Tuesday, March 27, 2007

If Peter Parker picked a peck of pickled peppers

For some odd reason, I've been on a comics-turned-into-movie roll (X-men, 300, etc.) The latest is Spiderman and Spiderman 2.

Hate is a strong word, especially for critters I can squash if they don't run away. But I really do hate this particular superhero's namesakes (and I'm still looking over my shoulder and on the ceiling as I'm typing.) So I didn't really see the first parts of Spiderman because I was covering my eyes for most of it. I don't care if they're CG arachnids, they're still repulsive...

The movies were kind of boring. Maybe it's just because Tobey Maguire isn't that great an actor, and neither is Kirsten Dunst. Or I'm in comic superhero formula overload (Superman Returns, Batman Begins, the X-men trilogy, and now Spiderman all within a space of five months.) At any rate, I wasn't that impressed. And during Aunt May's "There's a hero in all of us" speech, Mariah Carey's song kept playing in my head and I couldn't shake it for the rest of the movie. Also, the helpless love interests, a la Perils of Pauline, are starting to get on my nerves. Why do they always try to marry random guys just for the sake of getting married? And fall off buildings? And the bipolar villains in both S1 and S2 were practically the same character, just with different freak-of-science powers.

But I am well-armed culturally for S3 this summer...

Also, the gray, wet weather is back after a brief sun break. Which is always the cruelest joke of nature: taunt those Northwesterners with a day of sun, then plunge them back into seasonal affect disorder for three more months. Mwahaha.

On another note (but a more fascinating one), someone should write something about the role of the press in the superhero genre --mediator, rabble-rouser, voice of truth, etc. It would be more captivating than some stuff within the genre itself.

4 comments:

Xtina said...

aw, i liked spider man. i do get sick of the screaming damsels though.
is there a superheroine out there who had a successful movie?

Rainster said...

I think I'm more a Superman fan. Cuz at least the female gets to be a reporter and sort of smart, rather than an actress who's just sweet and pretty and doesn't really have a personality. And I like the alien adoptee past better than the bitten-by-a-bug explanation for superpowers. (As I search the floors and ceilings and shadows to see if there are any creepy crawlies....)

Does Xena count? Although that was TV, not film.

Torgo said...

What about Alien? Sure, Sigourney Weaver isn't a superhero in the "bit by a radioactive spider" sense, but she single-handedly defeats huge, terrifying monsters in 3 movies, then her clone defeats/gets freaky with the same monsters in the fourth.

I think she's a great superheroine in a successful franchise.

Xtina said...

never saw alien, so that's why i didn't think of it.

what'd you think of katie holmes in batman begins?