Spectacular Spider-Man

Pretty much any time I talk about Spider-Man on this blog, I use one of two points of reference. The first is the original comics themselves (the Silver Age comics of the 60's and 70's). The second point of reference is a short-lived children's cartoon from 2008 to 2009 called The Spectacular Spider-Man. Its first season aired on The CW network (part of Warner Bros. network), and the second season aired on Disney XD. The series was developed primarily by Greg Weisman and Victor Cook, and was produced by Sony.

Despite referring back to this series repeatedly, I've never actually written a review of it. Recently, however, I re-watched the series (by introducing it to my 8-year-old daughter and her friends), and thought maybe I should actually write a review of. Put simply, Spectacular Spider-Man is probably the single best adaptation of Spider-Man that has ever been put on a screen. It's not only the best Spidey animated series, but it might even be better than any of the Spider-Man movies, including Sam Raimi's movies and Marvel's recent Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Spectacular Spider-Man is a better adaptation than any of the Spider-Man movies.

High school drama for all audiences

The show is a children's cartoon and its high school setting is definitely targeting younger kids. But it is surprisingly well-planned, well-written, and well-executed for a children's cartoon, and the teenage drama suits Spider-Man exceptionally well. Any Spidey fan, regardless of age, should be able to enjoy this show.

On the surface, the series seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Ultimate Spider-Man line of comics. This was a little bit off-putting for me at first because I don't particularly care for the Ultimate Spider-Man storylines or aesthetics. However, Spectacular won me over by remaining very faithful to the original comics as well. Spectacular manages to take the best elements from every incarnation of Spider-Man, combines them, and modernizes them into a 21st century setting while delightfully capturing the spirit of the original 60's and 70's comics. Plot elements and themes are pulled from the original comics, from the Ultimate comics, and also (being produced by Sony) from the Sam Raimi movies. It even makes a few successful homages to the 1990's Spider-Man: the Animated Series that ran on Fox and had been, up till this point, the gold standard for Spidey on TV (at least, up until the last couple seasons go completely off the rails).

Spectacular takes the best elements from every incarnation of Spider-Man,
while remaining spectacularly faithful to the original 60's and 70's comics.

Spectacular even replicates some scenes straight from the panels of the comics. The infamous "Face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot." scene is transferred verbatim. Other scenes such as Spider-Man removing the Venom symbiote in the church tower, and channeling the thoughts of his friends and loved ones to help him lift himself out from under collapsing metal beams are also faithfully replicated.


Spectacular [BOTTOM ROW] replicates panels from the original comics [TOP ROW] almost verbatim.

Other adaptations have also replicated (or paid homage to) specific comic book panels. For instance, The Animated Series of the 90's also had the "Face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot!" scene, and the symbiote bell tower scene, and so forth, and many of its episodes are loosely based on issues of the comics. Homecoming had the "trapped under rubble" scene. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie had the Green Goblin being impaled by his glider. And so forth.

What separates Spectacular from these other adaptations is that Spectacular manages to maintain more of the nuance and texture of those original comic panels.

And it isn't just the faithfullness to the source material that I like. The show is also generally well-written, with some clever (and not-so-clever) uses of things like symbolism and foreshadowing. The characters are all well-written and well-performed. The animation may have exaggerated body proportions, but it's very fluid, expressive, and is full of nuances in facial expressions and body language. There are some parts of the show that have some cheesy dialogue that reminds me that it's a children's show, but overall, the show is immensely watchable by adults and children alike.

There's some quality writing, including foreshadowing, symbolism, and misdirection.

If I haven't made it clear already, this show is fantastic, and I absolutely adore it! The next section will contain minor spoilers, and the sections after that will contain major spoilers! So if you haven't seen the show yet, then I highly recommend that you buy the DVDs and watch it, then come back to finish reading the review. You can maybe get through the next section ("Friends and Lovers") without too much spoilers, but sections after that will be spoiling major story threads, including what I consider to be the single biggest spoiler in the entire series. Suffice it to say: I love what the show does with Gwen Stacy, I love what it does with Mary Jane, I love what it does with Harry Osborne, and I love the depictions of most of the villains! If you haven't watched the show yet, then read on at your own risk!

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Amazing Spider-Man 2 title

You'd think that super-hero movie makers would have learned some lessons from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. Specifically, you'd have hoped that they'd have learned not to throw too many villains into one movie - especially if you have to cover the origin of all of them. As I stated in my review of the first Amazing Spider-Man, it was too soon to reboot the Spider-Man movie franchise. After Spider-Man 3, that franchise could have used a new cast (Tobey Macguire was starting to look flabby in the Spider-Man tights), but a complete reboot was unnecessary and premature. Andrew Garfield could have filled Tobey's shoes as an older, more mature, confident Peter Parker without the need to reboot the franchise and retell the origin story.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 looking for parents
The movie really bogs down after Peter stops fighting bad guys and starts looking for his parents. Didn't we already see this exact same stuff in the last movie?

