You know who had an arc? Noah.

Chats With Al: Review of "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark"

  • alex:I went through all these different phases while watchin git
  • opens, cue beginning of U2 score
  • "oh hey, this isnt bad, basically just a Lamb Lies Down/Tommy ripoff"
  • then this pretty neat faux-opera choral thing with giant yellow banners and a large black spider goddess hoisted on some beam singing
  • nice costumes
  • then, the first dramatic scene
  • OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS NO NO THIS CANT POSSIBLY BE IT
  • like springtime for hitler level bad
  • the writing is just unfathomably awful
  • also for this performance it was peter parker understudy
  • far and away the worst broadway actor ive ever seen
  • kind of a problem since he speaks like 60% of the dialogue
  • every bone in your body, every instinct in your soul just sort of repulses at it
  • theres this one musical number, "Bullying by Numbers"
  • I can't believe humans wrote it
  • anyway, that level of awfulness continues for about 45 minutes
  • the like, soul-crushing, I cant believe what im watching level bad
  • then the shock wears off
  • and the rest is merely mediocre
  • once he becomes spiderman at least they have the cool flying around on ropes stuff
  • the costumes were cool too
  • there are a lot of WTF stuff
  • me:wow
  • i really want to hear the U2 music
  • alex:NO
  • its the worst thing ive ever heard
  • you know how bono does those "yeee-aah" stuff
  • me:i want to go
  • alex:in one song he replaces it with like "bam pow zap"
  • me:of course
  • oh wonderful
  • alex:like spiderman sings the chorus and it ends with a bam pow zap bono moment
  • me:uno
  • alex:try to download bullying by numbers
  • me:dos
  • tres
  • alex:easily one of the worst songs ive ever heard
  • me:quatorze (sp)
  • a lot of elevation/vertigo type shit i hope
  • alex:oh here was another amazing element
  • because bono wrote it, they slipped in "references" to U2 throughout
  • like one scene two teenagers are driving by
  • and "new years day" is playing on the radio
  • another scene theyre all at a club, dancing to "Come on, come on"
  • or whatever that song is called
  • one scene peter parker is on the phone, and he gets put on hold
  • the intro to beautiful day is the muzak
  • its also an incredibly weird mashup of the comic book, movie, and taymors own vision"
  • so the mary jane character is basically doing her best kirsten dunst impression
  • also green goblin doing defoe
  • like, exactly
  • another hell element is that they try to "update" it for the 21st century
  • by putting in references to shake weight, facebook, etc.
  • like some Dreamworks kids movie
  • me:of course they do
  • all broadway shows try to be movies nowadays
  • alex:I mean you can see where all themoney went
  • its a very lavish production
  • its just completely misconceived on every level
  • you cant just do Taymor + Spiderman + u2
  • the guy who played jameson was great
  • that was pretty much the only enjoyable part of it
  • me:so no technical fuckups?
  • how insane were the special effects
  • alex:unfortunately no
  • a lot of flying around on cords and stuff
  • its fairly impressive
  • the final battle is in mid-air
  • my audience seemed to love it
  • me:so how many stars
  • alex:from me?
  • zero
  • its worse than any movie I saw last year
  • the scenes before he becomes spiderman are among the worst thing ive ever seen in my life
  • Al notes that this ticket was subsidized by his place of work: