Saw The Dark Knight last night...

How to fix Spider-Man 3:

1. Eliminate the angst. Mary Jane loves him, he loves her . . find something else to talk about.
2. Eliminate the Sandman's apocryphal storyline where he murdered Uncle Ben.
3. Eliminate Venom unless you could find a clever way to introduce him, instead of the "random glob from space lands near our hero" plotline.

I don't like Venom at all; to me, he and that costume are the first indicator that Spidey was about to get into 20 years of bad plotlines (Clone Saga, Captain Universe, Alien Costume is now his worst enemy, Mephisto nullifies his marriage, etc.).

But the fanboys adore Venom, and the movie failed to do him justice. It wasn't as bad as Bane in Batman and Robin, but it was as bad as Phoenix in X3.

 

My biggest problem with Spidey 3 were there were too many villains that weren't actually...villainous. It felt like they were all good guys at heart and never *really* were in it for the kill or anything. It felt so disconnected, you could tell no one really wanted to be there anymore.

With all of the positive reviews of Batman Begins, I'll definitely have to give it a rent before I go see DK.

 

Batman Begins is good and this is a direct sequel to that, so if you only see one, it's definitely the one to watch.

 

Piotr, that's exactly my thinking. The ideal way might have been to have the "random glob from space" come home with Jameson. Or maybe the Ultimate Spidey version...

 

Spiderman 3 was absolutely dreadful.

 

I didn't hate that movie quite as much as many others did, but that scene made me cringe. Beyond ridiculous. The last place you can pull crap like that is in a big-budget movie with a big comic-geek audience.

It just seemed to me as if at some point in the writing and production of the movie, Raimi decided it was going to be his last and he just had to shove a bunch of stuff in. They would have been much better off breaking it up into two movies, with the Sandman and Harry as the "bad guys" in the Spider-Man 3, having the black costume pushing Peter too far at the end, setting up a Venom-centric Spider-Man 4.

 

Jamming too many villains into the storylines tanked the Batman franchise in the 1990s, and essentially tanked Spider-Man 3.

In "Batman Begins" you have Ras' Al Ghul (primary villain), the Scarecrow (secondary villain), Carmine Falcone (minor villain), and a brief hint of The Joker in the final 30 seconds of the movie. I suppose Earle (the corporate douche played by Rutger Hauer) was a minor villain as well.

"The Dark Knight" apparently keeps the villains to the Joker, Two-Face (at the end) and brief appearances by the Scarecrow and mobster Maroni (replacing Falcone in a Frankie Pentangeli/Pete Clemenza switch-off). I'll be interested to see if a brief hint of a certain slinky feline female is thrown in at the very end.

 

So, are you saying Batman Begins has too many villains or not? I didn't think it was a problem and I doubt it will be one this time. It is possible to make a good movie with a lot of villains in it, but it has to be done well. Batman Begins did it well, in part because there was really only one "big bad." Also, the script was just very good.

If anything, it should be easier this time with less need for backstory.

The problems come when potentially outstanding villains are wasted (see Venom in Spider-Man 3) or you get what seems like two movies smashed into one (X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3). I have faith in the writers and director to pull avoid that and give us something special in Dark Knight.

 

"Begins" had one major villain, one minor villain, and three others who were only peripheral to the script. Once you get past one major and one minor villain, you're into kitchen-sink territory.

 

Got ya. Yes, they do seem to be keeping it under control. I doubt we will even see much of Two-Face as a villain in this movie. Sam Raimi should watch this and see what he should have done with Spider-Man 3.

 

Spidey 3's problem was that it was roughly three movies crammed into one big piece of junk.
I don't think the Dark Knight will have that problem, but I figure the next Superman movie will be nine kinds of stupid since once you get past Luthor, you don't have many recognizable villains. So the next one will have a Lex plot, another villain, and then one more to round out it up to two hours and push up merchandise sales.

 

That's what I'd be afraid of with the next Superman movie. Then again, there was no way I would go see the next one in the theater anyway. As much as I loved what Singer did with the first two X-Movies, I hated what he did with Superman Returns. Even Kevin Spacey couldn't save it. That sounds harsh. I didn't hate the movie. I was just extremely disappointed.