by Antonio Jacobs

Created on: April 12, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Spiderman 3: Don't Do Drugs

I believe that Spiderman 3 will do a great service to preaching the argument that former first lady Nancy Reagan made her cause: don't do drugs. Like its two predecessors, Spiderman 3 will prove to be the moral lesson on drug use that Scarface only wished it could be.

In this movie, Tobey Maguire plays Peter Parker, whose amazing powers allow him to fight crime. He is romantically involved with Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirstin Dunst, who is the Ruby slippers, that is, that object that all desire. Since Spiderman is a movie with an anti-drug message, poor Mary Jane represents her namesake. Pot heads will swear on all they believe in that Mary Jane is the only drug that is not addictive; in fact, they'll try to tell you that smoking weed is medicinal. Marvel has taken this idea and ran with it consistently with its Spiderman series. The first film compared marijuana with the "harder" stuff: inhalants and pills. Mary Jane won, but at the end, Peter Parker swears off the stuff. He doesn't last long though; in Spiderman 2, Peter is back on the Jane jones big time, and goes into serious withdrawal, losing his powers and nearly getting killed by the neurally altered Otto Octavius, Still, Peter manages to get his act together after a reverse intervention with Harry Osborn, and manages to get hooked at the end.

In the third installment of the series, it looks like the monkey is truly on Peter's back. Mary Jane simply is not enough; he needs something more. Enter the suit: all black, performance enhancing, mood altering and out of control. This movie is based on a popular storyline from the 1980s: Marvel Comics ran a storyline called The Secret Wars, where the world's greatest heroes and villains were transported by an omnipotent being named the Beyonder to a distant planet to engage in gladiatorial combat. Spidey returned with a funky black suit that responded to his mental commands; it generated his webs, it changed into civilian clothes, it enhanced his strength, speed and agility. Unfortunately, what Peter thought was alien technology was really a parasitical life form, which attempted to take over his mind and body. It was with the help of Mister Fantastic (the second FF movie is coming out soon, also dealing with an alien from outer space) that Peter was able to rid himself of this alien symbiote, who eventually found another host who turned into the wildly popular super-villain Venom.

Just as Mary Jane is a transparent metaphor for marijuana,

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