We promised Ben we’d go see Spiderman 3. Personally, I was pushing for the latest Shrek movie, especially after getting a tirade about violence and horribleness from another mom whose slightly younger kid wanted to leave Spiderman after about 15 minutes. Of course, they saw the IMAX version, and that’s probably a bit more intense.

Granted, there is probably a bit too much marketing toward the kids for the level of of the movie, but hey, there’s a megaton of money being made on those figures. Every mom and dad in America knows that.

Action figures are better than cigarettes, anyway.

Ben is still collecting his Star Wars stuff, and Power Rangers, and Transformers, and Fantastic Four, and even Batman. He’s already got a fair number of variations of the basic Spiderman figure. He loves them, carries a couple everywhere, has very complex worlds and plots involving them. Basically, I think they are dolls for boys, but I have to say that these articulated figures sure worked to retire anything like a Ken or GI Joe. For that I am grateful. I won’t tell you what I did to the few Barbie dolls I ever had…

Anyway, the movie was a rollicking good time had by all. Any movie with this heavy dose of vaguely uncanny doppelganger fun is good with me. Two photographer nerd superguys with the same basic taste in women – a blonde is a redhead, who is a blonde – mirrored kisses and guys who just don’t get it. Bits of temptation and hell, bits of redemption and caring – very intercontagious and structural. Instead of making truly complex characters, they separated out the good and bad and mixed them up a bit in color-coded quick time.

A little comic relief here and there, a couple of snappy insulting lines (nothing as good as “this is so not Spandex). All the women were great, although none of them got to be superheros. I loved the scenes between Peter Parker and his aunt May (Rosemary Harris) in particular. I don’t know if they pulled a Natalie Wood on this one or not, but if she was doing her own singing Kirsten Dunst has a very pleasant voice.

Sandman showed up, although he seemed a bit more like a sandstorm. I thought he was a sympathetic figure, actually. Nobody ever gives his daughter and ex a darned thing (big of you to “forgive him” though).

Let’s get Swamp Thing and Concrete into the action – what, they don’t count for anything? They’d rock.

Note for Spiderman 4, Spiderman Continues, and Spiderman meets Scooby-Doo: Never spend a lot of camera time on crying guys with bulgy eyes, especially if they do funny things with their mouths too. Tobey Maguire should not be allowed to cry on camera – he does not do it well. A death scene was almost ruined for me when I had to stifle my laughter for a second. Stick with the Goblin guy, and Sandman, for the crying parts. They both have better faces for it.

I think Tobey (Spiderman/Peter Parker) got a bit ripped off in this movie. Everybody else had better lines. The interesting part for his role was when he was briefly “wrestling” with the internal evil displaced onto the black meteorcrud-crystal lube-symbiote-thing. I liked the dancing, and many of his expressions were actually more appealing (to me) but no matter how they muss his hair or add mascara, Billie Joe Armstrong he’s not.He was starting to remind me of that guy that played Frodo, Elijah Wood. Ok for a hobbit, not so much for a superhero. I liked most of the other characters more.

I had seen Topher Grace (Christopher John Grace, b.1978) several times before I recognized him at all, and that was only because of a fleeting expression on his face. My, the gawky boy (Eric Foreman) from “That 70’s Show” sure turned out well. I’m guessing that, except for the costume, it must have been fun for him to play Eddie Brock/Venom. I wouldn’t have thought he could have done it. You can’t tell from the available stills from the movie, but he had a serious yum factor going. Well, he did until he became Venom – the teeth and little snaky black bits of symbiotic goo were fantastically scary and wonderful. And so was the Spock/Austin Powers raised eyebrow action, although the makeup was just that tad too heavy.

I’m picky, huh? Well, I actually enjoyed the film very much. Two movies in two days. We haven’t done that in a long time. I think the last movie we went to before that was Superman. Oh yeah, that reminds me. The flag moment was a bit gratuitous, wasn’t it? At least they didn’t go all Captain America on us for this one.

Final message: You always have the choice to do the right thing.

Actually, you don’t always have that choice, because sometimes you don’t have enough information.
Sometimes you don’t have a good way of making a decision.
Sometimes there is no right thing to do.
Sometimes you know the right thing to do, but it is not within your power.

But I know what they mean. It’s a little streamlined for clarity. And we need the reminder that we can make choices.

The choices you make create the character that you are, which affects the way you think, which affects the way you make decisions and judgments, and the way you start to habitually make the same kinds of choices, etc. etc. When you have a choice, do the very best you can to think it through, and feel it through, and consider everything you possibly can – and then do what you judge to be the best thing, the right thing, in that context. All of that wouldn’t do very well at the end of a movie…

Just remember, even if you think you’re doing the right thing, you might still be wrong, and life isn’t fair.

Joe Frank has pointed out rather persuasively that while the truth may be slippery and elusive, you are always the author of your own lie.

But that’s a whole ‘nuther kind of movie.

Ahh, yeah. Time to sleep. ‘Night.