Reviewed by Blake Kenny (February 5, 2003)
Even before last year’s blockbuster monster hit crawled into theatres, I would consider myself a Spider-man fan. While I’m sure many people jumped on to the Spidey bandwagon after the film went big, I’ve always been somewhat of a Spider-man nut. I’ve always been a fan of anything that allowed me to escape from reality for a few minutes.
Not only was I pretty much raised on the classic 60’s cartoon series, but when I became a teenager/young adult, I was big into collecting comics books as well. I spent far too much money on comics in fact – collecting not only The Amazing Spider-man, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-man and just plain Spider-man, but about 20 other titles as well. I even spent a ton of time drawing comics with aspirations of perhaps, once day drawing them for a living.
Eventually, after 6 or 7 years of serious collecting and reading myself into the poorhouse, I slowly gave up the hobby. Comics were really big shortly after I got into them, and somehow paying $3-4 an issue for some comics felt like petty extortion. Basically I just couldn’t afford to buy all the titles I wanted anymore. So I cut back on the number of titles I collected, placing Spidey’s head on the chopping block in favour of a few characters I enjoyed more… in particular The Punisher. Still, even he became victim soon after, as I inevitably stopped collecting all together. Granted, I still love comics, but not to the extent that I once did. The fire’s still there, but the funds aren’t.
Anyhow, while I was thrilled to see everyone’s favourite wall crawler get the big screen justice he deserved, I knew the popularity of the film would result in a marketing cash-cow for Marvel comics and whoever else was involved. Spider-man’s arrival in theatres obviously meant merchandising overload – and soon after the film was in theatres, the first DVD full of Spider-man cartoons hit the stores. Then, after it lengthy theatrical run the film also ended up on DVD; and we were treated to a second batch of these toons. Obviously this second release was capitalizing on the subsequent growth in popularity of the Green Goblin. So this being the case, here’s the review of Spider-man: The Return of the Green Goblin for your reading pleasure.
One thing I’ll say about this disc and the one that came before right from the start. It’s very vague about it’s contents. I happen to work in a store that sells DVD’s and you would be amazed how many times someone brought the animated disc up to me and asked if it was the movie. Another thing – once you finally figure out that it’s animated, you’re still left wondering which animated series these episodes are from. As you know, there have been several different Spider-man toons over the years, so to clear matters up, these are primarily the episodes from the early 90’s. The new series that highlights today’s hot characters - like Venom and Carnage. This is modern day Spidey.
For those of you who actually watched the TV show, you’re probably aware that this series played out in somewhat of an episodic format. Many of the subplots would carry over from one episode to the next. So while most of these episodes centre on the Green Goblin, there are many underlying plotlines going on that might go right over your head. Unless you’re very familiar with the characters you’re likely to miss out on some of the show’s subtleties.
The DVD basically includes 4 episodes from the series. There are 2 more bonus episodes included on the disc, but I’ll discuss those later in the bonus section. The episodes include The Spot, Goblin War, Turning Point and Guilty. First off I’ll mention that the title of this DVD can be somewhat misleading, especially when the Green Goblin only appears in 2 out of these 4 episodes. In fact the 4 episode are linked more by a device known as the ‘Time Dilation Accelerator’ than anything else.
Not only is the time dilator a major factor in these shows, but it also brings about the creation of a new characters knows as ‘The Spot’. It’s after the creation of the Spot in the first episode that the time dilator seems to move from one owner to another. Along the way the focus of each episode shifts to characters like the Kingpin of crime, the Hobgoblin and the Green Goblin. The time dilator is also responsible for a key moment when the Green Goblin discovers Spider-man secret identity and proceeds to torment Peter Parkers family.
In fact, the only episode of the 4 that I could have done without is the one entitled – Guilty. Not only did this episode have nothing to do with the Green Goblin, but the time dilator was nowhere to be seen either. In the scheme of the overall series, I’m sure this would have been nothing more than a filler episode.
As far as the look of the show goes, it pretty much standard fair. It’s basically Saturday morning cartoons with a nice mixture of primitive CG whenever Spider-man swings through the city. While the animation isn’t bad, it’s definitely assembly line stuff. When you have tons and tons of episodes to pump out during a season, this is the sort of animation you’re likely to see. Cookie cutter cartoons. Nothing grand, but it gets the job done.
Being a Spider-man fan, it was interesting to see the animated show since I haven’t seen in years. Not only was it interesting, but it was even a little enjoyable. I’m sure that if I were 12 I’d enjoy it even more.
While this DVD was clearly released to capitalize on the re-emerging popularity of the characters. I’m sure it was only a matter of time until we saw something like this on DVD anyway. Spider-man has always been a well known superhero and simply put, I don’t think his popularity ever really diminished. Truthfully, it’s just smart business to release these toons when the movie hits big. That’s marketing! I mean what other proof do you need. The Animated DVD – Daredevil Vs Spider-man releases on February 11th 2003, a mere 3 days before the Daredevil feature film hits movie theatres throughout North America. Isn’t that convenient?
