Spiderman III

[GnFnR87]

i didnt think it was funny when peter cried either.


it was a solid, fun, and entertaining movie. it obviously couldnt live up to the hype.....

i wish they focused more on venom and cut out one of, or both of the other two villians, but for what it was it was good.... i still think the second one is the best of the series though.

[Sober_times]

I didn't think it was funny when Peter cried at all... And the CGI was great... I don't know what you guys think is so bad about it...

He looked like an emo kid, the dance sequence was horrible, the strut was pathetic, and than how can anyone take him seriously in eye-liner! Should change the name to EmoMan.?

[25]

Most of the complaints in this thread are utter crap. Some of the effects are substandard (specifically the recycled shots of Spider-Man swinging through the city and the dodgy plate shot composites throughout the movie) and the story is muddled, that's about the worst of it. All the rest of the blather is internet fanboy bullshit. Pretty much everything which is in the movie works, despite the whining about the jazz club scene and the fact that the protagonist has emotions and relationships. The movie would work better as a whole if the story was pared down to Spider-Man seeking revenge against Sandman while being the subject of Harry's vendetta. We didn't get that movie because you all wanted your Venom. It's a trade-off; gain a villain, lose the substance of the story. I'll bet there's a solid 30 minutes of this movie just waiting to be edited back in for the "director's cut" dvd. And I'll bet it contains less symbiote and more story.

It falls short of living up to the second movie but it's pretty much on par with the first. Hardly a damning criticism.

[25]

As for the budget, Sony has admitted that it cost $258 million just for production, but there was an article in the New York times that cited sources who said it cost around $500 million including marketing. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that's true, given how this movie's advertisements completely saturated the market.

Most of those advertisements are paid for through endorsements, it's not money that Sony spent or even saw.

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

why do you guys keep going to these kind of movies to come here and say it sucked?

stop it already and go see good movies: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859765/

[25]

go see good movies: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859765/

It's foreign and boring so it must be good? If that movie was in English and starred Ben Affleck it'd win an Oscar and be roundly slaughtered. And rightly so.

You know you'd rather watch http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063678/

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

go see good movies: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859765/

It's foreign and boring so it must be good? If that movie was in English and starred Ben Affleck it'd win an Oscar and be roundly slaughtered. And rightly so.

You know you'd rather watch http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063678/

boring : subjective.
foreign :  to 1 billion people, it's not.

if it was english, from america, or from europe, it'd have more chance to be "formated and standardized".
if ben afleck was in it, ..... wait, i'm trying to think ....
if it won an oscar, it would have more chances to be "mainstream", in the sense of trying to appeal to a large community,making it very "flat".

thx for the link, i'll check that out.


on spiderman 3 ... you expect these movies to be bad, can't you just download it and watch it for free with some friends?
you know they 'll be on TV soon.
save Cinema for rare movies.

[Izzy]

Most of the complaints in this thread are utter crap. Some of the effects are substandard (specifically the recycled shots of Spider-Man swinging through the city and the dodgy plate shot composites throughout the movie) and the story is muddled, that's about the worst of it. All the rest of the blather is internet fanboy bullshit. Pretty much everything which is in the movie works, despite the whining about the jazz club scene and the fact that the protagonist has emotions and relationships. The movie would work better as a whole if the story was pared down to Spider-Man seeking revenge against Sandman while being the subject of Harry's vendetta. We didn't get that movie because you all wanted your Venom. It's a trade-off; gain a villain, lose the substance of the story. I'll bet there's a solid 30 minutes of this movie just waiting to be edited back in for the "director's cut" dvd. And I'll bet it contains less symbiote and more story.

It falls short of living up to the second movie but it's pretty much on par with the first. Hardly a damning criticism.

..so you didnt notice the plot lines that went nowhere?

Parker and MJ's relationship on the rocks - but she gets blackmailed and the relationship ends because of that - so why was all the bumf before needed? Wouldnt it have worked better if they were engaged and THEN Harry Osbourne had wrecked it?

Sandman 'i killed ur step father!' - irrelevant, Spidey goes ''evil'' because of the suit!

Total lack of character development for anyone really, Sandman just doesnt need to be in this film, he's a 10 second plot device stretched to well over an hour, (and how much did he cost??)

Contrived elements galore - thank god that meteor landed so close, and did so silently!

-why did the crane break, what was the point of that scene?!? How did it advance anything?

This was a bad film, its nothing to do with 'fanboy' stuff, hell i've never read a comic in my life.

...oh and other problems, woeful acting, effects, editing, and cinematography - (goblin v parker at night, could anyone actually tell what was going on??)

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

(goblin v parker at night, could anyone actually tell what was going on??)

i dont know if you noticed that, but action movies tend to like night fights. when they cannot, they do fast editing - remember batman begins? - i think i got an epileptic attack from that movie.

