The Official "I Loved Raimi's Spider-Man' Thread - Part 1 of 99 Luft - - - Part 12

[Doctor Octopus]

Venom in the movies is so much better than his lame counterpart in the comic books.

Agreed. Raimi not even a fan of Venom and he do better job with him than comics.

 

[NotNickFury]

Sandman was, aside from the special effects, pretty bad too though.

It's weird that Raimi couldn't get into Venom since he seems really into sympathetic-or-at-least-understandable villains and Venom can certainly provide that, IMO a lot more easily and naturally than the Sandman does.

Venom and Brock could provide that, but it didn't feel that way in this film. Brock claims that Peter made him lose his girl, but he and Gwen went on one date. He fakes a photo and blames Peter for being humiliated...even though he was already in the wrong. Raimi likes the sympathetic antagonist, but if he wanted that with Brock, he went about it the wrong way.

 

[A Necessary Evil]

Agreed. Raimi not even a fan of Venom and he do better job with him than comics.

 

[ItchyWebShooter]

Spider-Man 3 still has, IMO, the best movie trailer of all time. If it could have lived up to the hype surrounding it (and if any of you remember those days... there was SO. MUCH. HYPE!) then we'd never have had the TASM franchise, and maybe wouldn't have MCU Spidey at all. I like the film, but I can't disagree that it was very disappointing at the time, even to an 11-year-old.

Raimi definitely nailed the perfect origin for Venom (or at least better than what the 616 comics gave us) but, in action, we needed more.

 

[ehh]

I remember when the trailer premiered during an episode of "Shark" on CBS. Everyone was talking about it in school the next day.

 

[ItchyWebShooter]

I remember when the trailer premiered during an episode of "Shark" on CBS. Everyone was talking about it in school the next day.

I remember watching it on YouTube over and over and over and over, then someone took some black suit Spidey clips and set them to "Back in Black" and my hype levels exceeded all previous levels known to mankind.

 

[DigificWriter]

I'm rewatching Spider-Man 3 right now on Blu-ray and, while I've always liked the movie and feel like it's incredibly underrated, I've come to the realization that I've kind of subconsciously bought into the 'hate' for the film by ranking it below Spider-Man 2 when in fact it surpasses that movie and closes out Raimi's series in phenomenal fashion by doing the following things:
1) It organically builds on the foundation established by Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 while simultaneously adding new layers to said story by 'flipping the script' in regards to what we thought we knew about his Uncle Ben's death and the circumstances that led Peter Parker to become Spider-Man in the first place.

2) It creates a perfect narrative "circle". By revisiting and building upon narrative elements from the first and second films, Spider-Man 3 allows Sam Raimi the opportunity to bring a sense of narrative closure to the character-driven story arcs he helped bring to life on film while simultaneously "leaving the door open" for future narrative possibilities.

3) It makes the character of Venom interesting without losing focus on Spider-Man. It's been well-documented that Sam Raimi did not want to include the character of Venom in Spider-Man 3 and was forced to by producer Avi Arad, but, in spite of the circumstances surrounding the character's inclusion, he still managed to make him interesting without his presence overshadowing or pulling the film's narrative focus away from its titular hero.
4) It serves as a narrative platform through which Raimi can explore the themes of mirroring' and 'reflection', from Harry's emergence/ascendance as the second Green Goblin mirroring that of his father's to Eddie and Gwen being mirror images of Peter and Mary Jane to Eddie and Harry's respective hatreds of Peter and resultant descents into darkness mirroring each other to even the relationship between Peter and his Aunt May mirroring that of Flint and his daughter Penny.

5) It manifests the psychological effect of the symbiote on Peter in a way that remains consistent with his previously-established characterization. One of the biggest issues I realized that I have with the "black suit"/Venom storyline conceptually is that it's a thin excuse for making Peter take on a completely different and unrecognizable personality just for the sake of doing so, which doesn't realistically make any sense narratively, and it's a pitfall that Raimi thankfully avoided by instead using the symbiote to amplify elements of Peter's personality that were already present in his psychological subconscious.

 

[Doctor Octopus]

Raimi definitely nailed the perfect origin for Venom (or at least better than what the 616 comics gave us) but, in action, we needed more.

Agreed, origin much better than comics version which is bad.

 

[Herofan]

I'm rewatching Spider-Man 3 right now on Blu-ray and, while I've always liked the movie and feel like it's incredibly underrated, I've come to the realization that I've kind of subconsciously bought into the 'hate' for the film by ranking it below Spider-Man 2 when in fact it surpasses that movie and closes out Raimi's series in phenomenal fashion by doing the following things:
1) It organically builds on the foundation established by Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 while simultaneously adding new layers to said story by 'flipping the script' in regards to what we thought we knew about his Uncle Ben's death and the circumstances that led Peter Parker to become Spider-Man in the first place.

I thought most viewers/fans disliked retcons in general? Retcons can work but in my view they often don't and that was a good example of one that didn't, too big a thing to change for too little benefit. It felt like Raimi just couldn't think of another way to give Peter a personal connection to the villain (which he had to have again) and/or make Peter really mad at him.

I think it really undermines Spider-Man to have that his uncle died not because of his inaction and the thief being bad but more because of just chance.

