Ultimate Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 1: Great Power; Episode 2: Great Responsibility
(Look at me, capitalizing on Into the Spider-Verse and reviewing a Spider-Man cartoon and everything)
So while I was definitely unimpressed with Avengers Assemble, I have been hearing some decidedly mixed stuff about its sister show, Ultimate Spider-Man. I've been itching to watch a Spider-Man cartoon for a while now, and if nothing else, Ultimate Spider-Man's voice cast is certainly... intriguing. Okay, it's mostly J.K. Simmons and Clark Gregg reprising their live-action roles as Jonah J. Jameson and Agent Coulson respectively, but at the same time, I've also heard a fair amount of controversy surrounding Ultimate Spider-Man. It's heaviest supporters note that it's a light-hearted show in the vein of old-school Teen Titans that combine comedy and action. Its detractors (who also suffer from "grrr our previous Spider-Man cartoon was cancelled", similar to Avengers: EMH vs. Avengers Assemble) note how toyetic the show is and just how distracting the comedy is.
So yesterday I watched a bunch of these episodes, and then I decided that, what the hell, I might as well watch the entire first season and maybe do reviews about it. I'm curious, honestly, after seeing all the controversies, so I picked this one compared to the fan-favourite Spider-Man: TAS or Spectacular Spider-Man.
And the first episode... well, it's... it's certainly distracting. On one hand, I do appreciate that other than Deadpool, Spider-Man is probably the only superhero character that can headline a show with constant joke-y cutaways. It's definitely quite charming if it didn't happen every two minutes or so. The trick about doing a format like this is that the cutaways can't really detract from the actual episode itself, and I'd argue that it definitely does for these two episodes.
And the first two episodes are... insanely clunky. The first episode basically tries to shoehorn everything through cutaways -- Spider-Man's origin story, J. Jonah Jameson's role as an angry news-man, SHIELD, the Avengers, HIP!Aunt May, Peter's school life, Mary Jane, Harry Osborn, Norman Osborn, Flash Thompson... it's an insane amount of introdump that is done in a pretty bad "tell-not-show" deal, and I genuinely felt that a lot of these could definitely be done better. Like, that segment when we first meet Harry or Mary-Jane for the first time? Did we really need Peter recapping how they met in this universe for a full half-minute? No, not really.
The main premise is that this version of Spider-Man is going to be ULTIMATE because he's being mentored by Nick Fury and SHIELD. The first episode basically has Fury show up and help Spider-Man take down a villain called the Trapster, and then after fighting the rest of Trapster's team, the Frightful Four (the Wizard, Ulysses Klaw and Thundra), Spider-Man decides to go what the hey, let's give it a shot. And that's about the gist of the first episode. Oh, sure, we do get some hints of how Norman Osborn and Dr. Octavius are planning and scheming to 'steal' Spider-Man away from SHIELD and into Oscorp's employ, allowing them to make an army of Spider-Men, but eh.
The second episode, though, is basically another set-up episode. It establishes the other segment of this show -- that Spider-Man is being recruited to be the leader of his own team of... junior Avengers? Which, in this case, is made up of teenaged versions of Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Buckethead Nova and White Tiger. I know two of those four names, and after all those Netflix live-action shows it certainly is surreal to see Luke Cage and Iron Fist as teenagers.
It's a simple setup and the four are clearly nothing more than just, well, one-note personalities. Nova's arrogant, White Tiger is brusque, Luke Cage is a bro and Iron Fist says namaste. The big action segment of this episode is a rematch with the Frightful Four-minus-one, with Spider-Man's conflict sort of just waffling back and forth on whether he's going to continue on as part of SHIELD... which... Fury's basically blackmailing Spider-Man, isn't he? Or at least, getting him to sign on under false pretenses? Whatever. We get the introduction of the Junior Avengers as Peter's new classmates, while Phil Coulson ends up being the new principal. Okay then.
Oh, and before I forgot, throw in an agonizingly long bit where the show just basically turns into an advertisement for the Spider-Cycle, which I assume is based on a tie-in toy, and it's kind of irritating. Work the damn toys into the narrative, people! I don't need an extended sequence of Curt Connors telling me how much more awesome the bike is compared to normal web-shooting, or an extended sequence showing the bike shooting web and driving on web and walls and shit.
Overall, it's definitely a flawed show. The voice-acting is decent, I suppose, and Drake Bell does a pretty neat job at delivering a very excited teenage boy that is easily distracted by everything around him. J.K. Simmons and Clark Gregg really bring to mind their live-action counterparts, which is awesome. Stan Lee shows up as the janitor! Tom Kenny's performance as Dr. Octavius is probably one of my favourites in these two episodes, although I have always been a huge, huge fan of Tom Kenny's performances. The animation is also pretty crisp and well-done, with lots of vibrant colours and animation. But the rather questionable zigzagging all over the place in regards to pacing and general tone. It's definitely neat to watch, and it's nowhere as dumbed-down as, say, Justice League Action or as psychedelic as Teen Titans Go, but I dunno. I'll give the show a chance, I suppose, because I definitely see a fair amount of things that I do like about the show, but at the same time it might very well just kind of end up the same way as I felt with Avengers Assemble.
(We'll probably do Spectacular after I finish this season.)
(We'll probably do Spectacular after I finish this season.)
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