refresh_daemon
Joined Oct 2000
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Spider-Man 3 is the first movie where Sam Raimi has disappointed me. It's certainly a Sam Raimi film and it very much follows the previous movies in terms of style, presentation and even in terms of where its story goes, but where it fails is to tell a well woven tale.
The story follows after the events of Spider-Man 2 and both of the previous movies are briefly summarized visually during the opening credits, which is nice for those who have to catch up. Spider-Man has become the talk of the town and Mary Jane is opening up a show. Uh, then a whole ton of stuff happens in a hurry, including the introduction of three villains and a retcon of the first movie, which leads to a whole lot of emo-spidey/Peter Parker.
And there's so much attempted in this story that it just doesn't hold together. Several elements of the stories feel heavily contrived, just to get all the villains present. The Harry Osborn, the the Black Suit and Eddie Brock have enough going for them that they could have all held together their own movies separately, using just the Sandman as an intermediary villain, but so little time is spent developing any of the major story lines that the film literally tells us what's going on most of the time and does things like retconning events of the first movie to fit in motive for the second emo-Parker. Which in itself is an inversion of the whole "Raindrops Are Falling On My Head" sequence from the second film. Unfortunately, the charm wore off and the sequence went on far too long this time around. Also, because the film has to juggle so many events, it felt like I was a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth between a heated game of "let's change up the entire tone of the film with a dramatic twist" over and over again. I really didn't appreciate that we hit emo-Spidey/Parker three entire times over the course of the film, with him "getting better" each time. The stories, the Mary Jane/Peter Parker story, the Harry Osborn story, the Eddie Brock/Black Suit story and the Sandman story all just aren't given enough time to breathe and set before things change over again.
I got bored and I got frustrated. Furthermore, the Sandman, as a character is poorly developed and so are his powers, which ultimately seem overwhelming and it's surprising how easily he's defeated. The only character that gets some interesting development is Harry Osborn, but not enough time is spent with him and it doesn't feel like, at the end, what happens with him is earned by the film. So almost every element of the film seems a little forced.
Technically, the film is up to the standards of the previous films. It looks great and Raimi and company maintains their eye for color, for camera-work, for adding cheese when wanted and providing kinetic action. The actors all remain up to the standards established by the previous films and I really do like how the film feels so much like the previous two in terms of the overall presentation.
Ultimately, the only problem with Spider-Man 3 happens to be a huge one. The story essentially tries to sandwich what might be three movies worth of plot into a two hour movie (and yes, the movie really felt too long) and it just fails to pull me into its world, making me feel like I was getting smacked around by a giant plot stick. And it just seemed too obvious that it was trying to do that. And, so, I was quite disappointed by Spider-Man 3. It's not "the suck" entirely, because, contrived as it is, it still does try to tell a story (or two, or three) that might be coherent and meaningful if more time was given to it, but it doesn't succeed. I'd say it's fine to stop at Spider-Man 2 and leave the series on a good note. 5/10.
The story follows after the events of Spider-Man 2 and both of the previous movies are briefly summarized visually during the opening credits, which is nice for those who have to catch up. Spider-Man has become the talk of the town and Mary Jane is opening up a show. Uh, then a whole ton of stuff happens in a hurry, including the introduction of three villains and a retcon of the first movie, which leads to a whole lot of emo-spidey/Peter Parker.
And there's so much attempted in this story that it just doesn't hold together. Several elements of the stories feel heavily contrived, just to get all the villains present. The Harry Osborn, the the Black Suit and Eddie Brock have enough going for them that they could have all held together their own movies separately, using just the Sandman as an intermediary villain, but so little time is spent developing any of the major story lines that the film literally tells us what's going on most of the time and does things like retconning events of the first movie to fit in motive for the second emo-Parker. Which in itself is an inversion of the whole "Raindrops Are Falling On My Head" sequence from the second film. Unfortunately, the charm wore off and the sequence went on far too long this time around. Also, because the film has to juggle so many events, it felt like I was a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth between a heated game of "let's change up the entire tone of the film with a dramatic twist" over and over again. I really didn't appreciate that we hit emo-Spidey/Parker three entire times over the course of the film, with him "getting better" each time. The stories, the Mary Jane/Peter Parker story, the Harry Osborn story, the Eddie Brock/Black Suit story and the Sandman story all just aren't given enough time to breathe and set before things change over again.
I got bored and I got frustrated. Furthermore, the Sandman, as a character is poorly developed and so are his powers, which ultimately seem overwhelming and it's surprising how easily he's defeated. The only character that gets some interesting development is Harry Osborn, but not enough time is spent with him and it doesn't feel like, at the end, what happens with him is earned by the film. So almost every element of the film seems a little forced.
