![]() That's the benefit of consistently casting the most charismatic, likable people on Earth. Just one year after Spider-Man 3, audiences were introduced to A) Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, a gritty ground-level near-masterpiece that would never admit a guy dressed up as a bat looks really silly, and B) Iron Man and the launch of the MCU, a delightful, highly-entertaining franchise that also happens to be filled with casual assholes who are never, ever framed as assholes. It's a fascinating way to dig into a comic book character, and something we haven't seen since. ![]() The transformation comes to a head when Peter brings Gwen Stacy ( Bryce Dallas Howard) to the jazz club where Mary Jane has taken up a post-Broadway-firing residency, strictly to show his ex that he's "cool" now because he adopted the same haircut as George McFly. You'd be like, "aw, he's so mad." That's Peter Parker in his evil Symbiote guise, a smoll bean's idea of expressing power and confidence. ![]() Imagine, like, a baby wearing an adult's suit trying to fire you from your job. It's the definition of a square person trying to jam themselves into a trapezoidal hole. Spider-Man 3's Symbiote-fueled "Evil Peter Parker"-the one who looks like he runs a Livejournal dedicated solely to the band 30 Seconds to Mars-is designed, acted, and filmed to be as lame as possible. It's Peter Parker's terminally uncool idea of a monster. With Peter Parker, the result is.not that. For Eddie Brock (Topher Grace)-already loose on morals and fresh off praying for another person's death-the result is a literal monster. As presented in Spider-Man 3, the Symbiote is less rampaging lobster fiend and more just a ball of guck from beyond the stars that leeches on a host by drawing out its worst attributes. Spidey is one of Marvel's most moral creations, and Spider-Man 3 absolutely nails what happens when something that pure gets "corrupted" by the Venom symbiote. Which is jarring as hell for fans who grew up with a web-head who is snarky, sure, but usually returns to working-class New Yorker style of earnest good. MJ is like "I'm so tired and scared that my hard-earned career is derailing" and Peter is half-way out the window with his spandex already on like, "lady just say the thing from the last movie so I can go." In Spider-Man 3, Peter asks her to say it because he's become entitled to her support, no matter the situation. ![]() In Spider-Man 2, MJ offers up " go get 'em, tiger" after accepting what it is to love someone with a city on his shoulders. Raimi subverts his own, iconic line here. He can no longer relate to the (extremely real!) problems of Mary Jane Watson ( Kirsten Dunst) without looking at them through a spider's web. The first time we see Peter in Spider-Man 3, he's standing in Times Square like an absolute psychopath watching a big-screen Spider-Man video on a loop. ![]() He's officially swinging too high above New York to recognize the everyday issues of the people around him. If Spider-Man is Peter learning that great power comes with great responsibility and Spider-Man 2 is the tragic illustration of what that responsibility can cost, Spider-Man 3 finds a Peter Parker so overloaded on both power and responsibility, he's forgotten to factor in his own actions. But the underrated triumph of the movie is the way Raimi-along with co-writers Ivan Reitman and Alvin Sargent-naturally finds a way for Peter to lose himself. Spider-Man 3 is ripe with issues it's over-crowded with villains, the pace is somehow both frantic and too subdued, and James Franco occasionally delivers lines like he's just discovered the purpose of a human mouth. The most important thing to stress about the scene is how hard Peter Parker comes off like a giant asshole, as intended. Folks, it is time that the awkward jazz room gyrations of Emo Peter Parker get their rightful due. And it's also a genuinely clever bit of character work that's unlike anything in the comic book movie realm both before and afterward, offering the kind of layering that the MCU could absolutely benefit from borrowing once in a while. The scene, from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3, is one of the most divisive, criticized moments from a film already regarded as one of the genre's most disappointing duds. Thirteen years ago today, mild-mannered super-human newspaper photographer Peter Parker ( Tobey Maquire) aggressively styled his hair like his mom just dropped him off at the 2009 Bamboozle Festival, put on the same outfit My Chemical Romance wore on the "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" tour, and bopped his way down the New York streets to some James Brown, looking about as un-cool as a person can physically look before they literally transform into a Steely Dan cassette. ![]()
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