I don't think I've ranted on in this particular blog about how much I dislike the approach Sam Raimi chose to take with the first three Spider-Man movies, so let me give a quick recap on why I hate them the way I do:
Yes the effects were fine, and no I'm not one of those "no organic webshooters" people, and yes I thought that the supporting characters, particularly Schillinger as James Jonah Jameson, were very good. But when the best thing you can say about a superhero adaptation is how great the actress playing the hero's ailing aunt is, then there's a problem.
I did a big rant on everything I hate about the SR's SM movies in another blog I was contributing to. That blog is gone now, but I think I have it saved somewhere and it goes into exhaustive detail about all my major hate-points with the three movies as they stand right now. I'll post it eventually, but for now here's a bulleted list:
-Spider-Man peppers his foes with smartass wisecracks when he fights them. He would never play straight man to the Green Goblin.
-Having Spider-Man scream "Yahoo!" as he is fighting badguys is not a substitute for wisecracks.
-Spider-Man keeps his mask on when he's out doing superhero things. There are several good reasons for this: Among them are the protection of his loved ones and the fact that Spider-Man with his mask off looks like a grown man in Spider-Man underoos.
-Rescuing Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, or Aunt May from being dropped off of something is not Spider-Man's only job as a superhero. It certainly shouldn't be the climax of every friggin' movie.
-Spider-Man, while he goes through some emotional rough spots, does not blubber like an infant.
Every single one of those things: Deal. Breaker. As far as I'm concerned.
So even though I'm a fan of Spider-Man I don't own any of the movies, and the only time I've watched them beyond the one theatrical viewing mandated by law to determine their level of suckage was to watch the Rifftrax versions. Tobey Maguire can make doe-eyes all day if he wants to, actually that kind of adds to the problem come to think of it.
So, needless to say I was very disappointed to learn that team Raimi was coming back aboard for a couple more movies. I thought that there was a tacit agreement in our culture that, no matter what you think of it, the Sam Raimi era was drawing to a close as far as Spider-Man was concerned. Usually in your big franchises three movies is the cutoff before the director and the talent that made any given film series great lose interest and want to move on to making period drama or Japanese horror remakes or what have you and the studio forges ahead with a new creative team. Usually what they forge to is abject failure, but that's immaterial. I was hoping that just this once Hollywood's merciless howling engine of sequel production would work in my favor and I'd magically get a Spider-Man movie directed by Guillermo del Toro. Nope. Not this time. The whole gang is coming back, isn't that just super!
I know that in all likelihood if Raimi dropped out they'd give it to Brett Ratner or one of those Captain Shakycam asshats they have ruining every movie with an action sequence these days. And they would then proceed to make Spider-Man suck in ways as yet undreamed by man, but it's a gamble that I was willing to take. Had it been, you know, in any way mine for the taking.
I guess you can't blame the studio heads for playing it safe. The lone island of sense that represents my feelings on the Spider-Man movies is but a tiny dot in a sea of unconditional approval. Even the third movie couldn't really put a dent in the Spider-Man Love Express. The movies made billions of dollars worldwide. People seem to like their Spider-Man with extra supporting characters and hold the humor as a defense mechanism. I wonder, though, if this is because of the decisions that were made for the Spider-Man movies or in spite of them.
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