Ok, so as I've make abundantly clear, I'm a big comic book nut. The first two comic heroes I can recall being exposed to as a kid in the 70's were Spiderman and Batman, both of which I hold a special place for in my big dorky heart. When I reached the age where I was reading and collecting comics, the local store (a tiny market that 80 years ago had been the county courthouse) only carried Marvel Comics so, consequently, the first comic I ever collected was Spiderman.

I first saw him in kids educational shows on PBS and then in these crappy made for TV movies

and various animated shows.






Then in 1987 or 88 they announced that they'd be doing a real movie. We got really excited about it and then we didn't hear anything about it again till 1992 when they said Jim Cameron would be directing with Charlie Sheen as Peter Parker. Then nothing till right before the first movie finally came out in 2002.

Check out this trailer. Most of you have never seen it and by the end of it you'll know why they didn't use it.

For those of you that think it was in poor taste I'll point out the obvious and explain that it was filmed BEFORE 9/11. They chose not to use it afterward, which is perfectly understandable, but it kinda sucks because it was a really good teaser trailer.

Anyhow, I just mentioned all that to show how into this I am

Given my comic book roots it kicked ass to be at the midnight showing of the new Spider-Man movie.

Here's a really grainy sneak preview:

Pretty much everyone from my local comic book store was there (yeah, they know me) and I'd say fully half of the audience were wearing t-shirts with the comic version of the black suit logo on them. This was a comic book crowd and that's the best crowd to see a comic book movie with. It's also the best crowd to see a Kevin Smith movie with, but of course, he's a comic guy and it shows.

Anyhow, I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone so I won't get too in depth with the review. I'll just say that I wasn't disappointed with it in the least. Raimi continues to do what he's done with the first two movies in that he's taking the familiar old two-dimensional villains and making real people of them. This time out he does a fantastic job with Harry Osbourne and the Sandman and of course, Venom who's had at least a dozen origin stories to make sense of.

This brings me to my one complaint with the movie though, minor though it is: too many characters. The only way in which Spiderman 2 was better than 3 is that three has too many characters to introduce and flesh out and it gets just a bit muddled in the middle. It all ties together beautifully in the end, but I think the Sandman should have shared a movie with just one other villain so we could have fleshed him out a little more, where Venom could have been an entire movie by himself.

In part 1 we introduce Spiderman and the Green Goblin and we see Peter's life. In the second one we already have Spiderman established so we introduce Doctor Octopus and we see Harry Osbourne continue to develop his mean streak and on top of that we see Peter's relationship with Mary Jane evolve. Those two worked great. But in three we have the relationship plotline, the black suit (that eventually becomes Venom), Eddie Brock (the guy that becomes Venom), the Sandman, and the resolution of the Harry Osbourne situation. They easily could have had two great movies here, but presumably, since this is Macguire and Dunst's last movie as the lead characters they wanted to really knock it out of the park.

Having said that though, they couldn't have slammed all these characters any better than they did. It's a great movie and well worth your $8.75 or whatever the hell movies cost where you are now.

I'll go all fanboy on your asses and do a really deep analysis once most of you have seen the movie. And see it you should. It kicks fucking ass.