Comic 72

Does Whatever a Spider Can…

May 11, 2007

I haven’t seen Spiderman 3 yet. This makes me very, very sad, but also somewhat relieved.

When the first movie came out, I was taking animation classes at a school across the street from a theatre. The day of the premiere, everyone was so pumped for the movie that people were humming the Spiderman theme and drawing nothing but Spiderman. (It was, of course, a school full of geeks.) Even the instructors were pumped for the movies, and let us out early so that we could line up for the 5:00 show. That was at 2:00.

It was just in time, too. By 3:00, the line went around the block. It was the sort of gathering of geeks that you only get at cons or a big movie openings. (Sadly, no one was dressed up…) We passed the time by doing sketches of our favorite Spiderman villians, and of course, Spidey himself, which delighted the non-artsy geeks in line. I think a couple of us actually got paid to do sketches. So by the time the Marvel title came up of the screen, we were all so wound up that the movie could have totally sucked, but as long as Spidey was in it somewhere, it would have been the best thing -ever-. But the movie was good, great even, and we walked out of there on cloud nine.

No movie is likely to live up to that kind of experience, no matter how good. And I have my doubts about this one being even as good as the first two. I think they’re trying to do too much. God, just the Venom storyline alone is enough to fuel an entire movie, but they’ve also thrown in Hobgoblin (are they calling him the Green Goblin?) and Sandman… Yikes. That’s a lot. And so I’m relieved that I haven’t seen it yet, because until I do, I’m existing in some sort of quantum state where it’s like Schrodinger’s Spiderman, and I’m afraid to open the box.