ourchair
Well-Known Member
Okay, so I saw this with Compound.
I was really hoping that the new trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer would be attached to it, so I could scream, "BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" But this is the Philippines, where we get American blockbusters a few days earlier, which means that the reels usually aren't as up to date on trailers.
Anyway, I'm not going to try to summarize the plot, and I'm still undecided about my feelings toward the film. Someone at AICN said that he felt he liked the film less because he re-watched Spider-Man 2 before, and that he might have enjoyed it more having not seen it. I came in with the same deal: I just happened to catch Spider-Man 2 on cable while having dinner a few days ago and was struck by how well handled some of the character moments were in spite of its odd storytelling trajectory.
So anyway, I'll just highlight some moments and give my thoughts:
The Score: I really really really really hated the new score. Most people who know me particularly well know that even though I'm not really a hard-core nerd-student of film scores, I do respond particularly to them. The new themes that Christopher Young created were just terribly handled. I was fine with his work on Ghost Rider, but the new theme he crafted for Venom and the blacksuit was really annoying --- this clanging, wailing dirge-like sound that was so one-note and devoid of subtlety.
It might not have been a problem if the scenes in which it was used weren't strung together. But since they were --- you'd have four scenes in which the theme just repeats with no variation (even John Williams' Harry Potter theme, which I hate, tries to vary itself according to scene mood) and I'm all like, "We get it already! Peter's turning to the darkness!" Compounding the problem is that Elfman's theme for Spider-Man essentially gets used here with barely any remixing, save for some odd synth heavy version that's used in one scene.
Butler Ex Machina: At one point in the film, Harry refuses to help Peter take on Sandman and Venom, seeing as Peter is responsible for saying mean things and
. So Peter leaves and suddenly Bernard (the practically silent butler from the first two films) walks up to Harry and reveals that he has known all this time that Norman died at the wrong end of his own goblin glider and therefore has no real reason to blame Peter for losing his father. Oh and then reminds him that his friends love him and all that.
I can understand that as a 'polite' butler Bernard tries to not comment on the things that happen around him (he even says so), but if Bernard chooses this moment to set Harry on the right path of helping Peter, couldn't he have done this AT THE START OF THE MOVIE, long before the young master Harry gets his face disfigured from a vengeful battle with Peter?! Dumb-*** butler.
Sandman: Thomas Hayden Church is a much better actor than the material he's given to work with here. I can't say I've seen ANY of his movies, but he carries the character well in spite of the fact that he is blatantly underdeveloped, saddled only with a half-heartedly conceived humanizing element of having a sick daughter he's trying to acquire money for. His involvement in Ben's death is handled poorly through no fault of his performance.
As for his origin, Marko just happens to fall into a particle physics accelerator --- a plot-convenient twist of fate. This doesn't bother me since almost all the Spider-Man villains are about strange twists of fate involving petty crooks and their origins were never that memorable in the first place. They're essentially crooks with a gimmick.
Venom: I feel that Venom will receive mixed reactions. I myself liked him a lot. There isn't a whole lot of substance or depth or empathy to the character, and you know what? I don't care. That's exactly how I like it. In this movie, Brock is portrayed as a photojournalist with tabloid-levels of integrity, and absolutely no regard for anyone but himself. He's a freaking jerk.
He's a very very bad man, a jerk and a dickhead before he got the suit, and the suit only serves to amplify that. None of that "Spider-Man hurts the innocent" bull**** or delusions of being a "lethal protector". There's this one scene towards the end where Peter tries to argue with Eddie telling him that he's got to take off the suit because it only does bad things, blah blah blah poisons your soul, and Eddie says, "I like being bad. It makes me happy."
I suspect some fans are going to quibble over this Venom and his patent one-dimensionality and the very briskly (but IMO efficiently) handled character development, but I like that there's no BS. In fact, I think the line above would've been much better if it was, "Being bad makes me happy. It always did." to further underscore the massive levels of jerk-titude. Especially since you don't get the sense that Eddie had a bad childhood as Grace and the film-makers suggest in interviews.
The symbiote is a big outer-space ex machina, that just arrives on earth via a meteor --- no explanation and no sense of how that relates to the larger 'universe' of the film franchise, but I didn't really mind as there wasn't really any neat way to introduce it, as both its Ultimate and 616 origins are heavy on explanation.
My only real problem is the that the black costume is treated with such nonchalance. Most of NY doesn't seem to really care about Spidey's new look, and Peter's dismissal of Connor's repeated warnings is handled in a fashion that seems like we as an audience are also supposed to dismiss it.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that when Peter decides to rip off the costume he does it with such callous disregard: He goes to a church for NO reason whatsoever, and tears an evil aggression-amplifying alien parasite off his body and then he just leaves. Thanks for respecting the House of God, jackass.
