So it pains me to say it, but I didn’t like Spider-Man 3 all that much. (I’m a fairly obsessive Spider-Man fan, and I really wanted to like this one. And while I certainly dug parts of it—especially James Franco as an eeeeevil Harry Osborn and Topher Grace as an eeeeevil Eddie Brock—the whole thing left me feeling pretty disappointed.) Anyway, my review will be up/out tomorrow, and the film is playing at every theater imaginable on every screen imaginable starting Friday, but in the meantime, I recommend reading this—a pretty interesting analysis of the jaw-droppingly massive marketing campaign that Sony launched for the film, saturating the globe with Spidey from New York to China.

The lengths that Sony’s gone to ensure that this film will rake in a shit-ton of money is just mind-boggling, and the reasons that it has to make a lot of money, and fast (including the fact that by some reports its total cost is around $500 MILLION, and that Shrek 3 hits later this month, followed quickly by Pirates 3, meaning Spidey only has a week or two to really cash in) are fascinating. Anyway, well worth checking out, regardless of whether or not you’re interested in Spider-Man 3: Fact is, the muscular power of Hollywood’s marketing depts. is glimpsed in all its terrifying, all-out glory pretty rarely, and this is definitely one of those times, and it’s already affected pretty much everyone on the planet.