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Wasss once a man
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Posts: 1,430
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Join Date: Nov 2006
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I totally felt Venom got the bum's rush. The symbiote was a pale imitation of what it was in the comics -- there was no flowing off & onto Peter, they only had it peel back on its own when Eddie was wearing it, plus it didn't morph into any other kind of clothing or use the invisible/camo ability Venom has often displayed. And I may have missed it because I would have taken it for granted until I was actually thinking about it, but did Venom even get named in the film? Maybe in that news report?
I felt there could have been a LOT more done with Venom -- I always loved the "Lethal Protector" aspect of the character, where he hated Spider-Man utterly but saw himself as a righteous person whom Spidey had wronged, so he would never hurt "innocents." In the movie, it was just Eddie saying "I like being bad," and going psycho on pretty much anyone. And no self-referencing "We" -- the symbiote seemed intelligent at the beginning but there was no sense of communication, no real internal bonding with Eddie, just in the physical sense (what was with those stupid teeth when his mask peeled back...?).
I didn't mind Harry's amnesia, since it was very close to the comics. There, Harry discovered his father was the Goblin, took the Goblin's identity and briefly went after Peter, then did suffer amnesia. The movie felt a bit disjointed when he was returning to his evil ways, although that's probably because they had 2 or 3 other plotlines going on at the same time. What REALLY bothered me was the scene in the coffee shop where Harry was telling Pete that he was MJ's other man -- Harry was full-on evil then, was wanting to hurt Peter, so Pete's Spider-Sense would have been SCREAMING.
I can understand the whole "seeing the actors emote" thing in terms of losing the mask, but if that's the case just go make more Fantastic Four and X-Men movies. If you're going to make a Spider-Man film, you should be willing to deal with the fact that the main character has a mask and work on things like body language and dialogue. Speaking of which, where's Spidey's trademark snappy banter? He seems to get only 1 or 2 lines per scene when he's in costume, and there's no taunting villains, no bad jokes; a lot of the character of Spider-Man is missing, and all we're left with is angsty Parker. Add in the "Everybody Loves Spidey," key to the city thing and it might as well be any superhero as far as the actual superheroing goes.
I could go on, and bring up things from the previous movies (why the hell would you build evil tentacles in the first place, delicate & exposed "inhibitor chip" be damned!) but I'll just leave this with one final thing -- did everyone in that movie cry at least twice?! I think Jameson was the only character with more than 2 lines who didn't! Heck, even the Sandman, who's made out of SAND and we've SEEN doesn't react well with water, squeezes out a tear right before Peter gets closure on his whole reason for being Spider-Man and forgives his uncle's killer (why does every villain need a personal connection with Peter Parker anyway...?).
X2 remains my favourite comicbook-based movie, and despite Spider-Man being my lifelong favourite superhero I just feel the movies, when you get down to it, miss the point with the character(s).
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