The Ultimate Spider-Man is Actually Pretty Good

So I’ve been trying recently to branch out into American comics. You may have noticed this. My most recent adventure has taken me into the animated world of Spider-Man.  Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man TV show is actually pretty awesome. The premise is this: Peter Parker has been Spider-Man for a while when he is approached by Nick Fury with a proposition: join up with S.H.I.E.L.D. and let them train Peter into the “ultimate” Spider-Man.  Peter accepts and is suddenly tossed onto a team with junior S.H.I.E.L.D. agents White Tiger, Nova, Power Man, and Iron Fist.  Hijinks ensue and Peter learns valuable lessons about superheroing, blah blah, you know the drill. Anyway, it’s a pretty fun show.

PHIL! (Uh, his name is Agent.)

So first I gotta be upfront with you about the real reason I started watching this show. Yes, it was a good way to learn more about the Marvelverse, as Peter often breaks the fourth wall to explain a situation or introduce a character we may not know.  But really? I needed more Son of Coul in my life.  Yup, that’s right. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had a lot of influence on this show, and one way that shows is in the presence of Agent Coulson as a supporting character.  Best of all, they even got Clark Gregg himself to do the voice acting! It’s just a small part in the background (Coulson is undercover as the principal at Peter’s high school) but it made me happy nonetheless.

The voice acting in general on this show is pretty great, with Drake Bell as Peter Parker, Tara Strong as Mary Jane, J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, and Tom Kenny, Greg Cipes, Steve Blum, Travis Willingham (as Thor!), and even Mark Hamill as various other roles. (Stan Lee has a running cameo as the high school’s janitor.)

The animation is somewhat inspired by anime, with some chibi-fication and whatnot.  It also has a good mix of episoding plots versus an overarching storyline.

I’m enjoying it so far. (Although, to be fair, seeing as the internet seems to be full of this show’s haters, I’m relatively easy to please and have no basis for comparison.) I recommend you check it out, too!

The Amazing Spider-Man! A Review

So I saw The Amazing Spider-Man at midnight (and I’m exhausted writing this so forgive any egregious spelling/grammar errors). Let me tell you my feels! I am going to try to keep this short; no promises.

First of all, I quite enjoyed this movie. It suffered solely in my personal estimation because I just saw The Avengers for the eleventh (yes, quite literally) time last Friday, and this movie is no Avengers. But it’s really good! Quick disclaimer: I am a newb to comics and know nothing about the Spider-canon.

Let’s do a bulleted list, Lady Bacula style. Things I liked:

• Peter was really the definition of adorkable. Cute, but stumbling enough socially to make it clear that this wasn’t just some misunderstood Gary Stu. This is an actual awkward kid who sometimes can barely string a sentence together in front of people. (It made for a neat, psychologically unpackable dichotomy with Spider-Man; he’s wisecracking and funny as hell once he gets behind the mask.)
• Gwen Stacy. Oh, Gwen. Disregarding my epic girlcrush on Emma Stone, Gwen is a great character. She is a scientist! She is good at math and biology and just as smart as (smarter than, actually) Peter! Without her Peter literally would not have been able to save the day! Yay Gwen! Guess who does more than just scream, get saved, and make out with Spider-Man? Gwen! Eat your heart out, Kirsten Dunst Mary Jane Watson!
• The movie was full of cool (fake) science! I love science! I wish I was good at it, but watching actors pretend to be people who are good at (fake) science is the next best thing!
• The stereotypical high school bully was a relatively three-dimensional character who grew over the course of the movie! What?! That’s unheard of in high school movies! It made me happy.
• It did a great job distancing itself from the Tobey Maguire trilogy, in plot, character design, and even the overall feel of the movie.
  

  My mom’s gonna hate me for saying this (she’s a die-hard Tobey!Spidey fan), but I think I liked Andrew’s Spidey better.

• Stan Lee’s cameo. Omigosh, lumpin’ hilarious.
• Dr. Connors is Xenophilius Lovegood! Mind blown!
• The character development was really solid to me. As a crotchety old twenty-two-year-old, though, I have to say that it’s hard for me to imagine any seventeen-year-old kid I currently know acting as grown-up as the kids in this movie.

