The real problems of Spiderman 3 - Part I

*Spoiler warning for everything

It’s not the excess of villains or the dancing, it’s the lack of connective tissue, stuff just happens for no reason, time being wasted, douchiness, and characters make no sense. Some of these points could be improved, many are down to the foundations of the movie. Let’s autopsy.

Inauthentic Douche

Peter Parker is an unlikable douche for the first half of the movie, but not in the way the writer and director wanted him to be. The big fat ego is not integrated into Peter Parker’s character, it just caked over and smothers it. We get the mannerisms, body language, and lack of confidence of the lovable bumbler we enjoyed with a douche zombie words flowing out of his noise whole like a bad dubbing soundtrack. He is supposed to come off like the guy at the office that got a promotion and can’t shut the fuck up about his Botox, his Tae Bo or his Xbox. The result is we don’t buy him as lovable bumbler Peter or as douche Peter. This isn’t douche cringe, it’s inauthentic, and Spiderman has always been very authentic.

The good version of what Peter was supposed to be in Morty in Rick and Ricklaxation after the detoxification. He goes out to dinner with the redhead love of his life, is a douche, she leaves, he hits on Stacy (with the same haircut as Gwen Stacy), and later goes to work at a New York skyscraper. And he dances.

It was 6 minutes of douche Morty, then a big fight between Healthy and Toxic Rick (a unique take on the dark reflection fight of Spidey and Venom), another 1.5 minutes of douche Morty and the packed that shit in. It was good flavoring, a nice bit of spice. In Spiderman 3 Peter is a dickwad from the moment Mary Jane reads the reviews pretty much all the way until he gets the symbiote off an hour a 15 minutes later. On the way, he whines, cries, complains, shouts, and kisses another woman and blows up Harry’s face. He does apologize to 2 people and saves Gwen Stacy, but that’s hardly enough. For half the movie he doesn’t show his goodness in any significant way, he’s just a Peter Parker shaped asshole. Trying to spare Harry in the first fight, fighting alongside Harry for Mary Jane I the final fight, forgiving Uncle Ben’s killer, those happen in the rest of the movie. For half the movie, Peter Parker sucks, that is a slightly bigger problem to ignore than some fucking Ewoks.

Stuff just happens

· I’m fine with Harry Osborne losing his memory, I’m not fine with booze and staring at a portrait bring his memory back. He can stumble on the Goblin lair and get his memory back from that.

· I’m fine with the Sandman washing away for half the movie, I’m not fine with him attacking Spiderman and then out of nowhere explaining what happened with Uncle Ben. Venom recruited him not an hour earlier to kill Spiderman, he gets punched and blown up, Venom dies, so now it’s talking time. I’d take out the “You killed Ben Parker!” accusation from the subway fight and move it to the final fight, and Venom is bribing Sandman. Now Sandman fights the final fight to get Spiderman out of his way and save his daughter. Sandman has Spiderman on the ropes, Spiderman says something about how Sandman created Spiderman when he killed Uncle Ben Parker, and now he will end it by killing Peter Parker. Sandman understands his connection to Spiderman, softens up, explains, forgiveness to stop the cycle of hate, pain, and revenge, and then a rainbow.

· I’m fine with the Osborn manservant Bernard keeping the secret that Norman Osborne speared himself with the glider for years to defend the Osborne name. I’m not fine with Bernard confessing the whole thing to Harry on a dime, after years of letting bitterness poison Harry.

Eddy Brock Jr.

Eddy Brock Jr. is fucking terrible. Green Goblin attacked the Oscorp board to save the company, he later attacked Spiderman to draw him to the dark side. Doc Ock robbed banks and fought Spiderman to build his machine to justify his wife’s death. Eddy Brock is humiliated by Peter, Spiderman breaks his camera, and then he does evil. That’s it. He is so one dimensional that the line “I like being bad, it makes me happy” actually appears in the movie. Eddy Brock was a two-bit lazy, greedy, hustler who falls apart under scrutiny because he’s not good enough and he knows it. His version of “the symbiote increases aggression” is closer to the Batman Forever’s Riddler or Ironman II’s Justin Hammer, a wannabee that drapes himself with the symbols of power and is aggressive against those who doubt him when his dominance is challenged.

He was a weasel, Peter cost Eddy his camera, a job Eddy had for 10 minutes, a reputation Eddy had for a week, and dated the girl Eddy had coffee with, Eddy gets superpowers, now it’s murder time. He wasn’t a violent man that held back his fury and now the symbiote unleashed it, his character as established would not try to murder Mary Jane and Spiderman.

P.S.

Eddy Brock doesn’t want to be Spiderman (J. Jonah Jameson does).

Without the symbiote wanting to be Spiderman (because in the comix Spiderman is the symbiote's perfect host), Venom having Spiderman powers makes no sense.