[Izzy]

(goblin v parker at night, could anyone actually tell what was going on??)

i dont know if you noticed that, but action movies tend to like night fights. when they cannot, they do fast editing - remember batman begins? - i think i got an epileptic attack from that movie.

i know i know - they do them cos it keeps costs low

AVP's ''battles'' were little more than a blur......

[Back Off Bitch]

It made $148,000,000 in the USA & $227,000,000 outide of the US... The #1 record of all-time for opening weekend in the US!!! A total of  $375,000,000 in 3 days!!! It already made its money back!!!

[Izzy]

It made $148,000,000 in the USA & $227,000,000 outide of the US... The #1 record of all-time for opening weekend in the US!!! A total of? $375,000,000 in 3 days!!! It already made its money back!!!

.....er? u just oblivious to reality?

Its $350 million in production and a further $200 million in promotion

+

that figure is ticket sales, only a percentage goes to the studio

The studio needs $550 million just to break even!

[Timothy]

yeah its about an even 50/50 split between the studio and the theaters.

so Spidey would have to make roughly $1.1 billion world wide before it even breaks even.which isn't going to happen. but they will make a shit load with the dvd and toy line.

[25]

..so you didnt notice the plot lines that went nowhere?

Parker and MJ's relationship on the rocks - but she gets blackmailed and the relationship ends because of that - so why was all the bumf before needed? Wouldnt it have worked better if they were engaged and THEN Harry Osbourne had wrecked it?

Sandman 'i killed ur step father!' - irrelevant, Spidey goes ''evil'' because of the suit!

Total lack of character development for anyone really, Sandman just doesnt need to be in this film, he's a 10 second plot device stretched to well over an hour, (and how much did he cost??)

Contrived elements galore - thank god that meteor landed so close, and did so silently!

-why did the crane break, what was the point of that scene?!? How did it advance anything?

This was a bad film, its nothing to do with 'fanboy' stuff, hell i've never read a comic in my life.

...oh and other problems, woeful acting, effects, editing, and cinematography - (goblin v parker at night, could anyone actually tell what was going on??)

Yes I noticed the contrived elements and the leaps between plot points and, as I already said twice over, the reasons for them are clear. The story they're trying to tell goes off on a symbiote/black suit tangent and never comes back to the revenge angle. Yes it's annoying and it robs the movie of any substance and it causes every development in the film to be delivered in shorthand thereby preventing much of the important developments from having the impact needed and the time to develop. That said, all of those things ought to cause a trainwreck but the movie manages to juggle things around and remain coherent, certainly watchable and enjoyable, on a purely surface level.

Sandman needs to be in the movie, he just needs to be in it more. Harry's vendetta against Peter is supposed to be mirrored in Peter's attempts to avenge his Uncle. Sadly, we don't get to spend any real time with Sandman so that story is basically a non-starter - which emasculates the minimal time we spend with the other revenge angle. Those plot elements should have been the heart of the film, as was the filmaker's intention. What didn't need to be in the movie was the entirely separate and unrelated story of space-goop and rival photographers. A conclusion which we spent two movies working towards is stolen away by the last minute decision to cover a Saturday-morning cartoon angle. That's something to be annoyed about. The fact that Raimi and co. managed to absorb that situation and still turn out a decent movie is quite impressive.

So I agree with much of what you're saying, I just don't find that they lead me to the same conclusion.

Aside; I don't think you can blame the cinematography for the first Osbourne/Parker fight being such a clusterfuck. I think you can lump that in with the general complaint about visual effects. While it's an exciting sequence it does get bogged down by both having the black Goblin on a black background and having some of the worst green-screen/background plate compositing in a major movie in many years. It alternates between the background being too washed-out (so that we can see Harry at the beginning, so poorly done that it looks like 1950s rear-screen projection) and being too overpowering (so that we can hardly see him for the rest of the sequence). I have a suspicion that contrary to the reports of record-breaking production budgets the post-production on this movie was hampered by either lack of money or lack of time/talent because so many of the effects are either recycled, poorly done, or - in the case of the crane sequence - missing. Where is the rest of that sequence? Surely if Spider-Man didn't stop the crane it should still have been swinging around during the final battle? That's not a plot-hole, that's "oh shit, we're never going to finish this sequence in time. Cut it."

[25]

It made $148,000,000 in the USA & $227,000,000 outide of the US... The #1 record of all-time for opening weekend in the US!!! A total of  $375,000,000 in 3 days!!! It already made its money back!!!

.....er? u just oblivious to reality?

Its $350 million in production and a further $200 million in promotion

+

that figure is ticket sales, only a percentage goes to the studio

The studio needs $550 million just to break even!