Technically, the film is up to the standards of the previous films. It looks great and Raimi and company maintains their eye for color, for camera-work, for adding cheese when wanted and providing kinetic action. The actors all remain up to the standards established by the previous films and I really do like how the film feels so much like the previous two in terms of the overall presentation.
Ultimately, the only problem with Spider-Man 3 happens to be a huge one. The story essentially tries to sandwich what might be three movies worth of plot into a two hour movie (and yes, the movie really felt too long) and it just fails to pull me into its world, making me feel like I was getting smacked around by a giant plot stick. And it just seemed too obvious that it was trying to do that. And, so, I was quite disappointed by Spider-Man 3. It's not "the suck" entirely, because, contrived as it is, it still does try to tell a story (or two, or three) that might be coherent and meaningful if more time was given to it, but it doesn't succeed. I'd say it's fine to stop at Spider-Man 2 and leave the series on a good note. 5/10.
The Animatrix is a compilation companion piece to the Matrix films that collects nine short animated films set in the world of the Matrix. While it helps broaden and inform the world of the Matrix, the individual segments vary in their success in storytelling.
"Final Flight of the Osiris" opens up the film and is the CG animated number. In itself, it's just a short story about events that occur off- screen during the second Matrix film. At it mostly acts as backstory, it doesn't lend itself very much dramatic weight and spends a whole lot of time at the beginning showing off CGI attempts at life-like animation as well as CGI skin. While the visuals themselves are fairly impressive, I was ultimately underwhelmed. 5/10.
"The Second Renaissance Parts I & II" are two short films that chronicle the events leading up to the dystopia of The Matrix. An animated fauxcumentary, it sets the background of the Matrix world, step by step, showing how humans created the machines and the machines beat the humans after tons of abuse. While it's all quite well drawn (and contains dozens upon dozens of references to other films), I found it about as interesting as reading a poorly written history textbook. It does contain more interesting text than "Final Flight", especially as it deals with humanity's errors, but I have to say that despite it's strong visual style, it edged on being a yawnfest. And it doesn't pull punches. Another downside is that the more it exposed some of the backstory about how the world of the Matrix happened, the harder I found to buy it, which consequently had a negative effect on how I view the original Matrix movie. 6/10.
"Kid's Story" is really where this collection begins to pick up. I found it's hand-drawn blurry style to be rather catching, especially in capturing the waking-dream-like world of the Matrix. While the story mostly just deals with a kid's escape from The Matrix, it holds some interesting subtext about the nature of dreams (even within dreams) and ideas of fate. Not to say that this is masterful, but rather, it's a decent little piece, for what it is. 7/10.
"Program" is a piece that left me unsatisfied, because it raised questions that it failed to resolve. Essentially set within a swords- and-samurai simulation, the protagonist encounters a friend-as-adversary in the program. They talk about the nature of reality as they fight and as her friend lets her in on a dark secret. But the ending creates serious doubts in the believability of the confrontation within. Again, interesting art, but the story has large enough issues that it was hard to enjoy. 5/10.
"World Record" was actually kind of interesting. It deals with a world class runner who, in breaking records, begins to see cracks in his reality. It's quite simple and fortunately it's short, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. 7/10.
"Beyond" is by far my favorite piece of the bunch. A teenage girl starts looking for her cat, Yuki, and meets some boys who she follows to a local "haunted house", where she discovers both Yuki and an apparent glitch in the Matrix. The glitch makes some rather strange things happen, like gravity working weird and reality fading in and out. It works as an exploration of finding the strange and wonderful things in life and how reality/society/etc tries to "erase" these mistakes. Fantastic, even if it has the least to do with the Matrix mythology. 8/10.
"A Detective Story" deals with a detective named Ash who gets hired to find the hacker Trinity. His explorations lead him to some rather strange discoveries about reality. Working as an homage to hard-boiled detective films, I found it pretty interesting and it very strongly reminded me of Cowboy Bebop, including it's protagonist, who sort of reminded me of Spike. 7/10.
"Matriculation" left me with mixed feelings. Reminding me strongly of Aeon Flux in its art style (I'm guessing it's the same director), the film ultimately deals with the attempts of Zion to create machine "rebels". The Zion folk capture a runner-robot and plug it into their own Matrix and interact with it in a somewhat strange world. Unfortunately, for me, not much happens narratively within this machine- Matrix except for a series of somewhat interesting visuals and this segment goes on for quite a while. I got bored. But then it gets interesting and darker at the end and I found the ending to be rather interesting itself. So a mixed bag. 6/10.
