Marvel fans i've taken a look at many Marvel movies in the past and I will be looking at more in the future however the one thing that i've very rarely done is look at the companies previous animated projects. Which is a shame because alot of those shows especially the ones in the nineties served as my introduction to those characters with all that in mind here is my review of the very first episode of the 1994 Spider-Man animated series "Night Of The Lizard" enjoy comic book and animation fans and everyone inbetween.
The plot of the episode is there's a new creature in New York and Peter Parker and Eddie Brock are both tasked with getting pictures with the winner receiving a prize meanwhile Spider-Man has to find out who the creature is before it's to late. Plot wise I felt that the episode was pretty good with the story moving along at a nice pace but the story wasn't the series best in my opinion but it did a good job f setting up most of the main cast of characters.
Starring in the episode is Christopher Daniel Barnes as Peter Parker / Spider-Man and Edward Asner as J. Jonah Jameson. Also starring in the episode is , Linda Gary as Aunt May Parker , Rodney Saulsberry as Joseph Robertson , Liz Georges as Debra Whitman , Hank Azaria as Eddie Brock and Bud , Joseph Campanella as Curt Connors / Lizard , Giselle Loren as Margaret Connors , Toby Scott Ganger as Billy Connors and Ken Chandler as Sam.
As for what I thought about the acting in the episode it honestly wasn't that bad but at the same time I feel that it could have been alot better. While the acting was indeed good and was very passable for the episode that's all it was and that to me isn't a good thing since you should always be trying to put in a solid performance that could rival better shows and not turn in a performance that would earn you a paycheck.
Doing the animation for not only this episode but also the whole series is TMS Entertainment who have mainly worked on anime like Akira and episodes of Batman: the Animated Series among many others. The animation here I thought for the time that this show was made it was honestly really good i'm not going to say that it's amazing animation because it's really not but for a mid nineties animated show it's really good.
That said however there is something that we have to talk about and that's the fact that not only this episode but this entire series makes use of CGI. Which is just as bad as you'd think it would be don't get me wrong as a kid growing up when this show was I thought that the CGI looked really good but yikes it hasn't aged well at all the only good thing about the CGI is they don't use it often in this episode but when they do my god do you notice it.
Now this is something that I never noticed before now but to me the character of Debra Whitman (Liz Georges) looks so much like Betty Ross from the nineties Incredible Hulk animated series. I know that these shows were produced at least a year apart and so chances of the studio working on The Incredible Hulk getting there hands on the Debra character model are very unlikely but one cannot help but wonder why they chose to make Betty Ross character look so similar to Debra.
Now as you can no doubt work out by any of the above images this episode and the show aired on Fox Kids starting in 1994 and lasted until 1998 which I think makes it the longest running Marvel animated series of the nineties but I might be wrong. Either way way there is no way in hell you can tell that this show was made in the nineties apart from the dated CGI since the episode doesn't make any kind of reference to things from the nineties which oddly makes the episode feel timeless.
I have to say that I liked how they did Lizard in this episode which is they basically made him a Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde type of character. With Lizard not really being able to remember much of what his human half is doing and what Curt's memories are all of which make him a vastly interesting character since your now wondering if the character is acting like this because he's evil or is it because he feels threatened by Spider-Man basically breaking into his home.
Let's talk about the show's theme song because it really needs to be talked about just like any other superhero show that came out around this time the theme song is so freaking good. Which shouldn't come as a surprise since it was performed by the lead guitarist of Aerosmith Joe Perry it's just a shame that the lyrics don't quite match up the awesome electric guitar but the theme song is still so freaking good.
Now then since this is an action show that means that we have to talk about the action that's in this episode. Which yeah is exactly what you'd think it would be like for a nineties animated action show in that there's not much action when there it's just two people fighting but that to me works in the episodes favour since the focus of the episode isn't the action it's the story being told and the characters but I still would have liked to better action tho.
Overall this episode wasn't that bad since it does a good job of setting up the world and the characters in the show. That being said however I do feel that this episode could have been since there are alot of issues with the episode which i've covered in this review but at the same time I feel that those issues serve as part of both the show and the episodes charm and so to change them would cause both the episode and the show to loose something and so this episode gets a 7 out of 10 from me.
All images used in this review were gathered from the official Marvel Animated Universe fandom wiki page and oddly enough nowhere else. I wasn't expecting tho find any of these images to be high definition and so I wasn't shocked at all to see that there are very little HD images as such I can't really recommend you use the official Marvel Animated Universe fandom wiki page but if you want to use it then I say go for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment