Didn’t see Spiderman 3

There are a thousand better films out there than ‘Spiderman 3’ – ‘Sunshine’ is not one of them.
The latest film from Danny Boyle, the director of the quite splendid ‘Shallow Grave’ and decent ‘Trainspotting’, sees the crew of a spaceship desperately trying to re-ignite a dying sun to save the Earth.

Sounds good on paper right? It ain’t.

It's terrible terrible trash. Badly acted, tediously long and worst of all - utterly unoriginal.

The ingredients of this film are thus;

1 part Event Horizon (itself a stinker)
1 part Nightmare on Elm Street (Chargrilled baddie anyone?)
1 part short story by Ray Bradbury (Golden Apples of the Sun - I think)
2 parts 2001
4 parts Alien

Mix and serve with a script by Alex Garland.

I can’t tell you how much I dislike his work – it’s not that it’s bad, which it most certainly is, it’s that he steals so liberally from the classics without even a hesitation to cover his tracks – take ‘28 Days Later’, another collaboration between Garland and Boyle;

‘Opening scene – a man wakes up in a hospital bed to find London deserted. Confused he wanders around the empty streets unable to comprehend what has happened. It is not long until the horror that has befallen the city becomes apparent.’

That was the opening scene to ‘Day of the Triffids’ – a masterwork by John Wyndham. It is also the opening to Garlands ‘28 Days Later’ – an audacious, patchwork of much better source material threaded together to form a poor mans zombie flick.

In ‘28 Days Later’, Garland quickly jettisons Wyndham’s work for George A Romero. First he steals from Romero’s ‘The Crazies’ (Folk go bonkers after becoming infected by a Government created Virus) and then he stops by both ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘Day of the Dead’. In fact he even goes so far as to wholesale rob a jump cut at the end of Day which goes from a final impending terror and safety.

See, the thing is this, a lot of screenwriters are piss poor, yet they get work. Good for them. But you just know that Garland believes what he is doing is creating loving homage’s to his heroes. Well he isn’t.

He’s a hack, without a single original idea to his name.

He even reportedly got a $1m for a script for the computer game ‘Halo’ – that was probably brilliant –

‘Master chief jumps onto the Warthog amid a hale of plasma fire from the grunts and Jackals. He misses, gets confused as to which direction they’re firing from and dies.

Master chief jumps onto the Warthog, knowing the plasma fire is coming from behind the disabled tank he turns the Warthog cannon on the approaching Jackals and fires, killing them all. He is instantly struck down by the invisible Elite with a plasma sword.

Master chief jumps on the Warthog… ‘

You get the idea.

Boyle isn’t much better - especially after ‘Sunshine’ representing his 3rd or 4th consecutive turkey.

Should have seen everyone’s favourite neighbourhood Spiderman… maybe next time.