‘THE ORIGIN OF SPIDER-MAN’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

This is most peculiar. Season 2 of the 1960s ‘Spider-Man’ TV series begins with the episode ‘The Origin of Spider-Man’. That means that all the episodes that were in Season 1 take place after Season 2, I think. If you want to see these in chronological order, you’d have to watch Season 2 first.

But yeah, we have the beginnings of Spider-Man in this opening episode of Season 2. I’ve seen how the origins of Spider-Man came about in the 1990s TV series with the episode ‘Make a Wish’. I’ve also seen it in the first ‘Spider-Man’ movie with Tobey Maguire as well as ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’.

I’ve also read the origins of Spider-Man in ‘Amazing Fantasy’ #15 where Spidey made his debut in the comics. Clearly, from watching this episode, the origins of Spider-Man are faithfully adapted from Peter being bitten by the spider to going out to catch the criminal that had killed his Uncle Ben.

Yet somehow, the origin story gets presented in a very lacklustre manner. For one thing, the animation style is different in Season 2 compared to Season 1. There are a lot of murky colours featured in the episode and the pacing isn’t all that good with lots of shots of Spidey swinging about.

There’s also not enough of Uncle Ben and Aunt May to be featured in the episode. There isn’t even a scene where Peter interacts with Uncle Ben and Aunt May. I think having a scene where Peter talks to Uncle Ben and Aunt May would’ve helped young audiences to understand the relationship in this.

I also feel the scene where Peter gets bitten by the radioactive spider wasn’t well-executed enough. It takes too long for the spider to get affected by the radioactive beam and we don’t even see the spider falling onto Peter’s hand in order to get bitten by it. This came across as disappointing for me.

There also aren’t any scenes where Peter as Spider-Man gets to show off his powers to a TV audience when he went for the audition. In fact, he gets accepted to go on TV after letting the criminal that would kill his Uncle Ben go. There isn’t a wrestling scene for Spider-Man either in this. 😦

At least, Spider-Man does realise the mistake he made in letting the criminal go before his Uncle Ben got killed and at least he said those famous words “With great power comes great responsibility”. So whilst this wasn’t the greatest adaptation to feature ‘The Origins of Spider-Man’, it’s decent enough.

‘The Origins of Spider-Man’ rating – 7/10