Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (1 Viewer)

I just picked up the new DVD of Spider-Man: The New Animated Series during my lunch break, a blind purchase at that, and I'm looking forward to this new DVD set as a good companion piece to the Spider-Man feature film DVD.

Any thoughts any of you may have on this new DVD set? Sound, picture quality, extras, even any possible Easter eggs on the set? Looking forward to your thoughts on this one!

And this new DVD brings up a real trip down memory lane here that I just have to share... remember back in the 1970's when Kenner and other toy companies would produce those little mini-videotapes of TV shows and cartoons that you could watch in a little movie camera-like viewer? I had several of those, including at least six or seven different Six Million Dollar Man tapes, Snoopy, several Star Wars tapes, and even a Spider-Man 1960's cartoon. Those were really cool! And ViewMaster even did a large scale ViewMaster projector with different sound reels to them. It'd be neat to find some of those really retro home video precursors once again!

Meh, it's an okay series... but I REALLY hate the animation style. Is it just me?

I enjoy the style and the series itself. Some episodes are a little weak, but for the most part it's worth picking up if you're a fan of the movie, IMO.

I haven't grabbed it yet myself, though. I've seen every episode so far and I'm not in a hurry to watch them again.

I hope it's good. I'm about to head out to pick it up for my son and I to enjoy. He's almost 4. Is the show ok for his age. He's used to watching the classic GI Joe and Transformer shows. Will there be anything scarier than those?

The DVD is rated TV-PG for animated violence, so I don't know if it would be age-appropriate for him. I'd recommend checking it out for yourself first before deciding whether or not to allow him to watch it.

I luckily got it on Saturday. I'm still going through my B5: season 4 set though so I haven't had a chance to check it out yet.

I picked up the set, but haven't watched any yet. I did see most of the episodes during their initial broadcast.
At first I wasn't sure I liked it, the animation looked a little too "plasticky" (is that a word?) but it grew on me and started looking forward to it. I hope it comes back for another season....

Actually, I think the animation is fantastic, especially Spider-man. I think it's pretty impressive how they got him to look a walking spider, and many of his poses are straight out of the comic book. It's light years beyond the previous animated series.

The writing, acting, and character designs, on the other hand, I found to be mediocre. In particular, MJ's design is hideous. That style may look good in paper, but in 3 dimensions she just looks like a freak.

-B

I picked this up yesterday and watched the first two episodes. I'd never seen the series before, but decided to take a chance with a Best Buy gift certificate, so there was no out of pocket expense.

The audio/video quality are outstanding -- DD5.1 and DTS5.1, anamorphic widescreen transfer.

However, I really did not care much for the animation style -- the "human" characters had very wooden, robotic movement. Also, at least with the first two episodes, the writing is pretty weak. Hopefully the remaining episodes are better.

The animation reminds me of cel-shaded graphics in certain video games. I don't mind it at all, unfortunately, what brings this series down is the MTV influenced style in which the characters are written. I don't have to know this series was on MTV to see that and it does not fit well with the Spider-Man universe.

That said, I will still rent it nonetheless since I am a Spidey fan and want to at least check out the DVD.

I'm still waiting for season sets of the 60s and 90s series, by far the best representation of the web slinger.

Definitely not for young kids. In one episode a guy gets his hand chopped off and then someone loses a head.
I enjoyed the show and the one thing about the animation that bothered me was that the main characters always had the same clothes on.

My review is up on digitallyOBSESSED!:

http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/tre...w.php3?ID=5574

The commentaries are fairly unusual for a TV series; instead of being the dull chatter that you find on the Simpsons sets, these are well-planned little seminars, each on a different aspect of creating a CG-animated series. It's an extraordinary set of comments that makes this a highly recommended release.

I didn't like the video-game-like animation of the ordinary people, but the action sequences looked pretty good, and Spidey himself, who clearly got the most attention, looked terrific, I thought.

I absolutely love the 90s series!

It's not just you. Everyone I've talked to hates the animation style. Of course we're all really old, well into our thirties.

That said, it is better than the NBC version that was on when I was a kid!

Although I've picked up some bootleg tapes of the 1960s series, and they're really pretty terrible. My memory of them was much better than they actually are.

I'll agree, though, first 1990s Fox version was probably the best yet, and had some terrific voice acting.

YES! THE 90s Spider-Man Series RULED. When will that be in Season Sets? That's What I wanna know.

I have about six hours worth of the 60's series on tape. I copied them from tape almost 20 years ago, going around various video stores in the area to try to get them all. While the animation is cheesy by today's standards, there are many pluses:

1. Ralph Bakshi was art director and the psychedelic backgrounds were pretty far out.

2. I find the voice work excellently done fom Spidey to all the villians (Sandman was quite cool).

3. The music. Excellent blend of jazz and rock. Prevalent in the sixties was the sound of brass. Abundant here as well.

4. Peter Parker looks like he did in the 60's comics. I always found it curious why in the 90s version they made Peter Parker look more like Nicholas Hammond rather than the Peter Parker in the comics?

5. The characterization was spot on for 60's Spider-Man. This type of accurate characterization wasn't done again till the 90's series (the series with his amazing friends was an embarrassment).

6. While the animation was cheesy by today's standards, they were actually quite good for the day, when compared to its contemporaries.

7. And of course nostalgia, as I remember when this cartoon premiered Saturday morning and I was there.


A couple of years ago I read that these were being competely remastered and I even saw screen shots of before and after. Since then I've heard nothing. Has anyone?

At the time of the HTF thread about that, I pointed out that it was being done in Australia (I'm pretty sure that was the country) by an Autralian network, for use in Australia. And that Disney, who owns the USA rights, had the choice of buying those remasters or not.


I figure that Disney, under Eisner's wise decision-making capabilities, chose "or not".

Has anyone found the Easter egg on this disc? I came across it Tuesday evening, and here's how to access it:

Put in Disc 1, and select the individual episode menu. Scroll with your Right key on your remote until you reach the fourth episode screen. Press the Right key twice, and you'll see a small spider at the bottom left of the screen (next to the larger Spider-Man face in the bottom center of the screen). Press Play, and you will see a 20-second clip of the series' producer talking about the animators resorting to sight gags during the animation process, followed by a 10-second sight gag of Spider-Man wearing rabbit ears and teeth.

That's the only Easter egg on this disc.

sounds like I will buy this set in the near future because of the commentaries