Continuity Man, Continuity Man, where's the Continuity Man?

Like a lump of alien black goo, this post has festered in my blog-box for weeks, it's time to release it and let it find its own Topher Grace. Like Spider-Man 3 itself, it's longer than most posts but not necessarily better...

Black suit? there's a lot more where that came from...

Spoilers Ahead if you haven't seen Spider-Man 3 yet

In a similar vein to the madness that was Superman Returns, (not to mention the crowded 'plot' to X-Men III) Spider-Man 3, although enjoyable in parts. is surprisingly po-faced and turgid, which makes its logical flaws all the more apparent. Overall, Raimi does a great job in very difficult circumstances, in the hands of a lesser director--I'm looking at you Ratner....you Hack!-- it could have been utterly unwatchable.

Truth is, I was on the verge of tears during some moments and the action is well done if a bit over done. Thomas Haden Church is great (after his standout performance as The Strobe in this, he can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned) as always but it was a bit of a disappointment that some of his great comic timing was not utilised. The best performance was of course...Bruce Campbell. Kristen Dunst is as always in the Spider-Man movies a painful-to-watch and even more painful-to-listen to simpering oaf. Her ginger screams will haunt my dreams forever. Like Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas-Howard and James Cromwell did well with the few lines they were given but were pretty underused. James Franco was a revelation and arguably the best thing in the film, if lumbered by a terrible 'ow my head...I've convienently lost my memory' subplot.
J.K. Simmons, Bill Nunn, Ted Raimi and the Parker-Posey-alike Elizabeth Banks are all great as well.

Similar to the X2 to X-Men III transition from eager aniticapation to crushing inevitability, the coming of Spider-Man 3 was a juggernaut from which there was no escape rather than a film I thought every day about seeing until I saw it in a fevered mess of enthusiasm. I almost missed the Marvel logo which gave me a bit of a shock, that's like missing a really important prayer at mass or something for me.

I'm not a nit-picker per say, I'm not bothered if car or gun is a anachronistic by a few years in a film, but when a logical flaw or continuity gaff actually takes you out of the emotional core of a movie it sucks and you're sitting there thinking, why does this make no sense? One of the amazing things about Spider-Man 3, a film that cost a reputed $250,000,000, is that they couldn't spare a few of those dollars to buy a notepad and pencil and pay somebody just to check what the fuck is going on and keep continuity and logic.

oh so that's how it works....

1. The metorite: it was always going to be difficult to tie in the intergalacitc element of the black suit, being that it has its origin in the Secret Wars crossover, itself an exercise in crass commercialism and the black suit little more that a marketing opportunity to create diversity in spidey action figures. Back in the innocent days of the first Spider-Man movie, one of the reasons given for creating the organic webshooters was that it strained credulity that someone who got bitten by a genetically altered superspider could also be a genius capable of creating the web shooters and fluid. How then can this sort of logic go out the window in Spider-Man 3: a kid who just happens to get bitten by a genetically altered superspider also just happens to be out whining with Mary Jane in the middle of nowhere when a intergalactic symbiote just happens to fall nearby. What's galling about this is that there were already setups in the second film that would have made more sense, forthwith:

2. Forgetting Set-ups from Spider-Man 2. Where did John Jameson go? I thought he was almost shoehorned into the second movie to have a logic connection between an intergalactic conciousness and kid from queens. A scene of a few minutes showing Parker covering Jameson's latest voyage where the symbiote has attached itself to a rocket, or a probe sent out specifically to find this lifeform would have made a bit more sense. Heck they could even have included some line about the symbiote specifically targeting Parker because of his enhanced biology, that he was sought out instead of anyone else by the alien lifeform.

3. What? no Spidey Sense? Following on from the comics, the symbiote suit has seemed to negate the auld spidey-sense, but there's very little evidence of the spider-sense at the beginning of the film before the metorite incident. Apart from shooting web balls (ahem) (which was already evident from Parker learning more about his powers in Spider-Man 2) there is very little exposition as to how the suit is enhancing Parker's abilities.

