It's been a long day, full of emotional turmoil and dinosaur fights...
So, yes... here I am.
Watching Spiderman 3 with my nephew begged the question, am I too critical to just enjoy a movie? Have I lost my simple joy at the medium? It's the kind of question I asked myself after watching X3, but seeing my nephew so completely immerse himself in the movie brought it up again.
... Then, I remind myself that he's six, and also enjoyed X3.
It's not that I have a double standard. I'm critical of everything. But I can also fangirl with the best of them. (And have fangirled with the best of them. And those best rarely had cause to complain about my fangirlabillity.)
There is no fangirl love on this earth like I have for Threshold, and you should see how I tore apart that. Or SR! Only one girl can claim she fangirls SR more then I do... and even then, it's close. And yet not even it escaped my personal Inquisition.
I'm trying to learn to trust my own judgment. It's a slow process.
And it's not like I hated the movie. (Well, not as much as X3 anyway. OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT EVEN GOT MADE THERE IS NO GOD!) But it was on par with... say, Fantastic Four. Maybe a step or two behind.
I do, however, wish I hadn't written my review at the crack ass of dawn... I know from past experience if I don't write out my thoughts on a movie immediately, I almost never get around to it. Still, in sleepiness, I made far too many obvious mistakes.
For instance, I posed the question, "When did spontaneous dance become a symptom of underlying evil?" when the answer is pretty dead obvious: The Mask. I cannot believe I had forgotten that.
Things I neglected to cover: I actually thought Harry's date with MJ was adorable. Infact, I wish they had been that cute while dating, but he was too wrapped in in his family dysfunction and she was too busy cheating on him. Even though I think that the scene where he drops the omelet while trying to flip it is a bit ridiculous considering the earlier scene where he catches both the Basketball and the vase.
There were scenes that were nice, but felt like they'd fit better in the first movie. Such as the flashback to Harry cradling his dead father and crying. That would have added the emotion I felt was missing from the situation and would have made a beautiful and heartfelt scene on it's own. But instead it gets regulated to a flashback. I also felt in this one we got a better feel for the friendship between Harry and Peter, even if it had to be developed retroactively. With a little too much reliance on "Remember when?" conversations. Unfortunately, it came at the expense of horrible forced lines like "I protected you in High School, and now I'm going to kick your little ass!" Yeah... that first part was a bit much.
Something else that bothered me is I felt they let cannon get away from them. Not on the massive and unforgivable level that X3 did, but still enough to be noticeable. For instance, where was Spiderman's spider sense? And no, I'm not saying that because Venom was able to sneak up on him. Even with my tenuous grasp on comic cannon, I am aware that Venom was able to adapt to block that even though that was not at all developed in the movie. Instead, I refer to the scene where Peter is zipping along and out of nowhere Harry descends upon him. Honestly, isn't that something he should have seen coming?
And though there was probably no time to go into something like this, it is movie cannon that the Goblin Gas makes you nuts. It wasn't just super strength and agility, it came with a free side order of The Crazy as well. Though I suppose Harry was crazy enough as it was... Still, cannon.
Also, Meet the Robinsons was fun and funny. Go and take every toddling little one you know under the age of cynicism.
My journal appears to have spontaneously grown a set of tags. And a very thorough set of tags at that... intriguing.
Watching Spiderman 3 with my nephew begged the question, am I too critical to just enjoy a movie? Have I lost my simple joy at the medium? It's the kind of question I asked myself after watching X3, but seeing my nephew so completely immerse himself in the movie brought it up again.
... Then, I remind myself that he's six, and also enjoyed X3.
It's not that I have a double standard. I'm critical of everything. But I can also fangirl with the best of them. (And have fangirled with the best of them. And those best rarely had cause to complain about my fangirlabillity.)
There is no fangirl love on this earth like I have for Threshold, and you should see how I tore apart that. Or SR! Only one girl can claim she fangirls SR more then I do... and even then, it's close. And yet not even it escaped my personal Inquisition.
I'm trying to learn to trust my own judgment. It's a slow process.
And it's not like I hated the movie. (Well, not as much as X3 anyway. OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT EVEN GOT MADE THERE IS NO GOD!) But it was on par with... say, Fantastic Four. Maybe a step or two behind.
I do, however, wish I hadn't written my review at the crack ass of dawn... I know from past experience if I don't write out my thoughts on a movie immediately, I almost never get around to it. Still, in sleepiness, I made far too many obvious mistakes.
For instance, I posed the question, "When did spontaneous dance become a symptom of underlying evil?" when the answer is pretty dead obvious: The Mask. I cannot believe I had forgotten that.
Things I neglected to cover: I actually thought Harry's date with MJ was adorable. Infact, I wish they had been that cute while dating, but he was too wrapped in in his family dysfunction and she was too busy cheating on him. Even though I think that the scene where he drops the omelet while trying to flip it is a bit ridiculous considering the earlier scene where he catches both the Basketball and the vase.
There were scenes that were nice, but felt like they'd fit better in the first movie. Such as the flashback to Harry cradling his dead father and crying. That would have added the emotion I felt was missing from the situation and would have made a beautiful and heartfelt scene on it's own. But instead it gets regulated to a flashback. I also felt in this one we got a better feel for the friendship between Harry and Peter, even if it had to be developed retroactively. With a little too much reliance on "Remember when?" conversations. Unfortunately, it came at the expense of horrible forced lines like "I protected you in High School, and now I'm going to kick your little ass!" Yeah... that first part was a bit much.
Something else that bothered me is I felt they let cannon get away from them. Not on the massive and unforgivable level that X3 did, but still enough to be noticeable. For instance, where was Spiderman's spider sense? And no, I'm not saying that because Venom was able to sneak up on him. Even with my tenuous grasp on comic cannon, I am aware that Venom was able to adapt to block that even though that was not at all developed in the movie. Instead, I refer to the scene where Peter is zipping along and out of nowhere Harry descends upon him. Honestly, isn't that something he should have seen coming?
And though there was probably no time to go into something like this, it is movie cannon that the Goblin Gas makes you nuts. It wasn't just super strength and agility, it came with a free side order of The Crazy as well. Though I suppose Harry was crazy enough as it was... Still, cannon.
Also, Meet the Robinsons was fun and funny. Go and take every toddling little one you know under the age of cynicism.
My journal appears to have spontaneously grown a set of tags. And a very thorough set of tags at that... intriguing.