dimfuture.net

My relationship with summer movies has, regrettably, been reduced to something of a siege mentality. For every genre flick out there that I genuinely want to see, there seem to be about three or four whose presence must simply be endured. A recent post about summer movies on the newly-revamped Usual Suspects forums left me aghast at how little I genuinely get excited about anymore when it comes to genre entertainment. The third Pirates movie? Take it or leave it. Transformers? Jesus Christ, no. Fantastic Four? I guess I’d better not get started on that, lest I offend the legions of fans who felt that rewriting Doctor Doom as a doctor-murdering yuppie was a good idea.

I am genuinely excited to see Spider-Man 3, however (especially after seeing the making-of on Starz a few days ago, which literally left me slavering in anticipation), which is why I was pleased to learn that it’s bringing home the bacon in Asia, and hope that it will do very well Stateside as well.

Not everyone is convinced, however, as this Slate article will attest:

Sony needs to prime the cash pump because Spider-Man 3 gets the audience to itself for only a couple of weeks before the other giant sequels start to roll out: Shrek the Third, rapidly followed by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and then Evan Almighty with Steve Carrell—all that before Transformers blasts its way into theaters on July 4 weekend. The rest of the summer brings you a Harry Potter and Ocean’s Thirteen and The Simpsons Movie and another Fantastic Four, not to mention the by-all-accounts-hilarious Judd Apatow sleeper comedy Knocked Up. Whew.

For you in the seats, the spectacle should be both deafening and blinding. And if you’re happy, the studios may also be very happy: The number crunchers expect record box-office returns this summer. But anxiety has to be running even higher than usual because of the intensity of the competition. The question is whether all these movies can survive this roller derby, and if not, which gets hurt? Let’s just consider the early contenders for now because, frankly, we’re overwhelmed by so much “product.”

Well, not to play the part of the oversensitive, hyperbolic Spider-Man fan, but… what? Spider-Man might not do well because Evan Almighty exists? Do any of you know anyone who is actually going to go see Evan Almighty? In the theater? No, see, I thought not. I mean, yeah, I like Steve Carrell as much as the next guy — more, possibly — but he’s not quite an unstoppable movie titan just yet.

In all fairness, the real thrust of Slate’s article is that Spider-Man 3 reportedly cost over $350 million to make; a number more than astronomical enough to make the bomb-hungry box-office watchdogs at Rotten Tomatoes shit their collective pants in anticipatory schadenfreude. Of course, the article also assumes that genre fanboys are human, and therefore can be exhausted like humans. This is generally not accurate, as any number of unending flamewars on the philosophical merits of The Matrix Reloaded will readily demonstrate. Die-hard fanboys are like little endomorphic Terminators, armed with deadly persistence and scathing homosexual innuendos. They absolutely will not stop — ever! — until you like Superman!

As such, no genre fan worth his salt is going to pass up seeing a sci-fi movie because there are just too many on his plate. Most likely, your average fan has already made up his mind what to see and what not to see — especially since the vast majority of this summer’s blockbusters are sequels, many of them rounding off trilogies. I mean, sure, someone might say to themselves, “Man, I’d really love to see Spider-Man 3, but… damn! Knocked Up is out! I can’t see both!” But — and perhaps this is merely my blinkered perspective — I can’t imagine a whole lot of people doing that. Not enough to sink the film, anyway.

While I find the Slate article unnecessarily pessimistic, I don’t find it surprising; the bigger the fish, the more the press (and some disconsolate fans) will want to lob a harpoon at it. No one writes articles speculating on whether Transformers might suck… its dreadfulness is pretty much axiomatic. Expectations for something like Spider-Man 3 are, understandably, much higher, and thus the film has a lot further to fall — especially at that price tag. With the DVD market being what it is, however, predicting its demise this early is too pessimistic even for me.

I won’t speak to the potential “darkness” of Spider-Man 3 being a detriment to box-office draw, because, well, I haven’t seen the movie. I do know that having the same creative team on board for all the movies is a huge draw for me personally; I think Raimi has treated the material extremely well, and have no reason to believe he would, suddenly and without warning, take a giant Brett Ratner-esque shit on it. The unfortunate Law of Threes that seems to follow so many franchises around seems to rarely get broken — but there are exceptions. I’m really hoping Spider-Man 3 will be one of them.