For Your Reconsideration: Can the blockbuster disappointments of the 2000s be redeemed?
No one could be blamed for looking back on the pop culture of the 2000s and thinking “What a terrible decade. I’m glad we’re past it.” Back then, this weird negativity seemed to infect everything. I mean, damn, one of the defining pop anthems of that time was a refrain of ‘In the end, it doesn’t even matter’. Try hearing that over and over and over as a kid and not internalizing it. Thanks, Linkin Park! (song still slaps, though).
Let’s start with the much anticipated Star Wars prequels, the story of a hero’s fall from grace and the destruction of a democracy. This trilogy managed to disappoint and infuriate in addition to being bleak to its core. The Matrix sequels let everyone down as well: too bombastic for critics, a little too confusing and navel-gazing for casual viewers. That story ended with our hero Neo - his eyes horrifically burnt out, his woman skewered - having defeated the villainous Smith in a...pretty confusing bit of self-sacrificing theatre. Yes sir, just a carnival of nihilism and disappointment every which way you looked!
But I found enjoyment in at least one of the Star Wars prequels, Revenge of the Sith. And the Matrix sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, while not as good as the first, managed to offer inventive action sequences and an edgy vibe that screamed capital ‘C’ cool (cool for the time, okay).
No, my first bitter taste of pure disappointment came with Spider-Man 3. Because It’s the first movie where I can remember the slow build of anticipation over a number of years. Where I scrutinised every scrap of information I could find online. Then the trailers dropped and promised an operatic ending for Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. How could it not be the greatest film ever?
So I saw the flick with some friends and...what a monumentally mortifying experience. I couldn’t even articulate why it felt so wrong. In my mind’s-eye, it was like Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 were beautiful rivers and Spider-Man 3 was the forked stream of a caveman’s piss. My friends and I, the whole packed theatre, giggled nervously at scenes that were meant to be the emotional climax of an entire trilogy. To top it all off, some guy projectile vomited; it was like the sickening feeling of betrayal I was working hard to suppress had found a vessel to release itself in that poor guy.
But thanks to the passage of time and nostalgia, the images of all these disappointments have been laundered. At least, to some degree. Weirdly enough, some of the proof is in the memes.
The Star Wars prequels have recently developed a new kind of appreciation, in part due to the Sequel trilogy mostly unimaginatively remixing the original trilogy. Like, hey, those prequels might not have been great - or even acceptable, really - but at least they were attempting originality! It was the recent Clone Wars series that managed to finally, beautifully, reveal the full potential of the story. The PrequelMemes subreddit has about 1.9 million members, which in the ever-shifting landscape of what’s hot and what’s not is proof positive that those movies have evolved from objects of scorn into something beloved, even if that love is performed with quite a bit of irony.
Regarding Spider-Man 3, the Black-Suited Spider-Man arc, wherein an alien parasite attaches itself to Peter Parker and influences his behaviour for the worse, has acquired similar ironic appreciation. I can assure you guys that Tobey Maguire’s floppy emo hair and guy liner and spazzy jazz moves was met with pure indignation in 2007; there was simply nothing funny about this objectively funny man being funny. We were expecting villainy and we were served tom-foolery. But now there’s been a couple more Spider-Men, what was once baffling has become...endearing, I guess?
I mean for one, the Black-Suit Peter Parker, such a colossal dickhead, is an amusing counterpoint to Tom Holland’s precious cinnamon scroll interpretation of the webhead. You can see this play out in the often hilarious ‘Bully Maguire’ memes, wherein dickhead Peter Parker trolls him and other MCU heroes.
If you want to look at this Bully Maguire meme with a Galaxy Brain lens, it’s as if this shambles of a character - seemingly impossible for any viewer to find cool or likeable or appealing in any way - persists in a ghostly form to own and taunt thoroughly market-tested MCU heroes. It’s a realization that you could create the perfect specimen in a lab and for some reason we will cheer for the antagonistic, ill-advised thing to fuck up that mathematically precise specimen but good. Genuinely poignant stuff.
Tobey Maguire, no longer the youthful boy coming of age, is all but certainly making a comeback in this year’s Multiverse extravaganza Spider-Man: No Way Home. The ironic appreciation has given him a boost, sure, but it would be wise to steer clear of that looney tunes wackiness; keep that to youtube videos and our collective imagination, where it belongs. If this is going to be Tobey Maguire’s last crack at the Wall Crawler, let it be a sincerely dignified one.
Finally, we’re getting a fourth Matrix movie! The Matrix Resurrections. Neo was an iconic badass in the Matrix trilogy for sure, but Keanu Reeves was pretty much widely derided as just another wooden actor. Anyone saying he was always this beloved figure is simply indulging in revisionist history. The Keanu Reeves appreciation began in earnest around the time of the first John Wick movie. His stoic zen vibe and believably athletic body movements in action scenes were refreshing in the zeitgeist of quipsters performing superhuman feats in digital baths. And with social media exposing all kinds of festering nastiness in Hollywood, the fact that Reeves seems like a genuinely sweet guy has elevated him further in the public consciousness. The trailer looks intriguing and appealing for sure, and Keanu looks as cool as ever. Let’s just hope that his story gets to end with a bit more clarity and resonance this time.
Anyway, nostalgia and some creative internet humour have done their parts to rehabilitate the images of these damaged movies. The Clone Wars series proved that these things can be redeemed in some way. It’s on The Matrix Resurrections and Spider-Man: No Way Home to follow suit.