The first movie felt completely unnecessary and just didn't look or feel right. This movie is at least brighter and more colorful. It isn't visually as dull and washed-out as the previous movie. Garfield continues to excel in the role of Spider-Man with witty chit-chat, and the costume looks absolutely brilliant! He still doesn't sell himself as Peter Parker though, and his voice sounded muffled in his mask at some times, but if you could understand Bane, then you can follow along with Spider-Man.

So while it looks and sounds good, Amazing Spider-Man 2 just falls completely apart in its narrative.

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Amazing Spider-Man 2 banner

I did not at all care for The Amazing Spider-Man movie that was released last year. In summary, the movie was too dark, it lacked the light-hearted fun that I expect from Spider-Man, and the romantic dynamic between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy just didn't work in my mind. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was disappointed in the movie because of these issues. At this year's San Diego ComicCon, the creators and cast of the sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, revealed a lot of information about the new movie that actually impressed me! It just might be possible that the creators swallowed their pride, and took the criticism of the previous movie to heart.

This movie might actually look like a Spider-Man movie

The most noticeable and immediately obvious change in the overall look and feel of the new movie is the color palette. Most of the images from the film are sequences that take place during the day, so the images are bright and colorful. But the most important change is the complete redesign of Spidey's suit.

The new Spider-suit is "amazing"!

The new suit design is absolutely gorgeous! They totally nailed it this time around!

Amazing Spider-Man 2 - costume redesign
NAILED IT!

First and foremost, it is actually a direct adaptation of the comic book suit (minus the armpit web). It actually looks like something Peter Parker could have put together with the limited resources at his disposal rather than some kind of military-grade commando outfit. It looks like a spandex suit. The eyes are bigger and buggier and actually white instead of gray or silver, which just looks great and adds just the right amount of "cartoonish-ness" to the character. The colors could have been a little brighter, but I can live with that. Put simply: this is the best looking movie Spider-Man suit so far, hand down!

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Iron Man 3 - title Iron Man 3 poster

I have very mixed feelings about Iron Man 3.

On the one hand, the movie throws some very unexpected curve balls at the audience, and departs from other big-budget action movies by being a very thoughtful and introspective movie. It provided everything that Star Trek Into Darkness failed to deliver. If the people who wrote Iron Man 3 had been involved with writing Into Darkness, then that movie would have benefited greatly. Iron Man 3 succeeds because the writers are really trying to say things with their movie, even if they have to twist the audience's expectations and break a few eggs to do it.

On the other hand, the movie suffers from some pacing and script issues, and it blunders with its primary villain(s).

The core of the plot is about Stark coming to terms with the events of The Avengers and deciding if he can truly hang with genuine supermen and gods. It's a very introspective film (which is something that the Iron Man movies have been very good at). In fact, most of the movie revolves around Stark being forced to solve problems as a regular person, rather than being able to rely on a fancy, weaponized suit of armor.

Stark has reexamine his goals and objectives and try to figure out where he wants to draw the line regarding problems he can deal with, and problems he can't deal with, and also with whether or not he should deal with them. The internal conflict within the character is the primary moving for much of the movie's plot, and Robert Downy Junior pulls it all off with the grace and style that we've come to expect from him with this character.

Iron Man 3 - bros on the couch
Tony Stark is going to be stuck solving problems without his fancy armor throughout most of the movie.

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Amazing Spider-Man game banner

Prerelease promotional material really soured my interest in this game to the point that I waited over 6 months to pick up a used copy cheap off eBay. And the movie ended up being sloppy and wrong on numerous levels. And Edge of Time had caused me to lose faith in Beenox’s competency as a developer of Spider-Man games.

So there was a lot stacked up against this game, and I went into it gritting my teeth and ready to be furious. Maybe I set the bar a little bit too low, but I ended up enjoying Amazing Spider-Man. It cut a lot of corners and is easy and boring, but there’s enough good ideas in here that I’m actually excited to see if Beenox gets another chance to hopefully knock one out of the park.

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Amazing Spider-Man game - web swinging without physics Amazing Spider-Man game - web swinging without physics
Spider-Man can swing without anything nearby for his webs to stick to, including over the tops of parks and the city skyline itself.
This instantly pulls me out of the game experience everytime it happens.
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Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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