Spider-Man: "The Alien Costume" Recut

I hate when people just give all 10's and say "not much to say, great job!" but here I am. This is exactly what PE's detailed description makes it sound like. It's a perfectly executed faithful adaptation of the much-loved Spider-Man show from the '90s. Watching this, you'd never know it originally had commercials in it or was three separate episodes. Both the audio and video cuts are flawless. I only detected one instance where a line was difficult to hear due to the music (2nd Spidey/Rhino fight) but that might have been in the original audio. The story flows very well, and while a few of the cut lines on the cutlist seemed unnecessary to me, I also didn't miss them. So: probably a good call.

This thing has a frantic pace where they jam a ton of story in to a short time. That was just the style of the original cartoon, and watching this really brought me back. Despite being made for kids, this is far more enjoyable than the theatrical version of Spider-Man 3. Now if only PE can make a cut of the Green Goblin's episodes, we could throw that on back to back with this for a total SM3 replacement! (Please, please.)

Man I loved this show as a kid and The Venom Saga was always the best storyline. So to see it edited together so seamlessly with just minor edits made it truly awesome. It still has the same charm and engaging story as before, just more focused and made to feel like a direct-to-video movie. Also, just watching it makes you go 'huh, THIS is what Spider-Man 3 (with Tobey Maguire) SHOULD HAVE BEEN!'. Well, for me it now is! In my collection my 2000s Spider-Man movie series goes: Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: The Alien Costume Recut. Well done, Problem Eliminator!

This is a great fanedit. It takes out a lot of the overly-hammy parts of the original episodes ("I'LL CHASE YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!!!") and does the TV-to-Movie transition very well.

Quality:

SD source. Looks more or less as good as my DVD. I actually watched the Carnage episodes on Disney Plus afterwards and it looked a lot worse... I'm assuming maybe they did a quick upscale or something? Really doesn't look good. Spider-man's suit is a blur of red that smothers the black web-lines.

Anyway... I digress. The quality here is good considering the source. I didn't see any of the random coloured rectangles that another reviewer mentioned.


Video editing:

Nothing stood out as off to me beyond some jittery animation and quick cuts, but I think that's just the nature of the way the series is animated and edited. I checked the cut-list and nothing indicated to me that what I saw was as a result of the cuts.


Audio editing:

Didn't notice any transitions. Nice work.


Narrative:

As mentioned above, the series has a "rushed" feel to it generally, so it's not really something that's fair to criticise. I do think that it gets a bit tiring when the episode is an hour long rather than 20 minutes, but that's the nature of the beast.

There were, however, two moments that stood out to me as particularly quick and they were moments that were cut by the editor. One was the meeting of the buyers with the Kingpin, and the other was Jameson and Spidey's meet-up prior to rescuing Jameson's son. It's been too long since I've seen the original to know whether the difference is negligible or not, I just know that it felt over-quick and that the cut-list shows changes were made there. These are pretty minor qualms though and these moments can still be argued to be in line with the way the series generally presents its narrative.

No narrative issues were observably introduced. A couple of observations below, neither of which affect the rating:

- The attempt to cut Brock's hatred for spider-man seems superfluous. It's apparent that he's out for revenge, and other moments allude to that. I don't think the line that was removed achieved what was intended.
- I kinda find it funny that select quips were cut, presumably in reducing silliness or cheese. Boy, this show is drenched in cheese, silly lines and terrible puns - this edit included, despite trims. It's kinda just the nature of the show, so trimming some and not others again seems superfuous.


Enjoyment:

This was a very enjoyable nostalgia trip. I used to watch this on the telly a lot back in the day and I would often rewatch the venom-related episodes on my DVD. I always favoured those episodes since it leans into more space, aliens and science fiction, which is very much my bag.

Subjectively, I was sad to see the opening sequence in space go, but I understand the reasoning for it being cut. I would also have liked to have seen the Carnage episodes incorporated, which I think is possible, though would require quite a bit more narrative tweaking.

All in all: Well put together with plenty of tweaks and trims that I didn't pick up on and I can only assume improved things in most cases. Having watched other episodes of the show recently, I can confirm that there are some pretty laughable and dodgy moments with the animation, and I hardly noticed that kind of thing here. Great job!

I grew up watching the Spider-Man TAS show as a kid. I owned the VHS tape to all 3 episodes and would watch them very often. To see an edit such as this was very interesting to watch and prove that it could have been a straight to video movie! This edit proves that it could have easily been that.

Video: The quality of the video is as best as to the quality that has been released, so no Blu-Ray quality here, although I fully knew what I was into. The nostalgia in me thought it was fine, but it may seem low quality to some due to the dvd quality of the video from a 90s tv show. There are rumors that Spider-Man TAS may come out on Blu-Ray one day, where this edit would definitely be the better for it. Seeing this in full on Blu-Ray remastered quality would be spectacular!

Audio: Once again, the audio is as best as the quality that has been released yet. My feelings for this are the same for video, where a remastered version could one day benefit this great forgotten show hence better this edit!

Editing: I honestly didn't notice any changes since I was enjoying watching this edit too much. There were only a couple places where I noticed since there were some cringy dumb moments here and there in the original where I found that they had disappeared in this edit. Combining the episodes was seamless. Well done!

Narrative: No great immense changes here, but keeping it relatively the same with cuts here and there is truly enjoyable. Well done!

Enjoyment: Overall, this was a great edit where Spider-Man fans who remember watching the cartoon should give this a shot as it portrays the symbiote storyline as it was meant to be!