More thoughts later.
I was really hoping that the new trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer would be attached to it, so I could scream, "BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" But this is the Philippines, where we get American blockbusters a few days earlier, which means that the reels usually aren't as up to date on trailers.
Anyway, I'm not going to try to summarize the plot, and I'm still undecided about my feelings toward the film. Someone at AICN said that he felt he liked the film less because he re-watched Spider-Man 2 before, and that he might have enjoyed it more having not seen it. I came in with the same deal: I just happened to catch Spider-Man 2 on cable while having dinner a few days ago and was struck by how well handled some of the character moments were in spite of its odd storytelling trajectory.
So anyway, I'll just highlight some moments and give my thoughts:
The Score: I really really really really hated the new score. Most people who know me particularly well know that even though I'm not really a hard-core nerd-student of film scores, I do respond particularly to them. The new themes that Christopher Young created were just terribly handled. I was fine with his work on Ghost Rider, but the new theme he crafted for Venom and the blacksuit was really annoying --- this clanging, wailing dirge-like sound that was so one-note and devoid of subtlety.
It might not have been a problem if the scenes in which it was used weren't strung together. But since they were --- you'd have four scenes in which the theme just repeats with no variation (even John Williams' Harry Potter theme, which I hate, tries to vary itself according to scene mood) and I'm all like, "We get it already! Peter's turning to the darkness!" Compounding the problem is that Elfman's theme for Spider-Man essentially gets used here with barely any remixing, save for some odd synth heavy version that's used in one scene.
Butler Ex Machina: At one point in the film, Harry refuses to help Peter take on Sandman and Venom, seeing as Peter is responsible for saying mean things and
horribly scarring him with a pumpkin bomb
I can understand that as a 'polite' butler Bernard tries to not comment on the things that happen around him (he even says so), but if Bernard chooses this moment to set Harry on the right path of helping Peter, couldn't he have done this AT THE START OF THE MOVIE, long before the young master Harry gets his face disfigured from a vengeful battle with Peter?! Dumb-*** butler.
Sandman: Thomas Hayden Church is a much better actor than the material he's given to work with here. I can't say I've seen ANY of his movies, but he carries the character well in spite of the fact that he is blatantly underdeveloped, saddled only with a half-heartedly conceived humanizing element of having a sick daughter he's trying to acquire money for. His involvement in Ben's death is handled poorly through no fault of his performance.
As for his origin, Marko just happens to fall into a particle physics accelerator --- a plot-convenient twist of fate. This doesn't bother me since almost all the Spider-Man villains are about strange twists of fate involving petty crooks and their origins were never that memorable in the first place. They're essentially crooks with a gimmick.
Venom: I feel that Venom will receive mixed reactions. I myself liked him a lot. There isn't a whole lot of substance or depth or empathy to the character, and you know what? I don't care. That's exactly how I like it. In this movie, Brock is portrayed as a photojournalist with tabloid-levels of integrity, and absolutely no regard for anyone but himself. He's a freaking jerk.
He's a very very bad man, a jerk and a dickhead before he got the suit, and the suit only serves to amplify that. None of that "Spider-Man hurts the innocent" bull**** or delusions of being a "lethal protector". There's this one scene towards the end where Peter tries to argue with Eddie telling him that he's got to take off the suit because it only does bad things, blah blah blah poisons your soul, and Eddie says, "I like being bad. It makes me happy."
I suspect some fans are going to quibble over this Venom and his patent one-dimensionality and the very briskly (but IMO efficiently) handled character development, but I like that there's no BS. In fact, I think the line above would've been much better if it was, "Being bad makes me happy. It always did." to further underscore the massive levels of jerk-titude. Especially since you don't get the sense that Eddie had a bad childhood as Grace and the film-makers suggest in interviews.
The symbiote is a big outer-space ex machina, that just arrives on earth via a meteor --- no explanation and no sense of how that relates to the larger 'universe' of the film franchise, but I didn't really mind as there wasn't really any neat way to introduce it, as both its Ultimate and 616 origins are heavy on explanation.
My only real problem is the that the black costume is treated with such nonchalance. Most of NY doesn't seem to really care about Spidey's new look, and Peter's dismissal of Connor's repeated warnings is handled in a fashion that seems like we as an audience are also supposed to dismiss it.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that when Peter decides to rip off the costume he does it with such callous disregard: He goes to a church for NO reason whatsoever, and tears an evil aggression-amplifying alien parasite off his body and then he just leaves. Thanks for respecting the House of God, jackass.
More thoughts later.