So, I Got Home From Seeing SPIDER-MAN 3 At 0338 EST5EDT on 4 May 2007...
...and I still haven't calmed down. I just stopped crying 30 minutes ago.
First off, let me just say that I am RIDICULOUSLY unobjective about this movie. I can't be objective at all.
Why? Because SPIDER-MAN 3 rocked my world in so many ways I can't even begin to describe them all.
First off, pay ZERO attention to every bad review. Every one of them are wrong. Trust me, when I'm calmer, I'm going to write a really long, drawn out, objective-sounding explanation on why the critics who gave this movie a bad review are brain-dead idiots who need to be rounded up and put in an insane asylum. Suffice it to say that as a huge fan of SPIDER-MAN, a huge fan of Tobey Maguire in general, and initially very distrusting of how in the world they were going to write Venom into this movie and make it work, I walked out with every synapse firing and the endorphin rush in my body was so spectacular that for the first time in nearly TEN YEARS, I was 100% pain-free for a few brief, blissful moments. It was an emotional rush. I cheered, I screamed, I laughed, I wanted to rip Harry Osborn's lungs out, I think Mary Jane is a foolish, flighty girl and Peter deserves so much better. I wanted to make mad, passionate love to Dark Peter, because the confidence and strength radiating off of him was just amazing. Tobey plays these scenes with every bit of geek/nerd desperation of trying to be cool (with something in his brain telling him that "Yeah, you know, you are as bad-a$$ as you think you are, and more"). The jazz club sequence, which critics deride BECAUSE THEY COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT OF THE SCENE (sorry, still dealing with the adrenaline rush), is one of the most spectacularly-choreographed dance scenes I've seen done in years, and yet with Sam Raimi's wild camera angles, it becomes somewhat more...it's disorienting, it's fun to watch, and yet, you realize that SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT HERE. It's just amazing.
The struggle in the church tower...forget all the preview footage you've ever seen of it. The parallelism between Eddie Brock Jr., humiliated and drunk, crossing himself and kneeling on the kneeling bench in a church pew (which is FAR more uncomfortable than the main kneeling rail, and I know Catholics who won't kneel at the kneeling rail in the front because they feel so unworthy to approach the altar) and Peter, struggling to come to grips with what he'd done to Harry (beaten him within an inch of his life) and MJ (who in a rage he backhands across the room when she tries to stop him from basically killing the jazz club staff that he's pretty much single-handedly destroying) and feeling he needs not only forgiveness, but he must take a spiritual punishment (or a physical one, in the case of wrestling in the bell tower) as part of his Act of Contrition. The moment of transition, as the last of the symbiote falls off of a naked and beaten Peter Parker, and onto the frightened, angry, vengeful Eddie Brock, is loaded with so much symbolism that Andrew Lloyd Webber needs to be writing music for it.
As for why I was crying, there's a moment near the end with Harry, Peter, and MJ that I was watching, and I was listening to, and I kept thinking, "Peter, you'd better not cry, because if you lose it, there's no way *I* won't just completely fall apart." I was feeling tears well up in my eyes throughout that scene, and as the movie ended and I kept talking with fans around me, I felt myself lose it. The emotional release I had from watching this movie was amazing.
My stupid ex, jcsbimp, loved Spider-Man the character and the SPIDER-MAN movies. When the first one came out, we went together opening day (I took the morning off and he took the whole day off, and we caught an 1130 AM show) and had such an amazing time. But the next day, when I wanted to go back, he wasn't paying any attention to me because he was too busy chatting online. It was only when I looked over his shoulder that I realized that he was propositioning a woman in the chat room of a game we played together occasionally, remarking on her "great body" and "fantastic kisses" and "maybe we should talk later..." This was the second time I caught him in the act of cheating on me and started asking hard questions: Who is she? When did this start? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this with HER? He tried to make excuses, but I told him that I was done with his excuses and his implication that I was this ice queen bitch who deprived him of the joys of marriage and his bullshit complaints that I didn't allow him to pleasure me and that somehow made him feel like less of a man, and I was done with allowing him to blame me for his inability to keep his pants zipped. Then I told him to get out and go to his play that night (he was in a RM show, Romeo and Juliet) before either of us said or did something we would later regret, and if I was at home when the play was done, I MIGHT think about letting him in. SPIDER-MAN became my means of escape in 2002, a way of dealing with the pain and the betrayal and wishing that a hero COULD save us, as Chad Kroeger sang with all the passion of someone who knew we all needed rescue. I went out to see the movie that night, and the next night...and the next...and three days after that. By the end of June, jcsbimp had begged me for forgiveness, promised he'd never do anything like this ever again, etc., and began going with me to the movies again, especially SPIDER-MAN, which we saw an additional 8 times together, to allow us to rebuild our love on common ground.
