second inspired a t-shirt. The villains were so iconic that Far From Home brought them back. Can we really say the same for the cultural cache of the ASM movies? Sure, Emma and Andrew were cute, but did they have Peter going Full Weirdo and reciting poetry? Tom Holland: Everyone loves him, and I’m sure not going to disagree! But at the end of the day he’s still just a charming cog in the greater Marvel machine. No, I maintain that the cultural cache of those first two Tobey Maguire movies remains unmatched. And then there’s the third one. Which I will get to. In a sec.
But can we quickly go back 20 years? The nation is still reeling from 9/11, and we haven’t gotten sick of our tent poles yet. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter dominate the box office, X-Man has made superheroes cool again, and then in swings Spider-Man, a stylized, brightly colored, satisfying origin story that pleases nerds and newbies alike. Two years later, the sequel, and guess what? It’s even better! Everything is working. Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina lend their gravitas to the villains, Kirsten Dunst is appropriately sparkly, we don’t know yet that James Franco and Tobey Maguire are not great people, all is well.
Moreover, those first two movies cover a more or less complete arc for Peter. He wins, loses, and re-wins Mary Jane; tries and fails to amend his relationship with Harry; fesses up about Uncle Ben’s death to Aunt May; quits being Spider-Man, then realizes he has to be Spider-Man; we get a lot of J.K. Simmons; they very well could have left it there. The mask moment on the train! The power-up montage! What a picture(s).
But. OK, so here’s the plot of Spider-Man 3, I think: Mary-Jane’s career is on the skids, which Peter is blind to because he’s high on his own supply of Spidey adoration. Still, he loves her and wants to propose. Meanwhile, convict Flint Marko escapes from Rikers and falls into some kind of particle accelerator which turns him into Sandman (Sand-man, Saaaand-man, does whatever a sand-man sand). The cops are looking for him. We know this because when he visits his sick daughter, his estranged wife tells him, “You are an escaped convict. The cops are looking for you.” Meanwhile Eddie Brock is gunning for Peter’s photography gig while nursing an unrequited crush on Gwen Stacy (the utterly charmless Bryce Dallas Howard), who is the police chief’s daughter and also a model and also in Peter’s science class. Gwen has a crush on Spider-Man after he rescues her from a collapsing skyscraper.
Venom hangs out in Peter’s apartment until the plot calls for it to take over his brain and trigger his much-maligned Emo Phase, when he wears a dark suit, gets a bad haircut, and is generally a dick and everyone hates him. Venom also makes him good at jazz piano for some reason.
Meanwhile, Harry still thinks Spider-Man/Peter killed his dad, so he makes himself a Goblin suit and taunts his former best friend, but their fight ends in Harry getting bonked on the head and losing his memory and becoming nice again, leading to flirtation with MJ. Oh, also, it turns out Peter and that thief he kinda killed aren’t the only people responsible for Uncle Ben’s death; Flint was the mastermind behind the hijacking, so obviously Peter is pretty pissed about that, and also very introspective. And this leads to his darker nature taking over. Kidding, the Venom symbiote just kinda appears after a tiny meteor crashes in New York, like, it’s just…from space! And it hangs out in Peter’s apartment until the plot calls for it to take over his brain and trigger his much-maligned Emo Phase, when he wears a dark suit, gets a bad haircut, and is generally a dick and everyone hates him. Venom also makes him good at jazz piano for some reason.
Now Spidey is wearing a black suit and people hate him for some reason, and also, maybe he quit being Spider-man? Unclear. Harry gets his memory back, steals MJ, and Peter’s like, well this is too much, I gotta stop being Venom! Also, he thinks he killed Flint, and Aunt May is like, that’s not what Uncle Ben would have wanted. Also, Peter gets Eddie fired for doing plagiarism! So Peter gets rid of Venom by ringing a big bell in a church, and for some reason, Eddie recognizes his voice from just his anguished yells, even though he didn’t seem to recognize his voice when he was having a full-on conversation with Spider-Man, but I guess it’s not easy to reconcile the fact that Peter is a superhero, so fine.
So now Eddie is Venom, and he teams up with Sandman to kidnap Mary Jane so that they can kill their mutual enemy, Spider-Man, and Spidey asks for Harry’s help and he’s like, no, and then his butler is like, by the way your dad definitely died via his glider it wasn’t Spider-Man’s fault at all, which would have been really helpful information like two movies ago, literally why did the butler not mention this earlier, so then Harry’s like, fine, and he helps Spider-Man rescue MJ and obviously dies in the process and you realize that this movie is kind of about Peter and Harry’s bromance. Peter uses tuning fork science to get Venom out of Eddie, but Eddie would rather be evil than alive, and then Peter forgives Sandman and Sandman sands away into the air, and actually he wasn’t necessary for the plot at all, turns out.
If it seems like all of these elements could have worked, but there are perhaps a few too many to be properly developed and explored in one movie, well, yeah! There are tonal and pacing problems throughout, and while the Emo Sequence is much funnier than people give it credit for now (the cringe is intentional, people), the whole thing feels like two steps forward, one step back, a retread of previous themes rather than closure. It’s still far more entertaining than much of the dreck that’s been made since, and I can only imagine the hot mess Marvel would have made of it. They certainly would have given MJ an out-of-character superpower moment, spun Harry off into a Loki-esque limited series about vengeance, plopped Gwen into another dimension where she can…OK, guess I gotta talk about the new stuff.
There’s too much Spider-Man. Way too much. There’s a multiverse movie and a multiverse animated movie, which is getting two sequels. And there was a Broadway musical. In Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt there’s a joke about the musical getting a sequel: Spiderman Too: 2 Many Spidermen, which includes the lyric, “And I will crush that Spiderman! And then that other Spiderman! And all the Spidermen ’til I’m the Spiderman!”
CORRECT. ENOUGH.
Between the release of S-M 2 and S-M 3, Batman Begins hit theaters, providing a dark, grown-up alternative to the sincerity and morality of Spidey (whether or not you think Batman kills, he definitely doesn’t cry!). A year after S-M 3, we got The Dark Knight. And honestly, that was what I thought superhero movies were going to be: Self-contained trilogies helmed by directors with clear visions. Satisfying stories that defined the character for a generation and then let it be for a while.
But no, just as there have been one million Peters Parker since then, so, too, have there been one million Bruces Wayne—and approximately a trillion Jokers. Venom got his own movie, then another, and now…Morbius is from the Spiderverse? Or something? And Dakota Johnson is going to get her own Spider-y movie, but that’s OK because I really and unironically love Dakota Johnson.
There are tonal and pacing problems throughout, and while the Emo Sequence is much funnier than people give it credit for now, the whole thing feels like two steps forward, one step back, a retread of previous themes rather than closure.
I very much did not like The Batman. Talking with friends who did like it, they seemed to think that much of the movie was set-up for the next movie, which, yes, is happening. I don’t think setting up the next movie makes a movie good. In fact, I think it makes it kind of bad. So whatever Spider-Man 3’s faults, at least they’re contained to its runtime. We aren’t expected to sit through tedious character building that won’t pay off for two years. Whatever doesn’t pay off simply doesn’t pay off, and then it’s over. Which also means that the first two movies, which are still so very good, aren’t impacted by unnecessary foreshadowing or teasing. Two great movies and an uneven third. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s how I like my superheroes.
The good news is that Raimi is back in theaters with Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. The bad news is that it’s for Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. And much as I enjoyed WandaVision, I just…it’s too much, and I’m tired. Or as Emo Parker might say to a radioactive spider: bite me. FL
