FADE IN:
Then.
In the months prior to last summer’s release of Spider-Man 3, the geek inside of me found himself with an addiction to anti-anxiety pills, so rife was he with anticipation for the third (and some thought final) installment in director Sam Raimi’s film adaption of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s iconic Marvel Comic. I recall seeing a teaser trailer for the film before Superman Returns (a comic book adaptation I’d much rather not discuss) and for pretty much every other twenty-something beta-male in the audience making an uncommon appearance in the light of day (or din of a movie theater), the experience has no real equal. I imagine that if a Mega-Church full of devout Christians got some sort of promotional video with clips and snippets of a heroic looking Jesus Christ tussling with hordes of the damned, brandishing a flaming sword, thirty seconds of righteousness followed by text telling them all to “Look out for The Rapture on 5-4-09”, perhaps we’d be in the ball park of “analagous.”
For nerds and geeks, the premiere of a hotly anticipated superhero movie trailer before the premiere of a hotly anticipated superhero movie is like manna. It’s like getting to eat a cookie before getting to eat a whole cake. It offers a look one year into your otherwise lackluster existence, giving you ample time to plan your days accordingly. The teaser itself promised to be triply awesome in the same way Spider-Man 2 promised to be doubly more awesome than Spider-Man. This was a preview that said “Hey, guess where your ten dollars are gonna be in a year?” This was a trailer that made me not think about how disappointed I was in Superman Returns. This is why Sam Raimi is a god.
Raimi, with the help of a bevy of talented screenwriters (most notably David Koepp and Alvin Sargent), had succeeded in making one of comicdom’s most enduring and lovable characters into two films that were entertaining, profitable and (horror of horrors) not pieces of shit comic geek apologists like me would have to defend to their intellectually elitist friends. Put simply, everyone (old, young, straight, gay, boy, girl) enjoyed the Spider-Man movies, except formerly pony-tailed painter Alex Ross, but he’s a gump-ass chooch, so fuck him. Raimi had agreed to make Venom, a character born of the darkest period in comic book history (the 90s), the chief antagonist. This was remarkable because a) Fans fucking LOVE Venom and b) Sam Raimi (and myself) fucking HATES Venom. The man put his own artistic integrity aside to repay the fans who, in a weird way, are responsible for the nice house he no doubt shares Mimosas with Bruce Campbell in. He had already conquered the superhero origin story. He had slaughtered the sophomore slump, Wrath Of Khan/Superman II paradigm that a lot of genre directors were incapable of handling. Now, he was going to take a pretty mediocre character (one that he actively despised) and make cinema gold.
CUT TO:
Now.
If I were to re-read every review of Spider-Man 3 searching for the phrase “cinema gold” I’d come up emptier than an Act II of Behind The Music-era MC Hammer’s bank account. Sure, people liked it. It made over 300 million fucking dollars. It was definitely cool. I liked it. It just didn’t zhing the way I thought it would. This can be attributed to any number of facts: the film’s length, Tobey Maguire’s increasingly unemotive acting, the uninspired third act. There is, however, one reason I’ve heard cited more than pretty much any other. Within three days of seeing the film, no less than eleven people who I’d discussed the film with said “The action was cool, but I don’t know why they made Spidey so emo.”
I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion. Oh, I agree that giving Tobey Maguire bangs and a dancing sequence was an ill-advised attempt at visual metaphor, and I agree that this film was a little more down-note than its predecessors at times (when it wasn’t being totally laughable) but “emo?” Sam Raimi didn’t make Spider-Man emo. Stan Lee did that forty years ago when he created the character. Forty years before assholishly arrogant gen-Yers even coined the often derrogatory term, Stan The Man invented the world’s first emo superhero, and God bless him.
When Spider-Man 2 came out, a lot of people were surprised to see that Dashboard Confessional had a song on the soundtrack. “An emo band on a superhero movie soundtrack?” I guess they missed that Nickelback guy who sounds like Tony The Tiger and the fat guy from Saliva I last saw selling Terence Howard pot in Hustle and Flow. In point of fact, I couldn’t think of a band more perfect for writing songs for ol’ Webhead to sling to (with the possible exception of Weezer.) Peter Parker is pretty fucking emo.