Two years later, after a long illness that cost me my uterus, ovaries, and very nearly my life, when SPIDER-MAN 2 came out, we used it as a way to once again make the kind of emotional connections we needed to make. We used our common love of the movies to rebuild trust between each other, and when we needed a pick-me-up emotionally, we'd go see it again (7 times). As Peter fought his way back from the feeling of having too much responsibility (letting go of his powers in the process), I let go of what remained of my mistrust of my beloved husband as a way of finding a balance in my life, too. I thought we'd turned the corner.
Little did I know that he was becoming more resentful of my illnesses. Of my times away from him while fixing crises at work. Of the times when, because I was sick as a dog, I couldn't put him first and make him feel oh-so-special and oh-so-important and satisfy all his manly needs. Little did I know that he was just waiting for a chance to break free. Little did I know that the time we spent on our 10th wedding anniversary, time we spent celebrating a weekend when I was actually feeling well...he was already cheating on me again. He hadn't learned that when you say you love someone for better and for worse, that means that you have to actually do it even when it's not fun to have to do the housework or take out the trash or clean the house or take care of your wife as her health begins to take frighteningly bad turns.
I won't rehash the Hell of 2006. What I will say instead is that the things that had once brought me pleasure--my love for the SPIDER-MAN movies--now brought pain. I couldn't watch SM1 without thinking about that time I caught him cheating and how different my life would have been if I'd stood my ground and said, "No, we can't be together like this; it's the second time within the last year that I *KNOW* about and I don't even want to know how many times you'd fooled me before." I couldn't watch SM2 without thinking, "We were so much in love that year. What happened? Was he just playing me? If he was, did I choose not to see it? Why couldn't I have seen this coming sooner?" I would try to put a DVD in, try to watch it...and couldn't get even halfway through before I had to take it out and stop crying. Even as the excitement began to build for SPIDER-MAN 3, even as I kept my own personal countdown and felt myself becoming eager and hopeful for something to just blow my mind, something inside me kept whispering, "You'll just be disappointed again. Peter's going to be a cad in this movie, and you've had way too much experience with cads this past year, and you'll hate it and walk out."
But, then, I turned a corner.
On 28 April, bimpchildsue and I sat down to watch the new recut of SM2, SPIDER-MAN 2.1. I put it in and resolved to watch it with her no matter how it made me feel. After a few minutes, I realized that I wasn't feeling pain, or humiliation, or anger, or anything else. I was feeling...enjoyment. I was happy. Again. For the first time in months, I could truly say I was happy.
So, when I walked into SPIDER-MAN 3 for the 2359 showing on 3 May 2007, I knew that no matter what, I was going to let the emotions I feel take reign and just...feel them. And I did. And when the movie ended, I was sobbing. Not just because of the sadness of the denouement of the final fight scene, but because I felt finally free of all my grief and sorrow. I felt happy at a SPIDER-MAN movie again, and what's more, I felt happy at it without having to filter my happiness through jcsbimp's messed up emotions.
I was laughing through tears when I called my friend (who'd once told me I could call her day, night, whatever) at 0241 on 4 May 2007. I was so happy, so bubbly, so excited, confessing that I was ridiculously unobjective about how freaking wonderful SPIDER-MAN 3 was. I rambled at length about how much I loved things, how wonderfully entertaining the Jazz Club dance scene was, etc. And then I started crying again, and I said, "I can't believe I'm still crying. I'm just so jazzed about this whole movie. It was just that good. And I'm sorry I'm a rambling mess at 0300 or whatever-the-Hell time it is there."
My friend said something that reminded me of why I love her so incredibly much. She said, "I'll gladly wake up at 3 AM to listen to you sound THIS happy anytime."
She knew what I needed to hear, and she knew why this moment of happiness meant to much to me. And that is the greatest gift I have ever received.
So, I'm not going to be objective about SPIDER-MAN 3 for a while. Try to understand. Better yet, go see it and don't sit there and analyze it. Just go with the emotions it generates within you. You'll have the best time ever. Trust me.
