An Open Letter to Hollywood

Spider-man 3 came out in theaters this weekend. By all rights, it should have been an amazing movie. It has everything a good film needs, Spider-man saving people, and a couple of really cool looking bad guys. It’s very hard to screw this up. And somehow, this movie sucks. It blows. It’s awful. I got more excitement from watching Sylar and Peter square off on Heroes than I did watching this film, which was supposed to be the ultimate movie based on my favorite fictional character since I was in elementary school. Listen up Marvel Studios and Hollywood. I know I have little “experience” directing a major motion picture, and my resume doesn’t look as good compared to others (at least I’m better than Uwe Boll), but I know that I could have written and directed a movie that would have made not just a lot of money (I believe the scientific term is butt load of money), but it would have been awesome. And note that there are lots of spoilers below, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet you might want to stop reading now.

Here’s the outline of the movie. Ok, so NYC has finally accepted Spider-man, and they treat him as a celebrity. Peter, who was always on the outside looking in, is in love with his newfound fame. Conversely, the always-popular MJ is having trouble getting her career started and can’t buy a good review (probably because she can’t sing or act). At the same time we have Harry dealing with his hate for Peter/Spiderman. We also have the Sandman and his storyline. And on top of all of that Marvel Studios somehow forced Raimi to squeeze in the symbiote and Venom storyline into this. All in 2 ½ hours!

One of my biggest gripes with this movie, and most comic book movies, is the need to kill off the villain at the end. Villains do not die in comic books! Mostly they appear to die. If the villain does die, then there needs to be a way for someone to come up and take their place. The first Spiderman movie actually did this right. When they kill the Green Goblin at the end of the movie, it becomes the catalyst for Harry to descend into the Green Goblin role. This movie not only killed off one of the best characters in the franchise when they decided to kill off Harry (I said there were spoilers), but they killed off two of the best characters at the same time in the movie, and both were completely unnecessary.

So Hollywood, listen up. As a huge fan of the comic book, and a fan of these types of movies, I’m going to explain how I think the movie should have ended.

First, Harry doesn’t die. There’s absolutely no reason for Harry to die here. He’s already redeemed himself as a character in this movie. The new costume for him was actually really cool, as opposed to the original costume, which was just awful. And in future movies you can use him as a villain again. Remember, the formula he took to get the Goblin powers is supposed to make him crazy. He could slip at any time, and become a really cool bad guy. Also, Eddie Brock doesn’t die. Come on now. This was the EASIEST to get right, and you got it wrong. Eddie Brock is supposed to go to jail. Because there the symbiote comes and sets him free, and in the process creates Carnage. Carnage might not work in movie form, but at least leave that option. You could even throw Brock in jail and never come back to him, but at least we as the fans could argue that as a possibility. And, as others have pointed out, how the hell could the same bomb that just burned half of Harry’s face, completely incinerate Eddie? That doesn’t seem to add up.

Those are some of the major things I would have changed. These little things also need to be addressed:

• No spider-sense? Are you kidding me? There’s no way the Green Goblin sneaks up on Spidey like that. None. There’s no excuse for that.
• The Sandman “flying”. This just looked dumb, and didn’t need to be in there. Neither did the Sandman, but whatever.
• Emo-Peter. We’re supposed to see Peter’s dark side brought out by the symbiote, and what do we get? Peter turns himself into an Emo kid. This could have been done so much better than a song and dance montage. Seriously, what the hell was that?
• The symbiote on Peter. If the symbiote that was on Venom was like a liquid in the sense that it would flow on and off of him at will, then why was it actual fabric on Spiderman? It should have acted the same exact way, and he could have used the costume at will.
• Peter went out a lot without the Spiderman costume on underneath his clothes. This should never happen.
• Venom was tiny. Venom is supposed to be huge, and I thought in this movie I could put him in my pocket.

I felt like the entire time I was watching the fight scenes in the movie that I was waiting in line for the Spiderman ride at Islands of Adventure and watching the story that they show when you are waiting. And when you think that a big budget blockbuster title you just paid millions of dollars for is of similar quality to a five-minute loop of animation, I would hope you get a little sad about that.

Of course, none of this means anything since Spiderman 3 is setting records all over the place. But just think, if people pay this much to see crap, how much would they dish out to see the genius that is my story on screen?