4. Venom See fans, maybe getting what you want isn't necessarily a good thing. Sure it was great to see Venom and all, but so briefly? The character was also very mismatched to the overall tone of the the Spider-Man movies, The Green Goblin, Hob Goblin, Doc Ock Sandman, the potenial introduction of of The Lizard, these are all old-school spidey-villians and work well together. Sticking the hyper-muscly 1980s villian Vemon in there is a bit odd. Whenever you get hackneyed 'evil twin' type supervillians its kind like the bottom of the super-barrel. Topher Grace does a good job, but it's amazing that the 1990s animation has more script and philosophy than the movie!No mention of a She-Venom in the movies so far though.

5. Sandman and needless retconning. Sandman steals money...Spider-Man hears about it on his police scanner (wasn't that a bit creepy?) and then goes after him, end of story, it's logical and uncluttered. But no, that won't do we have to have a bzyantine plot back track that makes Flint Marko responsible for auld Uncle Ben hairplug's , ahem, plugging, but he does it in a nice way? It's like Ben's almost saying it's alright you killing me and all, 'cause you're a good man, and your only helping your daughter or following some preordained plan so I get to say the famous line in the film that wee Petey figured out himself in the comic and get to be resurrected in each film', what's with this Jesus/Judas-like bobbins? can't he just be a fecking criminal that Spider-Man goes after?

other small annoyances:

Aunt May's hot water: Aunt May and Peter Parker are having another creaky heart to heart about ole Ben and all the while I'm thinking: why are they just drinking hot water out of the tea pot, there's no tea? If they were using tea bags why go to the bother of getting the hot water from the kettle to a tea pot.

Mary Jane's answer phone message changes mid film from "this is Mary Jane leave a message after the beep....beeep" i.e. she says 'beep!' giving her some much-needed sense of humour and personality, yeah like that's going to last: this is absent from the second occurence of her answering machine.

Isn't Parker in some way responsible for the Green Goblin's Death? and who the feck is that butler guy? and doesn't it make Osborne appear a bit too much like Batman?

There's no connection established between the Stacey's and Osbornes, why are they at his funeral? Yes Gwen Stacey is in Park's class at college but Osborne and Parker went to high schoo together, do we just assume all rich people in New York know each other?

Towards the end Venom takes off Spidey's mask and appears to drop it, a split second later Spidey's suit is intact.

Some of the smaller points don't really spoil the film as such, it's the just overall sense that no one knows what's going on and logic goes out the back door. One of the almost lampable questions I got asked my some mook when I was going on about how good Spider-Man 2 was 'was it good for a superhero movie or a normal movie', implying that superhero movies are a priori stupid and even average intelligence in one is impressive. The lack of writing and emotional depth in this gives superhero movies this sort of bad name, the grandstanding action and Stan Lee cameos, nice that they are, just aren't enough in the wake of Batman Begins and X2. Godammit superhero movies should be getting better not worse.

Jesus, just read that Lucas is even ripping the shit of Spider-Man 3 . Spidey 3 still has three times more sense, intellect and logic than all the prequels combined. More good reviews (good as in 'good reviews' not claiming the film is good, it's like a sub genre of reviewing that suits epic movie, where reading the reviews is sometimes more enjoyable than watching the movie) here and here .

Jimmny Accesses all Areas on Phantom Fm

The great journalist and blogger Sinéad Gleeson, her of Sigla Blog, best Arts and Culture blog at the 2006 and 2007 Irish Blogs Awards , is standing in for Edel Coffey for her Access All Areas on the fantastic Phantom 105. 2 FM you can listen live on the site and there's also a streaming player on their Irish superheroes I put together for St. Patrick's Day and other fun superhero facts (if I remember them) must remember to speak slowly and not get all excited if I end up talking about She-Hulk or something, it could happen.

I used to listen to Phantom all the time back in the day when I lived in bedsits in Rathmines, looking forward to it!

Previous tales of my media whoring (mis)adventures can be found here and here.

Be Seeing You

According to Superhero Hype and grabbed at Ain't It Cool News, this is a potential glimpse of Rorschach, well a mock up potenital pic anyway, no firm casting has been done, of The Watchmen movie (from a frame of the new 300 trailer). I do think Zach Snyder will do a good job, and by 'good job' I mean not shite. To make a good Watchman movie it has to be an evolutionary leap so there's Batman and Robin=>Batman Begins. So Batman Begins=>Watchmen needs to be the same sort of leap. "Ground Floor Comin' Up."

Superman Returns....to the drawing board hopefully.