First off, let me just say that I am RIDICULOUSLY unobjective about this movie. I can't be objective at all.
Why? Because SPIDER-MAN 3 rocked my world in so many ways I can't even begin to describe them all.
First off, pay ZERO attention to every bad review. Every one of them are wrong. Trust me, when I'm calmer, I'm going to write a really long, drawn out, objective-sounding explanation on why the critics who gave this movie a bad review are brain-dead idiots who need to be rounded up and put in an insane asylum. Suffice it to say that as a huge fan of SPIDER-MAN, a huge fan of Tobey Maguire in general, and initially very distrusting of how in the world they were going to write Venom into this movie and make it work, I walked out with every synapse firing and the endorphin rush in my body was so spectacular that for the first time in nearly TEN YEARS, I was 100% pain-free for a few brief, blissful moments. It was an emotional rush. I cheered, I screamed, I laughed, I wanted to rip Harry Osborn's lungs out, I think Mary Jane is a foolish, flighty girl and Peter deserves so much better. I wanted to make mad, passionate love to Dark Peter, because the confidence and strength radiating off of him was just amazing. Tobey plays these scenes with every bit of geek/nerd desperation of trying to be cool (with something in his brain telling him that "Yeah, you know, you are as bad-a$$ as you think you are, and more"). The jazz club sequence, which critics deride BECAUSE THEY COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT OF THE SCENE (sorry, still dealing with the adrenaline rush), is one of the most spectacularly-choreographed dance scenes I've seen done in years, and yet with Sam Raimi's wild camera angles, it becomes somewhat more...it's disorienting, it's fun to watch, and yet, you realize that SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT HERE. It's just amazing.
The struggle in the church tower...forget all the preview footage you've ever seen of it. The parallelism between Eddie Brock Jr., humiliated and drunk, crossing himself and kneeling on the kneeling bench in a church pew (which is FAR more uncomfortable than the main kneeling rail, and I know Catholics who won't kneel at the kneeling rail in the front because they feel so unworthy to approach the altar) and Peter, struggling to come to grips with what he'd done to Harry (beaten him within an inch of his life) and MJ (who in a rage he backhands across the room when she tries to stop him from basically killing the jazz club staff that he's pretty much single-handedly destroying) and feeling he needs not only forgiveness, but he must take a spiritual punishment (or a physical one, in the case of wrestling in the bell tower) as part of his Act of Contrition. The moment of transition, as the last of the symbiote falls off of a naked and beaten Peter Parker, and onto the frightened, angry, vengeful Eddie Brock, is loaded with so much symbolism that Andrew Lloyd Webber needs to be writing music for it.
As for why I was crying, there's a moment near the end with Harry, Peter, and MJ that I was watching, and I was listening to, and I kept thinking, "Peter, you'd better not cry, because if you lose it, there's no way *I* won't just completely fall apart." I was feeling tears well up in my eyes throughout that scene, and as the movie ended and I kept talking with fans around me, I felt myself lose it. The emotional release I had from watching this movie was amazing.
My stupid ex, jcsbimp, loved Spider-Man the character and the SPIDER-MAN movies. When the first one came out, we went together opening day (I took the morning off and he took the whole day off, and we caught an 1130 AM show) and had such an amazing time. But the next day, when I wanted to go back, he wasn't paying any attention to me because he was too busy chatting online. It was only when I looked over his shoulder that I realized that he was propositioning a woman in the chat room of a game we played together occasionally, remarking on her "great body" and "fantastic kisses" and "maybe we should talk later..." This was the second time I caught him in the act of cheating on me and started asking hard questions: Who is she? When did this start? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this with HER? He tried to make excuses, but I told him that I was done with his excuses and his implication that I was this ice queen bitch who deprived him of the joys of marriage and his bullshit complaints that I didn't allow him to pleasure me and that somehow made him feel like less of a man, and I was done with allowing him to blame me for his inability to keep his pants zipped. Then I told him to get out and go to his play that night (he was in a RM show, Romeo and Juliet) before either of us said or did something we would later regret, and if I was at home when the play was done, I MIGHT think about letting him in. SPIDER-MAN became my means of escape in 2002, a way of dealing with the pain and the betrayal and wishing that a hero COULD save us, as Chad Kroeger sang with all the passion of someone who knew we all needed rescue. I went out to see the movie that night, and the next night...and the next...and three days after that. By the end of June, jcsbimp had begged me for forgiveness, promised he'd never do anything like this ever again, etc., and began going with me to the movies again, especially SPIDER-MAN, which we saw an additional 8 times together, to allow us to rebuild our love on common ground.
