MovieChat Forums > Spider-Man (1994) Discussion > Brilliant show hampered by bad animation...

Brilliant show hampered by bad animation and toning down.


I'm not saying the animation kills the show, but it is distracting. I'm watching the aeries through for the first time just imagining how incredible this series could be with current 2D animation like Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, or even the animation the DCAU had. Even for the '90s, this looks pretty crappy.

Also, I'm not saying it should have been "hardcore" or anything, but it would have been nice if they were allowed a little more freedom, as Warner Bros. seems to give the DCAU. Still, not as big an issue as the animation.

Oh my goodness, he's like the Abed of racism.

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tbh, the first series had good animation, it got progressively worse as the seasons go on, as for the violence and crappy dialogue, I agree.

I taught you everything you know, but not everything I know.

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Re-watching some of the `90s Marvel shows right now and, IMO, I think it looks better/more polished than Iron Man and X-Men (though I love the designs of X-Men and find most episodes to look pretty good, despite the characters not moving as fluidly as on Spider-Man).

The only mis-step on Spider-Man is the combo of 2D onto CGI environments (I thought it looked poor even back in the `90s), but it's fine, they were trying something new at the time. Dunno if they used the same overseas animation houses (in Korea, most likely?), but sometimes Gargoyles and Spider-Man's character designs looked a lot alike ('specially around the eyes, in the look of the environments--or maybe it's just 'cause they both predominantly take place in New York--and in the coloration/shinyness of it all).

The series is far better than I remembered it, writing-wise. Even if a bit juvenile at times, most of Peter's one-liners still work, the characters sometimes converse like real people would, and the voice acting is quality. I didn't know that Peter's voice actor was also Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid and I was happy to find out that Ed Asner played J. Jonah Jameson (Asner did the main character in Up and was Hudson on Gargoyles, among a ridiculous amount of other roles in animation and live-action). By the time I'm done, maybe it'll give X-Men a run for its money, dunno.

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Yeah, I know some people prefer the character designs to be closer to the comic look, but due to that the show suffered from poor animation and lacking action sequences. Spider-man is supposed to be one of the most acrobatic superheroes, but in this show he moved just as fluidly as a 65 year old wrestler. X-men TAS also suffered from stuff like this.

People tend to give more recent cartoons flak because the characters aren't drawn like they were back then and I don't think they understand that it's easier to animate the characters that way and provides much more slick sequences. This is why Bruce Timm and his team went with the stylized look for Batman TNBA and the DCAU.






Sick of threads "Megan Fox should play this!"

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There was also a huge mistake in the editing in one of the episodes that apparently John Semper was pretty livid about. In the last episode of the Six Forgotten Warriors saga when SHIELD is being attacked you can see Chameleon holding a gun on Spider-man and Captain America. However after another scene you can see Spidey and Cap arriving and being ambushed by Chameleon and Red Skull. These scenes were actually supposed to be in reverse order and have yet to be fixed.





Sick of threads "Megan Fox should play this!"

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