Saturday, May 26, 2007

The Not So Friendly Neighborhood Man

First thing before this:

I met my relatives from Australia - coming over to Malaysia to visit us and my grandfather whom is whom is my great aunt's brother over a dinner on Tuesday. I was quite excited to meet them since we last met about two years ago. Unfortunately, I would not be able to join them in Penang as they would want to go for the durian feast there - just started and since I do not want to waste my leave for that, I would compensate that with dinner that I bought for them on Thursday night. I was insistent on meeting them as to make my point on that.

After dinner, I went back to my house but I tried driving through the SMART tunnel, which appears right at the new intersection between Jalan Imbi and Jalan Sultan Ismail (next to Times Square). It was a five km ride from here to the airfield base in Sungai Besi and I just thought -wow, no need to drive through the streets above and avoid the jam.

Now:

I just finished watching Spider-man 3 just now and I have to agree with Edmund's review of the movie. Despite being a lavish production and big money to make the kind of film, the film is more focusing on the set-pieces rather than the story itself, despite being the first well-hype movie of Summer 2007. I noticed that things are rushed and there's lack of characterization between our supporting characters such as Flint.

My first thing about the hype of the film is that it is going to be like The Two Thrones, the final chapter of Prince of Persia trilogy. The game was arguably the weakest of the trilogy and it seems that the film follows the same formula of plot like the game.

By I do know that in Sam Raimi's films, there is no such thing as villain exists in his definition.
As each character has its reason d'etre that forms the shell of the characters we see on screen.

After watching, I realized that the second one is the best of the three films so far. It has better characterization and it pays more attention of having one villain itself. Each of the characters are sufficiently explored unlike this one.

J. Jonah Jameson is my favorite character of the series given his rough talk. But this time, he was pushed back into sitting at a corner. Since things are rushed, there are too many loose ends to this film. What happens to Flint after the end? As in the comics I always know that Gwen Stacy is killed by the Green Goblin but her character is utilized one-half of the show and then blank.

The weakest link of all is Topher Grace. He doesn't do much in the movie and as the greater of the two baddies, he didn't have the kind of menace that great villains do. However, I came to notice one thing, in Peter David's novelization, he was killed on the pike but here it was changed into a bomb that things vanished without a trace. The script is constantly re-written even during the filming and at first I thought there's John Jameson coming down and bringing back the symbiote that is seen in the film.


The hero in the film is not Peter but Harry. I noticed that the connection of these three characters is somewhat similar to Harry, Ron, and Hermione as adults, each going for the girl, the two boys having the anonymity over each other and it ends with one of them sacrificing for the two with all forgiving each other. If you see how it ends, it is similar to the climatic part of The Sorcerer's Stone's wizard chess - Ron sacrificing his character in order for Harry to checkmate the opponent.

Perhaps the loose ends were deliberately placed in by the writers - the Raimi brothers as well as Alvin Sargent - producer Laura Ziskin's husband - as to say that there is more to come. But sincerely, three movies are enough already. Was there an intention to put one more as to carry those things over and tie up in the fourth film? But there are franchises that has the fourth movie coming out soon..Rambo IV, Jurassic Park IV, Indiana Jones IV, Die Hard 4.0 - wow...you name it. Maybe it is because that Hollywood has lack of original new movies to produce and maybe depend on the strength of a franchise to survive.

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