Superman Returns is good and the 147 minute running time does fly by (heh!) quite painlessly, but watching it on DVD and taking notes like the dweeb I am has produced more niggling questions that some of you out in the geek-o-sphere might be able to help me with. It seems that no matter how high profile an action movie is there is still a tendency to let logic out the door, and anyone who questions it gets told 'look it's a decent Superman movie whadda want!', well maybe one that made more sense.

I call this the Batman-Skateboot Conundrum, I can suspend my disbelief that character like Batman exists within his fictional universe but when he just happens to have ice skates in his boots when he fights Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin (1997) when he has just found out about him in the car on the way over it really annoys me. So either he has the skates in his boots all the time on the off-chance of meeting an ice based villian or he has multible boots in the boot of the Batmobile! anyway, that's an argument for another day, onto Supes....

The timeframe of Kypton exploding and the events of the movie. We can probably expect, or be forced to accept, that the technology of Kypton is suffciently advanced and to do things we can't comprehend. But there is supposedly a several thousand year gap between the explosion and little Kal-El getting to earth. The time frame makes sense in terms of making Kypton far enough away from earth not to be detected by humnaity, but this distance makes the likelihood of a craft that can stay on course and keep the infant Kal-El in suspended animation for that long mindboggling. Surely there would be some psychological/physical ramifications from spending 'several thousand' years in a little capsule.
Oh, and then Superman can make the round trip in Five years! Does he not need some sort of rest or sustenance? what kind of packed lunch to you take into space?

Kyptonite We know it's a just a plot device to make Superman vulnerable and to help along as HH would say the PFF quoitient of the movie, which is fecking high enough already, but how exactly does it affect Superman?

It seems to only affect him when he touches it, and then he's fine if he stays a little bit further away from it, it's kinda like characters closing that big metal door to keep the scary ice away in The Day After Tomorrow. When there are traces of it on the structure Luthor is on, Superman is immediately powerless and all those bad men (they were dark clothes just so you know) start beating the shite out of him (so Christians can get their surreptitious S&M rocks off?). So getting far enough away from it allows Supes to fly again and get power from the Sun (surely making him Ra more than the Jesus) fine, then he heads back toward the structure with no ill effects and lifts the whole fucking thing out of the water, close ups of his hands show there are far more prominent peices of Kyptonite all around him yet he can fly the whole thing into space when previously he couldn't even fight off Kumar (an Indian missle expert, you gotta love Hollywood) and a guy with a clown on the back of his head?

Luthor's Plan Using the crystals, Luthor plans to implant them in the sea and grow a new continent. The fact that this new continent will be entirely made up of icy crystals seems not to bother him, he still thinks it will be desirable, even though he has comepletetly obliterated most of America, whose gonna buy his shitty ice houses? What cartographer made all those maps for him and was he/she not a bit suspicious? What 'pleasures' did he show poor old Noel Neill?

His henchmen. There is a vague explanation that he met all his henchmen in prison, but surely there should be some chemistry between these goons? for a director as smart as Singer it's a surprisingly dumb movie dialogue wise, especially when you have the great Parker Posey on board, do these hench men ever have conversations? Do they never question what's going on? Why do they hate Superman? Did he put all of them away? Do all criminals have an a priori hatred of Superman no matter what their crime or how they got caught? What is the 'clown gang' that's mentioned briefly as a news story, sounds a bit Batman Forever if you ask me. What is it about DC Comics and clown henchmen, it works when they are the Joker's henchmen but why does nearly every Batman villian The Penguin, Riddler, Two Face, Mr Freeze have clown henchmen as well? fucking clown henchmen, they really grind my gears.

Other minigripes Doesn't Superman piss you off when he goes on about smoking? like when he keeps blowing out Lois's fag (incidentally doesn't her tiny wee head and toothpick neck make the cigarette look like a length of pipe). What does he care about smoking, he could smoke 1,000,000 fags and be ok. Plus the cabbie's cigar sets off the gas explosion and the henchman who tries to grab Luthor's cigar and gets immediately chrushed. Speaking of him being a dick, it's not really fair on the dog when Clark Kent throws the base ball into the horizon....

I'm sure there's loads more, but I'll leave that to other Superman Returns nitpickers: Cinematical, Peter David, astronomy nitpicks. Oh wow, Ghost Rider's out soon, I'm sure that'll make loads of sense....