Hate to sound like a broken record but the promotion was likely paid for in full by endorsements. Allow Spider-Man to grace the front of a cereal box, the cereal company ponies up the cash for advertising time. And look at how many cereals, apple juices, candies, and fast-food cartons Spider-Man is currently plastered on to. I doubt Sony spent much of their own money on advertising at all. So suddenly you're down to $350 million to break even. If we ignore the fact that the first two movies made incredible profits and paid for this production many times over, making it basically a free movie for the studio, and pretend instead that it's real money coming out of the company's pocket then they need to take about one billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide to make back the alledged $350M cost. Maybe they'll break even at the box office, maybe they wont. If they do it's quite a feat, most big summer movies don't come close to making their money back in theaters. Regardless, they'll make a killing on DVD. They'll make their money back five times over on worldwide home video, no-one at the company is going to be losing sleep worrying about that.

And given that the production was all in-house, how much money did Sony really spend on this movie in the first place? The humans involved took away their salaries, the rest of the money went from one Sony-owned company into another. I would love to see a real breakdown of what was spent and where the money went, it would be fascinating reading.  I'll go out on a limb and estimate that this movie probably cost Columbia/Tristar's corporate parent about $100 Million all told. Considerably less than R&D on their new Playstation.     

[mrlee]

i enjoyed this movie, more than spider man 2.

reasons why, spider man two had hardly any action, and got boring.

this movie broguht back the action i wanted.

HOWEVER

it did reek of cheese, the dance thing, all that cheese, so much cheese.

And really, why did sandman have to be there.

However it was a fun enjoyable movie like the first one.

[Izzy]

yeah its about an even 50/50 split between the studio and the theaters.

so Spidey would have to make roughly $1.1 billion world wide before it even breaks even.which isn't going to happen. but they will make a shit load with the dvd and toy line.

apparently the studio gets about 90% of the opening weekends recipts then each week the percentage falls

...thats why they are so obsessed with the opening weekend recipts as opposed to overall sales

Bizarrely they are now happy to have the film actually lose money on its theatrical run and then cover their costs through product tie ins and dvd sales

No way can Spiderman recoup the money at the cinema, they'll be hoping for a POTC 2-esque DVD mega success (sold like 25 million copies in a year......)

...on a completely unrelated note, no one wonder less people go to the cinema - its costs be ?10 a time at my local!

[mrlee]

yeah its about an even 50/50 split between the studio and the theaters.

so Spidey would have to make roughly $1.1 billion world wide before it even breaks even.which isn't going to happen. but they will make a shit load with the dvd and toy line.

apparently the studio gets about 90% of the opening weekends recipts then each week the percentage falls

...thats why they are so obsessed with the opening weekend recipts as opposed to overall sales

Bizarrely they are now happy to have the film actually lose money on its theatrical run and then cover their costs through product tie ins and dvd sales

No way can Spiderman recoup the money at the cinema, they'll be hoping for a POTC 2-esque DVD mega success (sold like 25 million copies in a year......)

...on a completely unrelated note, no one wonder less people go to the cinema - its costs be ?10 a time at my local!

jesus thats a lot!!

the most ive paid is ?5

[Timothy]

yeah its about an even 50/50 split between the studio and the theaters.

so Spidey would have to make roughly $1.1 billion world wide before it even breaks even.which isn't going to happen. but they will make a shit load with the dvd and toy line.

apparently the studio gets about 90% of the opening weekends recipts then each week the percentage falls

...thats why they are so obsessed with the opening weekend recipts as opposed to overall sales

Bizarrely they are now happy to have the film actually lose money on its theatrical run and then cover their costs through product tie ins and dvd sales

No way can Spiderman recoup the money at the cinema, they'll be hoping for a POTC 2-esque DVD mega success (sold like 25 million copies in a year......)

...on a completely unrelated note, no one wonder less people go to the cinema - its costs be ?10 a time at my local!

Well most see the theater run as a trailer for the DVD now.

[pilferk]

yeah its about an even 50/50 split between the studio and the theaters.

so Spidey would have to make roughly $1.1 billion world wide before it even breaks even.which isn't going to happen. but they will make a shit load with the dvd and toy line.

Not quite 50/50....it varies through the run, actually.

http://money.cnn.com/2002/03/08/smbusiness/q_movies/

First week is typically around a 75/25 split in favor of the studio and that gradually decends until by week 5 or 6 it's a 35/65 split in favor of the theater.  50/50 doesn't happen until around week 3 or 4.  The "bigger" the movie, FYI, the better the terms the studio gets, usually.

Typically, you need to make about 3x the production costs to "break even", and that factors in the split.

That estimate, though, doesn't includes ancillary revenue like promotional fees (for example, what Burger King paid Sony to feature Spidey 3 in their current promotion, videogame licensing fees, product placement fees, etc).  I'm not sure what Spidey3 is making on ancillary fees, but given how prominent it's featuring everywhere...I'd guess it probably will make about 1/3 of the budget...which will basically cover a LOT of the advertising and promotion.

So if we use the split, and figure it all out, here's what I get.

Figure ancillary fees at about 83 million, which basically will have covered the promo budget.

So they need to "make back", after split, the 250 mill of production.

They took in 375 million.  They'll get about 75% of that back.  That's 281 million.  Looks like they're already ahead to me.