Things I didn’t like:

• Sometimes Peter was almost too awkward, like I was wondering if he had a speech disorder because he literally could not string words into a sentence at all. Andrew Garfield also had a lot of sort of weird mannerisms that seemed a bit overdone.
• The one major POC character was the sinister, amoral, and demanding lackey of Norman Osborn (who we never see), is a bully and a coward, and might have died mid-movie? I’m not sure if he died or if he just got close to death by Lizard. The rest of the movie was super-duper whitebread.
• The credits cutscene (full disclosure: if there was more than one I only saw the first; I booked it out of there because I had to go to the bathroom so I apologize if I missed one) was just confusing. I’mma try to stop comparing this to The Avengers, but with that, if you knew who Thanos was you were excited, and if you didn’t you Googled “Who’s the big pink guy in the Avengers credits” and found out and got excited. This cutscene was trying too hard to be intriguing for the next movie.
• It had a guy in it who talked like the Joker and had a fedora, and he apparently is a telepath because he was talking into Dr. Connors head the whole time (when I thought it was just Connors’ inner Lizard having a Jekyll/Hyde argument with him for the duration of the actual movie). I’ll gladly see the next one, but it won’t be because the Peter’s-missing-father storyline has drawn me in with its intrigue and mysteriousness.
  

  Trying really hard to avoid comparing them; Avengers just blows this out of the water, though.

• The moral of the story was, if I’m not mistaken, “Don’t act as a father figure to Peter Parker or you’ll die.” (That was the moral, right?)

That’s all for now! Go see it and tell me what you think!

Trailer Tuesdays: The Amazing Spider-Man… Again

It’s Trailer Tuesdays again! Let’s talk about the new Amazing Spiderman Trailer!

I was less than whelmed when I saw some of the earlier trailers for The Amazing Spiderman. I don’t mind the idea of a reboot, or that Mary Jane isn’t in it (after the last movie this will reprieve and I always like Gwen Stacey), and don’t even mind bringing in Peter’s parents, that’s actually kind of exciting.

No what bothered me about the previous trailers is what bothered me about the old Spider-Man movies.

I love Spider-Man he is one of my favorite superheroes. Do you know why? It’s because he was also so freaking funny. Spider-Man is a teenager so he’s constantly, cracking jokes, and making snide remarks that even gives people like Deadpool a run for their money in the hilarious department. This is really what made the Spider-Man comics for me, and I loved him even more in The Avenger comics. Peter’s light hearted attitude that made him so funny was also what kept him going during rough times. Spider-Man has some story lines that are so depressing that even Batman doesn’t envy the guy, but Peter never turns into the angsty hero that Bruce Wayne is, because of his general optimistic attitude about the world. His humor and temperament is a reflection of that.

Yet in every movie Spider-Man is a little emo bitch! Why? Who is making these decisions? I demand to know!

Sp previous movies and previous trailers left down-hearted thinking I would never see the Peter Parker of the comics on the big screen… until now!

This new trailer looks awesome and most importantly FINALLY gives me the hilarious Spider-Man I have been waiting for all my life.

Spider-Man, you have me sold! I’ll see you in July!

Trailer Tuesdays: The Amazing Spider-Man

And here’s another trailer that’s been out for a while, because I’m too lazy to find something new.

Well, I’ll be honest here. I know nothing about Spider-Man besides what Ultimate Alliance and the movies have told me about him. And considering what I hear other people say about him, I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be a likable character. After all, whenever he pops up in the comics I read, I don’t hate him, but the movies did his character no justice for me, and I’ve spend the past so many years associating him with the word “douchebag.”

When news of the reboot first reached my ears, my joy could not be contained. I hated the movies thus far, and nothing could be worse than them.

Apparently I was wrong.

Yeah, the only thing I could think during this trailer was, “Emo, emo, emo.” This character type is so unbelievably annoying, and from what Lady Geek Girl tells me about Peter, it’s wrong. In some ways, the newer movie seems truer to the comics in terms of his super powers—the spider web thing appears to be a gadget and not an ability, for one thing—but in others, it really doesn’t.

According to IMDb, Mary Jane isn’t even in the cast, and then there’s the whole issue with his parents that feels shoved in for the sake of Peter’s angst, only further cemented with the line, “We all have secrets: the ones we keep, and the ones that are kept from us.”

If I’m wrong about any of this, feel free to correct me, because like I said, I know nothing about Spider-Man. I just wish the trailer didn’t paint Peter as someone who will do nothing but whine for two hours. Needless to say, I’m really not looking forward to watching this like I know Lady Geek Girl will make me come July.