2) It creates a perfect narrative "circle". By revisiting and building upon narrative elements from the first and second films, Spider-Man 3 allows Sam Raimi the opportunity to bring a sense of narrative closure to the character-driven story arcs he helped bring to life on film while simultaneously "leaving the door open" for future narrative possibilities.

The relationships between Peter & Mary Jane and Peter & Harry were OK but it went kind of far in making Mary Jane and Peter unlikeable (the former being so outraged at getting a bad review and maybe not being such a good actress, the latter becoming really egotistical and trying to make her jealous and at one point hitting her although I think accidentally).

3) It makes the character of Venom interesting without losing focus on Spider-Man. It's been well-documented that Sam Raimi did not want to include the character of Venom in Spider-Man 3 and was forced to by producer Avi Arad, but, in spite of the circumstances surrounding the character's inclusion, he still managed to make him interesting without his presence overshadowing or pulling the film's narrative focus away from its titular hero.

I didn't see how he was very interesting ... he was, aside from delusionally thinking that Gwen liked him, very angry and bitter that Peter exposed his journalistic shortcut/fraud of framing someone, that makes him pretty much a bad and unlikable guy throughout.

 

[ItchyWebShooter]

I didn't see how he was very interesting ... he was, aside from delusionally thinking that Gwen liked him, very angry and bitter that Peter exposed his journalistic shortcut/fraud of framing someone, that makes him pretty much a bad and unlikable guy throughout.

How does this make him any less likable than the original comics origin?

 

[DigificWriter]

Spidey 3's version of Eddie is interesting for me because he's used, conceived, and characterized as a mirror of Peter Parker.

 

[Doctor Octopus]

Agreed. I really like that too. It more interesting than comic version.

 

[PeterBenParker]

I wish there was more of him, despite it being against what Raimi originally wanted to begin with.

An ideal scenario would've had Raimi do his Spider-Man 3 with a new director for Spider-Man 4 (with Raimi as a producer/consultant, maybe) that featured Venom as the solo antagonist. Appeasing both parties?

 

[Herofan]

How does this make him any less likable than the original comics origin?

It is a matter of degrees but in at least some of the comics (although this may have been emphasized more or made up as a retcon later) it was emphasized that he had been doing a lot of good journalistic work, including or especially work that helped the public, for a while rather than either getting a story wrong or making a deliberate fraud from near the beginning of his career.

 

[ItchyWebShooter]

It is a matter of degrees but in at least some of the comics (although this may have been emphasized more or made up as a retcon later) it was emphasized that he had been doing a lot of good journalistic work, including or especially work that helped the public, for a while rather than either getting a story wrong or making a deliberate fraud from near the beginning of his career.

Yeah, that was all done later to add to his "antihero" status.

Originally, his origin was brick dumb as far as motivation to hate Spidey IMO.

I love ASM #300 but that is undeniably its biggest flaw.

 

[The Joker]

Venom's origin and motivation is one of the most laughable in comic book history. As Raimi said, it was Venom's cool look and powers and basically being a dark looking Spider-Man that skated him to popularity. You can tell Marvel had no idea that would happen because they quickly had no idea what to do with the character. That's why they've tried everything from anti-hero, to passing the symbiote off to characters who should never be wearing it like The Scorpion and Flash Thompson.

Venom should have been killed off in the 80's. All the symbiote garbage is one of the reasons 90's Spider-Man comics have such a bad rep.

 

[Spidey_62]

It's been a few years since I've seen Spider-Man 3. I try to watch the 1st 2 films at least once a year, but this year will be 10 years since SM3 came out so I want to rewatch it soon. I've appreciated it more as the years have gone on so I'd be curious now with a few years removed.

I saw it was recently added on to Hulu. It's crazy 2007 was 10 years ago, yeesh!

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Saw the trailer of the new game again, and couldn't help but think of this spectacular scene.

Spoiler

[YT]FwOdBKdruM8[/YT]

While watching this.

Spoiler

[YT]3R2uvJqWeVg[/YT]

 

[ItchyWebShooter]

It's been a few years since I've seen Spider-Man 3. I try to watch the 1st 2 films at least once a year, but this year will be 10 years since SM3 came out so I want to rewatch it soon. I've appreciated it more as the years have gone on so I'd be curious now with a few years removed.

I saw it was recently added on to Hulu. It's crazy 2007 was 10 years ago, yeesh!

I try to watch all 3 every year. I think you'll enjoy it despite its flaws. I've definitely reached that point.

It blows my mind to think my friends and I just went to see this movie in theaters 10 years ago, man. Time flies lol.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

This gif on its own is hilarious.

Made by Kane52630

 

[Nardz937]

This gif on its own is hilarious.

Made by Kane52630

"See ya, chump!"

 

[Nardz937]

Here's something I went and dug up for a good throwback - Tobey Maguire announced as Spider-Man!


https://web.archive.org/web/20000819070352/http://www.spidermanhype.com/news/july/juld00.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20001202011800/http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=6571

Too generally a favorable reception. May be hard to read- open images in a new tab to see.

Lots of funny responses in there. Someone actually opened a website protesting organic web-shooters LOL.

 

[DX]

"FREDDIE PRINZE JR. WAS ROBBED!!!"

 

[ItchyWebShooter]

Wow, that's a blast from the past. Very cool.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

"FREDDIE PRINZE JR. WAS ROBBED!!!"

I don't see that guy as Peter Parker, I see why he was considered for the part though.