Spiderman

Spoiler alert!

Today, the kids and I have been off to see Spiderman 3. Now, I'll fess up straightaway and say I'm a big fan of this incarnation of Spidey. I love the fact that Tobey Maguire has portrayed him as such a vulnerable superhero, that the character is so well rounded and shaded.

As I was watching, I was thinking about plot, because this movie, more than the others seems a tangled web of subplots, rather than one main plot with several subplots. I had been going to say tangled mess, but I guess with this movie web is better! Let's see -- there's:
(i) Peter and MJ
(ii) Peter and Harry
(iii) Peter and his inner demons
(iv) Spiderman and the Sandman
(v) Peter and his uncle's killer
(vi) Spiderman and the black alien thing, which turns him into the black-suited Spidey
(vii) Peter and another photographer

Some of these are related: (iv) and (v); (vi) and (vii); (iii) and (vi) -- oh, and (i) and (ii) tie into a number of them in all sorts of ways. I'd be hard-pressed to say which is the main plot, but it didn't really matter -- it worked for me. Just like Silence of the lambs, which is a really interesting study in plot because the subplot (Lector and Starling) is more gripping than and takes over from the main plot (Starling trying to catch the kidnapper/murderer before he murders again).

I must say I always watch James Franco with interest, because he's one of a number of actors I could imagine playing the main character in my novel. And Tobey Maguire was superb playing different versions of his character. And I'm not talking about the action scenes.

There are funny mistakes in every film. I think of the stormtrooper banging his head in Star wars. In this film, it's more of a continuity error. I'll just say watch the frypan that Harry and MJ are cooking in. Not that I can talk -- one of my major characters once changed from hazel-eyed to blue, and I hadn't noticed because I'm not visual but conceptual in the way I imagine things. I picked it up when reading through it, thankfully, but I always wonder if I could do that, then what else might I have missed.

Anyway, I'd recommend this movie. The action is mind-boggling, though at times so fast I couldn't actually track it with my eyes, but aside from the action, it's a superb character study. Can't wait till it comes out on DVD.