Two years later, after a long illness that cost me my uterus, ovaries, and very nearly my life, when SPIDER-MAN 2 came out, we used it as a way to once again make the kind of emotional connections we needed to make. We used our common love of the movies to rebuild trust between each other, and when we needed a pick-me-up emotionally, we'd go see it again (7 times). As Peter fought his way back from the feeling of having too much responsibility (letting go of his powers in the process), I let go of what remained of my mistrust of my beloved husband as a way of finding a balance in my life, too. I thought we'd turned the corner.
Little did I know that he was becoming more resentful of my illnesses. Of my times away from him while fixing crises at work. Of the times when, because I was sick as a dog, I couldn't put him first and make him feel oh-so-special and oh-so-important and satisfy all his manly needs. Little did I know that he was just waiting for a chance to break free. Little did I know that the time we spent on our 10th wedding anniversary, time we spent celebrating a weekend when I was actually feeling well...he was already cheating on me again. He hadn't learned that when you say you love someone for better and for worse, that means that you have to actually do it even when it's not fun to have to do the housework or take out the trash or clean the house or take care of your wife as her health begins to take frighteningly bad turns.
I won't rehash the Hell of 2006. What I will say instead is that the things that had once brought me pleasure--my love for the SPIDER-MAN movies--now brought pain. I couldn't watch SM1 without thinking about that time I caught him cheating and how different my life would have been if I'd stood my ground and said, "No, we can't be together like this; it's the second time within the last year that I *KNOW* about and I don't even want to know how many times you'd fooled me before." I couldn't watch SM2 without thinking, "We were so much in love that year. What happened? Was he just playing me? If he was, did I choose not to see it? Why couldn't I have seen this coming sooner?" I would try to put a DVD in, try to watch it...and couldn't get even halfway through before I had to take it out and stop crying. Even as the excitement began to build for SPIDER-MAN 3, even as I kept my own personal countdown and felt myself becoming eager and hopeful for something to just blow my mind, something inside me kept whispering, "You'll just be disappointed again. Peter's going to be a cad in this movie, and you've had way too much experience with cads this past year, and you'll hate it and walk out."
But, then, I turned a corner.
On 28 April, bimpchildsue and I sat down to watch the new recut of SM2, SPIDER-MAN 2.1. I put it in and resolved to watch it with her no matter how it made me feel. After a few minutes, I realized that I wasn't feeling pain, or humiliation, or anger, or anything else. I was feeling...enjoyment. I was happy. Again. For the first time in months, I could truly say I was happy.
So, when I walked into SPIDER-MAN 3 for the 2359 showing on 3 May 2007, I knew that no matter what, I was going to let the emotions I feel take reign and just...feel them. And I did. And when the movie ended, I was sobbing. Not just because of the sadness of the denouement of the final fight scene, but because I felt finally free of all my grief and sorrow. I felt happy at a SPIDER-MAN movie again, and what's more, I felt happy at it without having to filter my happiness through jcsbimp's messed up emotions.
I was laughing through tears when I called my friend (who'd once told me I could call her day, night, whatever) at 0241 on 4 May 2007. I was so happy, so bubbly, so excited, confessing that I was ridiculously unobjective about how freaking wonderful SPIDER-MAN 3 was. I rambled at length about how much I loved things, how wonderfully entertaining the Jazz Club dance scene was, etc. And then I started crying again, and I said, "I can't believe I'm still crying. I'm just so jazzed about this whole movie. It was just that good. And I'm sorry I'm a rambling mess at 0300 or whatever-the-Hell time it is there."
My friend said something that reminded me of why I love her so incredibly much. She said, "I'll gladly wake up at 3 AM to listen to you sound THIS happy anytime."
She knew what I needed to hear, and she knew why this moment of happiness meant to much to me. And that is the greatest gift I have ever received.
So, I'm not going to be objective about SPIDER-MAN 3 for a while. Try to understand. Better yet, go see it and don't sit there and analyze it. Just go with the emotions it generates within you. You'll have the best time ever. Trust me.