241 Pizza

After the success of Spiderman 1 and 2, a sceptical Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times thought Spiderman 3 was “a film that commerce mandated, a marketing puzzle that insisted on a solution, an über-franchise whose north of $250-million budget and sky-high expectations make it a master that must be served, a monster to be fed, an imperious creature with its own needs and drives. More than a thousand people worked on the production, some of them putting in the 8,000 hours it took to construct the film's 40 Spider-Man suits and others writing ultra-complex CGI software that we are told "required 10 man-years to code." That's a heck of a lot of code.”

Sadly, all that money was squandered on “too many villains”, thought Turan. “It is one of the weaknesses of the Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent script that our hero has to contend with so many menaces — Sandman, Venom, New Goblin, even some especially toxic gook from outer space — that none of them gets the traction the wonderful Doc Ock did in the last film.” The result is a film with a “cumbersome feeling, as if its plot elements were the product of competing contractors who never saw the need to cooperate on a coherent final product. Here's hoping that the choice about whether to make yet another "Spider-Man" is based on more than the almighty bottom line.”

And so to a misty-eyed Nathan Lee in the Village Voice, who looks back on a glorious “throwaway flourish” from director Sam Raini in Spiderman 2. “Swooping up from a digital dip through the Manhattan canyons, Spidey lets out a gleeful yippie!, voicing the goofy kick shared by filmmakers, character, and audience alike. The corollary in Spider-Man 3 is a sad bit of meta-commentary offered up during one of the big set pieces (telling that I can't remember which one), a reaction shot of two young boys gasping “awesome!” and “wicked cool!”I'm not sure what's more pathetic - the desperate note of self-congratulation or the fact that the only circumstance in which a 10-year-old New Yorker would utter the phrase "wicked cool" is when prompted by the script of a clueless baby boomer. A certain twee anachronism has always been part of the Spider-Man tradition—ditto dexterous, old-fashioned fun. But this summer's first obligatory blockbuster is all thumbs.”

BACKGROUND

• Spider-Man 3

• Spider-Man 3 - Tokyo premiere

• Shock revelation: why Spider-Man’s real name isn’t Peter Parkour

• Spider-Man 3 slams the accelerator down in pursuit of the Big Thrill

• Spider-Man climbs up to challenge Titanic

BACKGROUND

• Spider-Man 2

• Bad things come in threes

The quiet American

He's a superhero and drop-dead goodlooking, but Tobey Maguire is no troublemaker

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

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• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
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