Along Came a Spider

Without a doubt, this summer is the summer of the threequel. Between the new Pirates of the Carribean, the next Bourne installment (with Julia Stiles once again reprising her completely unnecessary role), and the third Shrek, theatergoers will have several opportunities to throw their money away and support bloated movie franchises and the big (read: evil capitalist) studios that peddle them.

The first of this year's threequels is already out: Spider-Man 3. The movie is packed with a lot -- perhaps a little too much. You have three villains; you have a seemingly omniscient butler (but what movie doesn't these days?); you have Bryce Dallas Howard in a blonde wig playing a physics major/model/police chief's daughter/damsel in distress; you have Bruce Campbell as a stereotyped French guy; yet, most importantly, you have an emo Peter Parker/Conor Obserst lookalike. I did notice one potentially troubling thing about this transformation. For one thing, Conor Oberst can't shoot webbing from his wrists, but even if he could, he surely wouldn't swing in front of an American flag, as Spider-Man does at one point in the movie. However, then I remembered that, by this point, Peter Parker had given up his emo ways.

This leads me to my next point. There's a clear, especially noble message underneath all the pumpkin-bomb explosions and giant villains made of sand. The message: don't be emo. If you're emo, your life will fall apart. You'll lose everything, including cinematic credibility.

To sum up my thoughts, this movie made me dumber, and it actually made X-Men III look like a competent effort. Dear God, I kneel humbly before you. All I ask is that you give me back my $7.75 and those two hours and twenty minutes of my life.