[6.0/10] This episode was a disappointment. Once the coolness of seeing Spider-Man interact with the 90s animated version of the X-men wore off, I realized the show didn’t put together much of a story to support the crossover, or a reason for them really to be at odds. It amounts to a heap of fan service, with only the vague hint of character motivations in the form of Beast trying to help him.
Then the whole plot with Kingpin and Landon and Hobgoblin and the mutant destroying chemicals gets super-convoluted super-quickly. I appreciate that Mark Hamill has given up the pretense and is going full Joker with Hobgoblin at this point, but I wasn’t particularly compelled by the villain plot, and I’m even less compelled by the cornball misunderstanding that leads to the show teasing a physical confrontation between Spider-Man and Wolverine.
Overall, there’s some cool action bits here and there, and it’s neat to see the X-men of my youth interact with the Spider-Man of my youth (I actually can’t remember whether I saw this episode as a child) but the episode pretty well coasts on the novelty of that and can’t come up with a good story to support it.
EDIT 6/7/2023: Five years later, and I revisited this episode in the midst of my rewatch of X-Men: The Animated Series. I’d probably bump up the score a little bit? You can definitely feel the fanservice practically dripping from the episode, with cheap excuses for Spider-Man to fight the various X-Men, stumble into the Danger Room, and otherwise engage in fisticuffs with the heroic mutants through misunderstandings rather than through a legitimate disagreement.
This was also a reminder of how scattered the scripting was for Spider-Man: The Animated Series on an episode-to-episode basis. There’s good material here -- particularly the scenes with Beast and with Uncle Ben -- but it’s all sort of stitched together rather than a story that feels like it flows naturally from one event to another.
That said, having reimmersed myself in the X-Men series before returning to this episode makes me like it more, if only because it deepens your appreciation for Beast’s feelings about a cure and his willingness to help Spidey. The X-Men show has delved into Beast’s psychology, and how he stays cool on the surface, but is haunted by how his mutation alienates him from others.
Him feeling a spiritual connection to Spider-Man who’s trying to avoid the same thing, and eventually finding that his research to avoid turning into a furry blue creature may have contributed to an attempt at mutant genocide, gives this one some real ballast, even if the usual Spider-Man “I’ll give up/No I won’t!” routine runs thin in hindsight. Plus, I appreciate the plausible connection between the two shows that Hank McCoy and Professor Landon used to do research together.
Oh, and also the designs for the X-Men are strikingly different on Spider-Man’s show. It didn’t hit me as much the first time around, but the studio that does this one really messed around with their color scheme and look. Not a big deal, but kind of jarring when watching it back-to-back with the X-Men series.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-02-12T23:39:00Z— updated 2023-06-07T21:53:34Z
[6.0/10] This episode was a disappointment. Once the coolness of seeing Spider-Man interact with the 90s animated version of the X-men wore off, I realized the show didn’t put together much of a story to support the crossover, or a reason for them really to be at odds. It amounts to a heap of fan service, with only the vague hint of character motivations in the form of Beast trying to help him.
Then the whole plot with Kingpin and Landon and Hobgoblin and the mutant destroying chemicals gets super-convoluted super-quickly. I appreciate that Mark Hamill has given up the pretense and is going full Joker with Hobgoblin at this point, but I wasn’t particularly compelled by the villain plot, and I’m even less compelled by the cornball misunderstanding that leads to the show teasing a physical confrontation between Spider-Man and Wolverine.
Overall, there’s some cool action bits here and there, and it’s neat to see the X-men of my youth interact with the Spider-Man of my youth (I actually can’t remember whether I saw this episode as a child) but the episode pretty well coasts on the novelty of that and can’t come up with a good story to support it.
EDIT 6/7/2023: Five years later, and I revisited this episode in the midst of my rewatch of X-Men: The Animated Series. I’d probably bump up the score a little bit? You can definitely feel the fanservice practically dripping from the episode, with cheap excuses for Spider-Man to fight the various X-Men, stumble into the Danger Room, and otherwise engage in fisticuffs with the heroic mutants through misunderstandings rather than through a legitimate disagreement.
This was also a reminder of how scattered the scripting was for Spider-Man: The Animated Series on an episode-to-episode basis. There’s good material here -- particularly the scenes with Beast and with Uncle Ben -- but it’s all sort of stitched together rather than a story that feels like it flows naturally from one event to another.
That said, having reimmersed myself in the X-Men series before returning to this episode makes me like it more, if only because it deepens your appreciation for Beast’s feelings about a cure and his willingness to help Spidey. The X-Men show has delved into Beast’s psychology, and how he stays cool on the surface, but is haunted by how his mutation alienates him from others.
Him feeling a spiritual connection to Spider-Man who’s trying to avoid the same thing, and eventually finding that his research to avoid turning into a furry blue creature may have contributed to an attempt at mutant genocide, gives this one some real ballast, even if the usual Spider-Man “I’ll give up/No I won’t!” routine runs thin in hindsight. Plus, I appreciate the plausible connection between the two shows that Hank McCoy and Professor Landon used to do research together.
Oh, and also the designs for the X-Men are strikingly different on Spider-Man’s show. It didn’t hit me as much the first time around, but the studio that does this one really messed around with their color scheme and look. Not a big deal, but kind of jarring when watching it back-to-back with the X-Men series.