Now, when I say “emo” I’m not making some broad criticism of a musical genre I personally couldn’t give two fucks less about. I’m referring to “emo” as some sort of post modern character trait. A lot of people I meet use the term to describe someone who is needlessly dramatic, socially introvertive or just especially whiny. It’s kinda like a few years ago when people used the word “goth” instead of “sociopathic” or “suicidal.” I suppose if enough of one personality type adopts a certain social persona, then anyone else adopting said persona better get used to being compared to that particular personality type.
I don’t share the same disdain for emo kids that most people do, (including, weirdly enough, other emo kids) but if we’re going to stick with the term, then let’s not pretend that this emo-transformation is recent. It’s been in Spidey’s blood forever. A nerdy, beta-male gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gets superpowers. Naturally, he attempts to use said powers to be cool and get laid (why he chose the profession of wrestling, I’ll never know) and in doing so, forgets the teachings of his wise Uncle, a caregiver he loses as a roundabout result of his own douchbagery. Rather than continuing to use his powers for personal gain (and, oh, I don’t know, help his apparently helpless aunt pay a bill or two), Peter decides that he must use his great power to be greatly responsible, stopping the city from being attacked by a myriad of animal and reptile themed psychopaths with axes to grind.
There isn’t really anything inherently emo about being a vigilante. In fact I always assumed that fighting crime went better with heavy metal music. I personally don’t picture The Punisher ventillating mafia dons with bullets to Armor For Sleep. What makes Peter so emo is the life he leads. His primary concerns aren’t really fighting crime. It’s paying his rent, getting a girl to not dump him, taking care of his aunt, sitting alone on rooftops and ruminating on why life continues to suck. His pasttimes are that of pretty much every sad sack twentysomething guy with a shit job, a broken relationship and a knack for being melodramatic. Peter Parker is basically Zach Braff with spider powers.
Some might argue that Superman is more emo than Spider-Man, but that’s pretty much bullshit. Superman is like a starting quarterback in high school who feels alienated by his good looks and physical prowess. That guy just needs some paxil. Batman’s pretty emo. He’s still wrestling with the death of his parents he witnessed at age eight. The only difference is he’s fucking rich. He deals with his issues by beating the shit out of guys like The Penguin and when he gets bored of that, he fucks supermodels and buys companies. He’s like if Patrick Bateman, Henry Rollins and John F. Kenndy Jr. had baby, and any thing related to Henry Rollins cannot also be considered emo. That’d just be fucked up. I suppose Wolverine is kinda emo. The whole “I’m the best there is at what I do, but I don’t remember who I am” thing is kinda bothersome, but in his defense, he’s fucking WOLVERINE. The only comic book character who gives Peter a run for his money in the emo department is Spawn. That dude has been bitching up a storm since the early nineties, and, further proof that God isn’t real, or that he at least likes Todd McFarlane too much, people continue to read the book anyway. McFarlane, however, used to draw Spider-Man before he created Spawn, so…winner.
Peter Parker is the second most important emo character in literary history (the first being Prince Hamlet, a guy who takes up four hours of the audience’s lives pondering the end of his own before laying waste to that of his enemies.) The only reason this trait seemed so annoying in Spider-Man 3 is because Tobey Maguire forgot the funny. The one thing that stops Spidey from becoming a cloying self-obsessive who bitches too much is his sense of humor. (This is also why Scrubs Zach Braff is always gonna be cooler than Garden State Zach Braff, no matter how many times Natalie Portman makes him listen to “New Slang”) Yeah, he whines a lot when he’s alone, but if The Juggernaut tries to stomp his ass, he quips him into submission. Everyone knows a guy who is constantly in turmoil over some pseudo-emotional bullshit, but he’s tolerable because in public, he makes people laugh and feel comfortable. That’s Peter Parker. Mary Jane dumps him. Fourteen pages of him swinging through the city with thought balloons full of what could easily be lyrics to a Fall Out Boy song. The Green Goblin back in town? Five pages of two guys in funny costumes trading one-liners and laughing the very real prospect of death in the face. If Tobey had pulled that off, I might’ve forgiven his four-minute homage to Bob Fosse.
No comments:
Post a Comment