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RE: Script flaws??? It's just like the comic book!!!...(nt)

Posted by halfnote on June 15, 2007 at 21:58:14:
I know not everyone is going to agree with me on this sort of thing. Whether it's nostalgia, rose-colored glasses, or a sentimental tendency to impute significance and purpose where there really is none, I can't say. And I'd plead guilty to all three.

But I grew up on the Marvel comics. They were my introduction to literature and fine arts. There was a great, fairy-tale like charm to some of these comics, and the characters in them, though stereotypical and "stock" in certain respects, had a certain humanity and resonance. Peter Parker, in particular, the earnest nerd, the young man beset by moral qualms, like so many of us all when we were his age, attains the kind of power which would thrill and intoxicate any adolescent, which would seem to be the solution to all his problems; and yet finds himself vexed and limited by it nevertheless. I guess you had to be there.

The story elements in Spiderman provide wonderful film-making raw material. There is something immensely appealing and refreshing about Parker's simple wholesome love interest and fidelity, his suffering and sacrifice and the moral burdens he takes upon himself, his great innocence despite his great intelligence and power. The first film made much of these elements. If anything, the third film resorted too much to the comic book sensibility. There just wasn't enough thought put into the script, it seemed to me. The idea of the Sandman, a man who loses his humanity and regains his soul ... the tortured Harry, haunted by the ghost of his father like a perverted Hamlet, who redeems himself, like the original Hamlet, through action, and ... I'm probably boring you to tears by now. Maybe you're laughing out loud.

But to me, these ideas did seem to be on the minds of the film-makers; it's just that they were handled so superficially and thoughtlessly. The clear script flaws and inconsistencies I pointed out in my first post are just evidence of a kind of careless that characterized this effort.

Can a comic book be made into a great film? Certainly! See THE INCREDIBLES. It ain't CITIZEN KANE or THE GRAND ILLUSION or 2001 -- but it's a fabulous entertainment and a wonderful, comic expression of what's American about Americans. Don't you think?