More Isn't Better

We have quite recently re-established that I am not a comic book fan. Let me re-re-establish that now, before proceeding.

I believe the two Spider-man films to be the absolute pinnacle of comic book movies. The first two Superman movies were decent. Batman Begins was pretty damn good. But Spider-man got everything right in my book (well, except for some of the swinging effects looking pretty lame), and managed to do it twice.

Both Spideys put story front and center. The fireworks and action were great, but it was all in service of story with real emotion and dramatic heft. The scope was tight, with contained plots and appropriate villains that, once again, serviced that same real emotion and drama.

And now, I have a huge sinking feeling that they've gone and totally frakked it all up.

The teaser trailer for next year's Spider-man 3 has made its first appearances on the net. I grant, it's too early to pass final judgment. This teaser is less than a minute long, it has no spoken dialogue, and is a blur of images that run by as quickly as a constipated weiner dog. But like I said, I have a sinking feeling.

It all goes back to the second Batman movie. They were the ones who started this whole conceit of superhero movies: that the way you make a sequel "bigger and even more full of action" is to start piling on extra bad guys. The Joker alone was somehow enough for the first Batman. But for the sequel? No, we had to have Penguin and Catwoman. For number three, we had to have the Riddler and Two-Face. And so on.

X-men 2 was guilty of character creep too. There were so many characters in the first one that a non-fan couldn't possibly muster the ability to give a crap about even half of them... but X2 had to give us still more. "More" says sequel. More is "better."

(Actually... you know what? Maybe it wasn't Batman that started this. Maybe it was Superman. Lex Luthor was somehow enough for movie one, but in movie two we had to have him and three super-criminals from the Phantom Zone.)

To me, this was one of the things that made Spider-man 2 so damn special. They resisted the cliche of upping the stakes by upping the villain count. Debate the villainy of Harry Osborn if you like, but Doctor Octopus was the only baddie in Spider-man 2 in my book. And the movie only benefited from this focus, as the villain's story was a great dramatic foil for Peter Parker's.

Well, screw that! Spider-man 3 appears to be making up for lost time. I guess someone told them they were supposed to have two bad guys in the second film, so they're making up for it by putting three in this movie. Unless the main plotline for Peter in this movie is going to be that he's going completely schizophrenic and/or has attention deficit disorder, it doesn't seem like the razor-clear linkages of the themes within the first two movies is going to be repeated here.

Now, the creative team that made the first two movies so great is the same team that's making this one. So it seems unlikely that they'll make something that totally blows this time around. But it does appear at the surface that they're going full-tilt for the comics crowd this time. (They're adding Gwen Stacy too! And Spidey's costume doesn't look like that old jank I pictured at the top of this post -- he has new duds, for reasons I'm sure are obvious and cool to fans, but unknown and off-putting to me.)

I think they're leaving folks like me in the lurch. Not that they won't still make a fortune at the box office. The question is, will they still make as good a movie?

I have a sinking feeling.