Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 1 Episode 2 and 2 Review
We got a new Spider-Man show that hit Disney+ yesterday. This time it’s an animated movie, titled Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. When it was originally announced, it was hinted that this was going to be the origin story for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man before Captain America: Civil War. As we got more information, it was clear this was its own thing. It being an animated Spider-Man show, wasn’t something that really caught my attention. But I was curious about it, was it any good? Did the first two episodes win me over? Let’s talk about it!
The Review
- Like I said, I didn’t go into this show very excited. I was curious, but I wouldn’t say excited. The early reviews for the show dropped over the weekend and they were all very positive. My curiosity for this show increased a little bit, but still was very curious. For me, I thought these first two episodes were fine. It’s this interesting experience, because it’s showing MCU events in a different reality. They recreate Peter Parker’s entrance in Captain America: Civil War where instead of Aunt May talking to Tony Stark, she’s talking to Norman Osborn. You get these several moments in these episodes that are recreations for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies. I thought that was distracting where it felt like fan service for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. It takes you out of the scene when you’re paying attention to the callbacks to the main line MCU. Beyond that, they tried to match the voice actors with their MCU counterparts. The actor for Peter Parker sounds a lot like Tom Holland, but not quite. Aunt May sounds like Marisa Tomei, but not quite. Colman Domingo is playing Norman Osborn, he doesn’t sound like Willem Dafoe. But they both have that deep sinister voice that it’s kind of close to Dafoe, with not really. It’s just so weird to me that they’re making this show, that’s not canon to the MCU showing what Holland’s Spider-Man was up to before Civil War. You have the season finale of this show end with Peter’s entrance in Civil War. You do something like that, maybe you have Tom Holland voice the character. Marisa Tomei is there as well. But they decided to go with this alternate reality version of Holland’s Spider-Man.
- The show is different enough from Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. They name drop Tony Stark, but Stark isn’t his mentor figure. Norman Osborn seems to be taking that mentor figure. MJ and Ned aren’t in the show, they’re replaced by new friends. It’s so distracting when it’s enough like Holland’s Spider-Man universe while being different enough. So far, the new stuff isn’t as interesting. Granted, we’re only two episodes in. Episode two focuses more on making this stand out. Hopefully by the end of episode 10, they find more ways to differ from Holland’s Spider-Man and stand on its own.
- I will, one thing that does make this feel unique is it feels like classic Spider-Man. One of the big question marks surrounding Holland’s Spider-Man is why they haven't given him a classic traditional Spider-Man movie. With Homecoming I get why they differed from Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. But with its sequels, they took him to Europe and dealt with the multiverse. Meanwhile, he was battling Thanos in space. The things that make Spider-Man the friendly neighborhood superhero are gone in Holland’s Spider-Man movie. These episodes focus a lot more on that, where he is swinging around the neighborhood rescuing people and animals. This show is delivering something that was lacking in the MCU previously. In episode two, you get this sequence where he’s fighting this fire guy in a pet store. While he’s fighting the villain, he's trying to rescue the pets. That’s just a very Spider-Man thing to do. We know that Doctor Strange is in the show, it’s confirmed that Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are in the movie. I hope when the show adds in these new characters, they balance it with the classic vibe of Spider-Man that this show is dealing with then this could be something cool. But right now, I don’t feel like the magic is there yet. I’ll watch the rest of the season, but I’m not fully hooked. I was hoping by the end of episode two, I would be.
- One final thing I wanted to talk about here is the animation. This was a bit of criticism and concern that a lot of people had when the trailers premiered. I’m not fully sold on the animation style yet. It’s very comic booky and it’s an animation style that I haven’t seen before. But if we’re doing comic book animated projects for Spider-Man, my mind goes to the Spiderverse movies. Once again, even in the animation style I’m drawing comparisons to other Spider-Man movies.
- I shouldn’t be watching this show and thinking that that's frustrating. I was hoping the first two episodes would win me over, they didn’t. I know some people are really digging this show. I’ve seen people on YouTube praising it. I’m not there yet, by the end of the season I hope to be won over.
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