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My Thoughts About Spider-Man 3

It’s 3:30 in the morning, just got back from a midnight premier of Spidey 3. Overall it was good but there were somethings that really did not make it great. Just to get it out of the way my post is spoiler free so please do read on.

First off, most of the movie was spoiled for me since I worked on the game, the Nintendo DS version that is. Though during production of our game we did not get a ton of info about the movie, but got enough info and concept images to know the main plot points of the movie. So right off the bat I knew how each of the major battles were going to be played out. I guess the fun part was seeing how they did it. Of the many battle sequences I found the subway battle between Sandman and Black Suit Spidey to be really cool. Some glimpses of this have been shown in the trailers but the entire sequence was well done.

Speaking of villians, Venom was pretty decent, but was also not as cool as he could have been. Some Spidey fans, such as myself, think Venom is by far the coolest villian and is equally matched to Spidey’s abilites. Some out there seem to say that though Venom is cool, his motive of hating Spidey as seen in the comics and cartoons, would get stale and boring really fast especially within a two and half hour long movie. Honestly I would have loved to see more of Venom than of Sandman, but in the end the director has the final say. Though Venom, in my opinion, has a cameo role in this film it was done well. Some things that were noteable include the personality, emotions, and abilites. Things that I think did not work for Venom, the look and voice. Even for the ammount screen time given to Venom, seeing an “Ultimate” universe version of Venom would have been awesome compared to what was shown in the film.

In the end if I had to rank the film I would give it about a 70-75%. Hey you may like it more than I did, you may think this movie is the best of the three. That’s cool if you do, because if I had not worked on the game or knew anything about Spidey 3 my personal rating would be a lot higher. On the subject of rankings, a good handful of critics out there have gone to the extent of bashing Spidey 3! Some people out there just don’t get the point that this is a movie based on a comic book franchise, things are going to be a little over the top and in some cases, “cartoony”. Other critics didn’t like the emotional elements either, I kind of agree with them on that but in retrospective of everything that happens in the movie the dramatic/emotional elements worked. Could have been better, but they worked. One things I noticed in most of the “bad” reviews are shots at some cheesy elements in the film. I won’t say what those are but you will know it when you see it. My opinion on that, it’s comic relief, I think that is concept some critics don’t get maybe. Perhaps they were looking for a movie that was exteremly serious and not made for the general audience of Spidey fans. Some of the comic sequences may have been over done, but again it worked within the premise of the movie.

If there is one thing I can agree upon with the “bad” reviews is that that this movie did try to cram a lot into one film. In the end it worked well and was an enjoyable movie, and I will most likely see it again.

Ok I guess I went on about the movie for too long. On to the games! Wait… nevermind. There is not a single review out there yet of any of the games! That is really odd. Hopefully the reviews will show up later today (and hopefully they are good!), but as a game designer that worked on a Spidey game I can tell you that they are fun to play. All of the game SKU’s have elements from the movie that are re-enacted quite well, along with other divergent stroy arcs based on characters from the comic book universe. I personally have not played the console versions that much, but as for the DS version it is really cool. Almost three hours of interesting gameplay. The coolest thing about the DS is the touch screen controls, all the moves and combos are done with the stylus. Everything is very intuitive and easy to learn. Plus the Black Suit is a hell of a lot of fun with new move sets and what not. Also on the subject of handheld, the GBA version is pretty neat as well. I did some work on that early on but another team finished the game.

Well I ramabled on long enough, if you read all of this, I salute you for putting up with me and my rant on Spidey 3. I need some sleep… it is now 4:00 am only six hours till work!