As terrible as Dread finds the show I wonder when he will stop watching it. He still seems to not be able to help himself to watch it every week.
You've a fair point. At this juncture my reasons to continue to watch "ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN" are as follows:
- Masochist Geek Pride: I endured 12 episodes of the far worse "SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED" back in 1999-2000, so I don't want to seem like a quitter here.
- Everyone Else: As a hardcore Iron Fist fan, his presence alone earns more goodwill than it should. Alongside Luke Cage and White Tiger, they're not bad. They're often the highlights of episodes and are often far more grounded than everyone else. I often feel sorry that they're the meat in an idiot sandwich (between Spidey and Nova).
- Rubbernecking: It is always hard to avoid a good train-wreck. Hey, the culture of wanting to take a good, long look at someone else's disaster is so rampant it has a term for it, which I just used.
- *****ing: As a comic fan, I'm not whole unless I can complain about something.
- Perspective: Every time I go on a tirade about some detail of "YOUNG JUSTICE" or some other better show that they didn't get perfect, this show exists as a reality check alternative.
Those're about the best reasons I can come up with.
I'd like to see some of your reviews for MTV Spidey. I really don't see what was terrible about that show. I enjoyed it. USM on the other hand is unwatchable. I've given up on it & I really tried to like it a few times.
The dilemma with reviewing "MTV SPIDER-MAN" is that it came out in 2003 and is very much old hat right now. Production wise, it was a bit of a mess. It was originally intended to be inspired or adapted by the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN comic, which in '03 was in its prime. However, two things changed all that. The success of "SPIDER-MAN" in 2002 caused Sony to want to make the show more like that, and MTV made other ridiculous demands. Among them were "no old people", which is why J.J. barely appears and May never does. Another was aimless cameos by musicians, which is why Eve of all people voices a generic villain of the week.
Still, it does have some positives. Neil Patrick Harris was a great Spider-Man. The animation is pretty good if one likes CGI on TV, even if there are quite a few repeat shots (I counted one particular shot of Spidey swinging upwards reused in almost every episode). The show had arguably the most bad-ass adaptation of Kraven The Hunter ever, from a cool design to Michael Dorn voicing him. While Harry's oddly blond, his character was entertaining. Some of the dialogue was pretty good now and again, and I actually didn't mind a subplot of Peter getting laid for once. The tone was at least consistent throughout the series, if one likes things dark.
The bad? The tone was almost overly dark with effort made in almost every episode to have the villain die every week, which prevented a rogue's gallery. It almost seemed as if some murders in the series were randomly thrown in merely to take advantage of MTV's lax censors. In terms of Spider-Man villains, only Lizard, Electro, Silver Sable, Kraven, and (arguably) Kingpin appear. While that is more than "ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN" has fared, in their place on the MTV show were generic villains thought up by the production crew and while one or two may have had some notable voice actors, they were more often than not forgettable. That sort of thing was a bane from the late 1970's Spider-Man show on CBS and this show repeated that. At the very least, "USM" offers other Marvel Universe villains instead of making up generic lamers with common gimmicks. It also has what is arguably the most depressing ending to anything CGI animated I have ever seen besides the ending to the N64 game "CONKER'S BAD FUR DAY".
Some people have said it's better than "USM" is today, and while it's tone is far more consistent I am not sure I would quite go that far. Much like "USM", mediocrity was often its peak. At the very least, Sony's second stab at a Spidey cartoon 4 years later would prove much better.
hype!
