May 2, 2007 at 8:54 PM EDT
What did you think of Spider-Man 3?
In the pantheon of movie superheroes, the Spider-Man franchise had quietly landed at the right hand of God, elevating the hell of the summer blockbuster into the heaven of pop art.
In their director, Sam Raimi, and their star, Tobey Maguire, the first two films had the right combo for the comic-book job smart yet not cerebral, kinetically gifted without being flamboyant.
Raimi infused the pulpy stuff with a delightful buoyancy, neither dragging it down into mere camp nor inflating it into faux Nietzsche.
And while Maguire's minimalist style (not too frivolous, not too intense) meshed nicely with the direction, it was his physical appearance that made him such a neat fit for our bisected protagonist. In a genre that demands every superhero be at war with himself, who better to slip into the identity crisis than an actor whose looks elude even the camera it can never decide whether that mug is leading-man handsome or forgettably humdrum.
So with the duo back, and presumably as dynamic as ever, the prognosis for Spidey 3 seemed May-morning bright. How, then, did can't-miss turn into what-the-devil-happened? How did that light buoyancy degenerate into this heavy-limbed clutter, those clean lines into these dull smudges?
In short, how did the franchise tumble from God's right hand straight down into the blockbuster's infernal banality?
The answer, like our disillusionment, is a while in coming. Early on, the picture appears as secure as the Manhattan it's set in.
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