How Many Miles To Babylon? - Spider-Man 3

So I finally saw Spider-Man 3 this weekend. It's a mess. I didn't really believe that it was a bad film, despite being universally described as one and despite seeing clips of it, even clips of the worst part of it. After seeing the film, I understand why. The parts of it aren't bad, it's the way it comes together.

Spider-Man, if you recalled, had Spider-Man developing powers and fighting the Green Goblin. Spider-Man 2 had Spiderman dealing with a psychosomatic loss of his powers and fighting Doc Ock. There's more going on, supporting characters and all that, but pretty much one villain per movie.

In Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man fights Sandman and Hobgoblin and Venom. I mean, I do not read comic books, so the only thing I know about Spider-Man is from the movies, right? The only reason I know the names of the villains is because I listened to the audio commentaries. There was no room in the film to actually use their names.

It's more complicated than that, too. Here are the major plotlines of Spidey 3:

• Spider-Man is infected by this little alien creature that looks kind of like the black oil alien from X-Files, which turns his suit black. The movie says the little black guy boosts aggression, and from certain nerds I gather that the black suit is supposed to make Spider-Man evil, but what it actually does in the picture is create a weird personality change in Peter Parkin, making him into an emo-banged jazz-dancing black-eyeliner-wearing megadork - slash - John Travolta in Saturday Night Live impersonator. The point is supposed to be that it makes him a jerk, and he has to deal with that.
• Harry Osborne, having found his father's junk, superpowers himself up and goes after Spider-Man in revenge of his dad, only to hit his head and come down with amnesia.
• Mary Jane Watson loses her job by being a lousy singer and ends up drifting away from emobangs!Peter and back into  amnesia!Harry's arms.
• There's this blonde girl named Gwen Stacey who is flirty with Peter in his chemistry class, kisses Spider-Man when he saves her life, is the daughter of the police chief, is being pursued romantically by a photog played by Topher Grace, and who models in her spare time. She doesn't actually do much, mind you, but she's in the movie muddling up all the relationships.
• Like I said, Topher Grace plays some guy who's name I didn't catch, a photographer who initially seems to be dating Gwen but turns out to be semi-stalking her. He Photoshops Spider-Man being evil, and when Peter Parker exposes his shops ("The pixels are all wrong!"), he develops a grudge against Peter and then is conveniently infected by the little black oil alien thingy, thus becoming Venom. He's very annoying and altogether seems a little underdeveloped.
  
• See, I almost forgot this part. The Sandman is played by that guy from George of the Jungle. He's supposed to be a pretty complex character, sympathetic the way most Spider-Man villains are; his adorable daughter is sick with Comic Book Movie Ailing Syndrome and he has no choice but to turn to a life of crime, because, of course, the press and charities are absolutely no help at all when it comes to adorable little girls with fatal diseases. The movie reveals - semi-spoiler, I guess, I'm not sure - that he is the one who killed Uncle Ben, not the guy with the bad haircut we see in flashback every two minutes. Peter Parker is determined to kill him in revenge, and this story is all about learning that morality isn't in black and white, but shades of grey.

The part that everyone criticized was emobangs!Peter, which was pretty bizarre. Changing costume and makeup is a time-honored way of showing a shift in a character's personality, and I've got to say, I've actually experienced that sort of thing first hand, but ... emobangs? I actually don't know any other way to describe them at all. The movie actually draws attention to the hairstyle by showing Peter rearranging his hair a couple of times. At least they spared us a scene of Peter painstakingly putting on black eyeliner.

The embarrassing part is the idea that no one in the production realized what they were doing because they are all too old to know what "emo" is, both the style of music and style of clothing. Peter himself dances - not just kind of bobs to it, actually dances - to some jazz and that get-on-up song which I think is from the seventies. Peter Parker is, storywise, about my friend Megan's age, I'd say, in other words, definitely young enough to know that brushing your bangs in your eyes isn't just brushing your bangs in your eyes, it's taking on a whole stereotype, and waaay too young to be dancing to jazz music like an incredible douche.

Anyway, emo aside, it doesn't make much sense story-wise because it's not explained how the alien could, like, change his taste in music, clothing, hairstyle, and the appropriate way to walk down the street. It's supposed to "amplify certain characteristics of the host," not bring in totally new ones. Was Peter Parker a closet jazz fan? That's too out-of-character for me to swallow. Still, I'm not complaining too much because it is basically Spider-Man on drugs; not even illegal drugs, like Peter Parker after he borrowed a friend's Ritalin and washed it down with Nyquil and half a beer.

The big problem with the movie was that they had material for three movies, and crammed them all into one. One movie idea is the one with the alien, and it's about Peter facing down his dark side and overcoming it. It's a good idea for a third in a series, also the black-suit versus blue-and-red-suit is easy to market. The problem is, the end of Part 2 pretty much promised that Hobgoblin would be the bad guy for part 3, which itself would make a great movie, but they hobbled the whole thing by ignoring Harry for long stretches of the film. The amnesia, which is the most cliched storyline ever, actually worked very well for the character. I'm - I'm kind of bitter about how he ended up. No spoilers or anything. The last idea was the Sandman and his story in connection with Ben Parker - again, you could make a movie about just that. Why glue everything together?

Peter is dealing with three totally different, and rather, contradictory moral problems here. One is aggression, which is connected with the alien; the other is pride, relating to Sandman, and the last is guilt, relating to Hobgoblin. Separate, they're strong, but put together, they're like when you mix coffee and cheddar cheese and lime juice, three of my favorite foods. And on top of all this, you've still got the annoying Topher Grace and Gwen Stacey!

I'm not surprised to find that some fans are cutting out the Sandman. Too bad their versions will also suck.

From listening to the commentary, it is apparent that this movie was very, very rushed. It was in production before the script was written. Most filmmakers recognize that that is the wrong way to make movies.

This is the best three minutes of Spider-Man 3. Watching it will probably make you want to rent the dvd, which will then disappoint you.