I got to see Spider-Man 3 this weekend and it was pretty good. There was a lot of “stuff” crammed into the 2 1/2 hours with many story threads. The part I liked best was several shots of Peter Parker tooling around the city on his beat-up scooter. And there were a few out loud funny bits involving J Jonah Jamison.
This weekend was Superhero weekend for me. I rented the DVD of Superman Returns which I saw last summer and I fell in love with the film all over again. I forgot I wrote a review on IMDB so here is a clip of that:
When an iconic film is remade you can go two ways – totally go down a different road and destroy what made the previous film iconic – think “Poseidon”, or you can do what Bryan Singer did and almost duplicate the feel and humanity from the previous Superman series of the late 70’s early 80’s.
This isn’t just a rehash but Singer tips his hat enough to the Donner directed films to satisfy this old fan and bring enough of current culture to satisfy new fans.
It starts with the return of the classic style for the opening credits and liberal amounts of the fantastic John Williams score. I did expect to hear some hip-hop or some bland pop music but luckily that wasn’t the case.
One of my favorite scenes is actually the first time that Superman reveals to the world that he is back and comes about 40 minutes into the film. Lois is on an airplane covering the launch of a new version of the Space Shuttle when a blackout scrambles the computers and the Shuttle can’t detach from the jet she is on. The main engines come on and sends Lois flying to the back of the plane and as she is struggling to reach an oxygen mask she happens to look out the window and *blip* sees Superman streak by to save her and all those on the plane. The look on her face and the music cue just chokes me up every time. Real tears.
The last part of the sequence is also a hoot. After Superman sets the plane down on the ground, he rips the door off and goes inside. He asks if everyone is okay and he and Lois make eye contact. Then after a bit of a pause he says, in a homage to the first Christopher Reeves film, that he hopes the emergency doesn’t put people off flying and that statistically it is the safest way to travel. He then flies off. Lois stands at the door watching him leave then she faints and falls down the emergency slide.
Here is a clip from that sequence so you can see why I love it so much:
I hope the coming summer movie season has a few more favorite scenes that I can watch 50,000 times on DVD.
