There Goes A Spiderman

It took just three days for "Spiderman 3" to break records. It took just a tad over two hours for "Spiderman 3" to break my heart. The "threequel" made one hundred and fifty-one million dollars in one weekend, making it the all-time box-office champ. Worldwide, the movie has made three hundred and eighty-two million dollars. This one is now bought and paid for (as if there was deep concern in the accounting department at Sony Pictures) and the fourth installment can now be officially speculated.
But I wish they wouldn't. It's hard to imagine that these words would come from me, a dyed-in-my-tights Spidey fan for four decades, but this is what it has come to. When I first saw "Spiderman 2", I sat back in my seat as the final credits finished and was happy to do it all over again. It had action and laughs, and most of all, it had a heart. There was a story in the middle of all those computer generated webs.
It almost made me forget that godawful live-action TV series starring Nicholas Hammond. Even the fanboys say "It wasn't the greatest television program ever made. It wasn't even a particularly good show." The problem was, it was being made on the cheap and fast for a quick buck, hoping to cash in on the success of the other Marvel superhero superstar, The Incredible Hulk. This was a heady time for comic book fans as superheros and superheroines were all over the dial. In spite of all the hoopla, I was more intrigued by Spidey's regular appearances on "The Electric Company" than I was with the CBS series.
Then in 2002, when we both turned forty, Spiderman came to the big screen. It made me very happy. Two years later I was even happier with the sequel. Who could imagine that I would be disappointed by a third?
It's a summer movie. It's big. It's loud. It makes kerjillions of dollars, and it has no heart. It has hundreds of moving parts and not one of them makes me care about any of the people up on the screen. This time when I saw the rating slide at the end, I was relieved. I'm ready to go back and read a few of my old comics, the ones that remind me why I fell in love with Peter Parker and his alter-ego in the first place. To quote Stan Lee: "Nuff said."