All in all, the Animatrix is mostly watchable, but doesn't have as many highs as it just sits in the middle. The art is mostly gorgeous, but many of the stories overstay their welcome or reveal gaps in logic, whether inside the story itself or in the mythology of the Matrix. As a companion piece to The Matrix, it works all right, even if it might show off huge cracks in the Matrix mythology. As such, I have to say it's really more of a work for fans, although I think "Beyond" is solid enough in itself to watch on its own. It's okay.
"Final Flight of the Osiris" opens up the film and is the CG animated number. In itself, it's just a short story about events that occur off- screen during the second Matrix film. At it mostly acts as backstory, it doesn't lend itself very much dramatic weight and spends a whole lot of time at the beginning showing off CGI attempts at life-like animation as well as CGI skin. While the visuals themselves are fairly impressive, I was ultimately underwhelmed. 5/10.
"The Second Renaissance Parts I & II" are two short films that chronicle the events leading up to the dystopia of The Matrix. An animated fauxcumentary, it sets the background of the Matrix world, step by step, showing how humans created the machines and the machines beat the humans after tons of abuse. While it's all quite well drawn (and contains dozens upon dozens of references to other films), I found it about as interesting as reading a poorly written history textbook. It does contain more interesting text than "Final Flight", especially as it deals with humanity's errors, but I have to say that despite it's strong visual style, it edged on being a yawnfest. And it doesn't pull punches. Another downside is that the more it exposed some of the backstory about how the world of the Matrix happened, the harder I found to buy it, which consequently had a negative effect on how I view the original Matrix movie. 6/10.
"Kid's Story" is really where this collection begins to pick up. I found it's hand-drawn blurry style to be rather catching, especially in capturing the waking-dream-like world of the Matrix. While the story mostly just deals with a kid's escape from The Matrix, it holds some interesting subtext about the nature of dreams (even within dreams) and ideas of fate. Not to say that this is masterful, but rather, it's a decent little piece, for what it is. 7/10.
"Program" is a piece that left me unsatisfied, because it raised questions that it failed to resolve. Essentially set within a swords- and-samurai simulation, the protagonist encounters a friend-as-adversary in the program. They talk about the nature of reality as they fight and as her friend lets her in on a dark secret. But the ending creates serious doubts in the believability of the confrontation within. Again, interesting art, but the story has large enough issues that it was hard to enjoy. 5/10.
"World Record" was actually kind of interesting. It deals with a world class runner who, in breaking records, begins to see cracks in his reality. It's quite simple and fortunately it's short, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. 7/10.
"Beyond" is by far my favorite piece of the bunch. A teenage girl starts looking for her cat, Yuki, and meets some boys who she follows to a local "haunted house", where she discovers both Yuki and an apparent glitch in the Matrix. The glitch makes some rather strange things happen, like gravity working weird and reality fading in and out. It works as an exploration of finding the strange and wonderful things in life and how reality/society/etc tries to "erase" these mistakes. Fantastic, even if it has the least to do with the Matrix mythology. 8/10.
"A Detective Story" deals with a detective named Ash who gets hired to find the hacker Trinity. His explorations lead him to some rather strange discoveries about reality. Working as an homage to hard-boiled detective films, I found it pretty interesting and it very strongly reminded me of Cowboy Bebop, including it's protagonist, who sort of reminded me of Spike. 7/10.
"Matriculation" left me with mixed feelings. Reminding me strongly of Aeon Flux in its art style (I'm guessing it's the same director), the film ultimately deals with the attempts of Zion to create machine "rebels". The Zion folk capture a runner-robot and plug it into their own Matrix and interact with it in a somewhat strange world. Unfortunately, for me, not much happens narratively within this machine- Matrix except for a series of somewhat interesting visuals and this segment goes on for quite a while. I got bored. But then it gets interesting and darker at the end and I found the ending to be rather interesting itself. So a mixed bag. 6/10.
All in all, the Animatrix is mostly watchable, but doesn't have as many highs as it just sits in the middle. The art is mostly gorgeous, but many of the stories overstay their welcome or reveal gaps in logic, whether inside the story itself or in the mythology of the Matrix. As a companion piece to The Matrix, it works all right, even if it might show off huge cracks in the Matrix mythology. As such, I have to say it's really more of a work for fans, although I think "Beyond" is solid enough in itself to watch on its own. It's okay.