My reviews are posted over at DVD Talk these days, and my take on “Spider-Man 3″ elicited this strange response. I’m classifying it as an “Angry Letter” not because it’s particularly angry, but because it’s nearly incoherent, which is an attribute I associate with angry letters.

I read your review of ‘Spider-Man 3′ and can similarly recognize that you were not even a Marvel comic casual observer. Anytime a filmmaker steps outside the boundaries of what an epic was created to be does it become disheartened by it’s viewers. Spider Man III was believable and greatly followed the traditions of its creator. If it fails at the Box Office could only your tapestry of a double-minded review have merit or recommendation.

OK, then. Following is a list of words that, judging by their usage in this e-mail, do not mean what the writer thinks they mean:

similarly
disheartened
tapestry
double-minded

I marvel (ha!) at the sentence structure, too. “If it fails at the box office could only your review have merit.” Yoda? Is that you?

(For the record, the name the writer gave was a common American name, on the order of “Steve Peterson” or “Martin Smith” or whatever, so I have no reason to believe that English is not his native tongue.)

Now, let’s try to decipher what he’s saying. Here is my best attempt at translation.

“I read your review of ‘Spider-Man 3′ and can similarly recognize that you were not even a Marvel comic casual observer.”

“I can tell from your review that you are not even a casual reader of the comic books on which ‘Spider-Man’ is based.”

“Anytime a filmmaker steps outside the boundaries of what an epic was created to be does it become disheartened by it’s viewers.”

I’m a little stumped here. He seems to be saying, “Anytime a filmmaker does something out of the ordinary, some viewers don’t like it.” But in his next sentence, he says that “Spider-Man 3″ goes along with what the character’s creators would want, which means the film isn’t out of the ordinary after all. Plus, he says “outside the boundaries of what an epic was created to be,” which implies not just going against the norm, but going against what the movie was SUPPOSED to be. So who knows.

“Spider Man III was believable and greatly followed the traditions of its creator.”

“‘Spider-Man 3′ is believable and lines up with what happens in the ‘Spider-Man’ comic books.” I have it on solid nerd authority that this is not particularly true, but whatever.

“If it fails at the Box Office could only your tapestry of a double-minded review have merit or recommendation.”

“If it fails at the box office, then that will be proof that your review was accurate. If it succeeds, then obviously that means it is an excellent film.” Flawless reasoning if ever I saw it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 11:13 am and is filed under Angry Letters, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.