That show had great production/direction/writing. I liked the episodes where they cross-cut either the camcorder birthday wishes or the school play scenes with the action.
Indeed. I honestly couldn't think of too many things I didn't care about the current 26 episode run, and I'm often very critical of animated TV shows. Just look at some of my thesis long rants in the WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN section.
(BTW, I still do watch BATMAN: BRAVE AND THE BOLD, but I enjoy that as a goofy, silly, self-aware guilty pleasure, and thus not worth long reviews every week, especially since I write for Examiner now. Emmy worthy it isn't.)
On top of that, doesn't Iron Man Armored Adventures needlessly make Tony Stark a high school kid?
The only good thing about the MTV Spider-Man was Spider-Man's look and his web swinging. Everything else was awful!
Everything about SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN is aces!
Yeah, Stark and his cast being teens for no real reason beyond outdated network assumptions about viewers is 50% of why I haven't tried watching IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES. The other 50% being that the animation didn't thrill me in previews. I've heard it's gotten better as it went along, but I just have no desire, even to hunt it down on Hulu or something.
The MTV SPIDER-MAN show was a production mess from start to finish. It was originally set to ape Ultimate Spider-Man (hence why Brian Bendis was involved in the production), but as soon as "SPIDER-MAN" in 2002 grossed a gazillion dollars, they changed gears to loosely attach it to that movie continuity, but being unable to further the character subplots since "SPIDER-MAN 2" was due up in 2004. Atop that, MTV demanded that any "old people" be all but removed from the show's regular cast (hence why there was no May, and few appearances by J.J.) as well as stunt musician voice casting for some guest roles (a whole episode around Eve's character, for instance). There are some good parts and elements of the show; the action for the time was exceptional for a Spidey show, but the only real boost it has is being better than "SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED" was in 1999, slightly. Plus, MTV lost interest in the show almost immediately, burning through 13 episodes over the summer and then banishing it to the DVD shelves. The era of "Liquid Television" that brought us stuff like "BEEVIS AND BUTT-HEAD", "DARIA", "THE MAXX" and even "THE HEAD" was a good eight years past.
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN is an exceptional, yet often underrated by major parties, show. I think the only almost major website that champions it is IGN, and Newsarama that's not. I do hope to see it return. I think it's more appreciated up north (Canada) than it is here in some ways.
Er, isn't it the only animated DVD since Hulk vs.?
I agree, though, it was very good; my favourite of the animated releases.
Yes. Marvel/LG has shifted to a "one animated disc a year" as of 2008. From 2005-2007 they were trying to spit out 2 discs a year, and that sort of schedule was too much for them, so they've seemed to focus on one DTV a year. To be fair, HULK VS. was two short films sold as one package, which is more like doing two mini movies instead of one large one, which was more work and likely made them run behind. The last animated DTV before "HULK VS." was "NEXT AVENGERS", which was a disappointing waste of imagination (an adventure starring the children of heroes who were created with such stock cliches, I swear I have seen more character creation imagination on unofficial Marvel based message board RPG's).
"HULK VS." was exciting fun for fans and action seekers. "PLANET HULK" has good action but is a rather faithful adaptation of a goof Hulk story, and is at least as good. The next one up next year is "THOR: TALES OF ASGARD" which is sort of a "Young Thor" story. I'm not too psyched. The Marvel/LG crew tends to be stronger when they are working off another comic story that actually exists rather than come up with something on their own. "HULK VS." being the exception, and even that had some homages.