Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Review: A Refreshing Take On MCU Peter Parker

As successful as Tom Holland's tenure as Spider-Man in the MCU has been, the fiercely popular films have still left enough on the table to leave the die-hards with an itch to scratch. When his Peter Parker debuted in "Captain America: Civil War," it was an expedient creative decision to not brute force a third live-action retelling of the wall-crawler's origin. But after three solo outings, two "Avengers" films, and a multiversal pointing meme come to life, fans still clamored for Spider-Man stories that were more grounded and tapped into the humble beginnings the character has operated from for the better half of a century.

Enter "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man," the new Disney+ animated series that began its life as a prequel set before "Civil War" to fill in the blanks of how this Peter Parker came to be. Early on in its development, the parameters seemed too limiting, so the premise was shifted to an alternate fork of the MCU's sacred timeline. The series explores one key change from the Holland Spidey we've grown to love in recent years by asking a bit of a "What If...?" of its own: What if Peter's mentor in his journey to fight crime wasn't the genius/billionaire/playboy/philanthropist Tony Stark, but the potentially unhinged, wavy-haired corporate sociopath Norman Osborn?

Across the first season's 10 episodes, this single wrinkle in young Peter's (this time voiced by Hudson Thames) arc provides plenty of interesting excursions from the established MCU narrative. It's fertile ground for a new mainstream take on the Spider-Man mythos with some big creative swings that get on base, even if they don't make their way out of the park. But it's hard to shake the sense that they still missed the mark in exploring the character's origin in a meaningful, resonant way.

Above all else, there's something genuinely effervescent about this show. Tonally, it's not some drastic departure from the live-action side of the MCU, or shows like "What If...?" and "X-Men '97." However, aesthetically, "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" is decidedly its own creature. Based on reactions to the initial trailers and details, the series' distinct look seems to be somewhat divisive. It has a flatter, less dynamic animation style that some have compared to the Brian Michael Bendis penned "Spider-Man: The Animated Series" that aired on MTV in 2003. But where that show's use of cell shading was pretty period appropriate, this series has more of a nostalgic approach. The show looks and feels like a happy medium between the Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr. art that dominated the character's first decade of publication and more modern work by artists like Marcos Martin and Chris Samnee, the latter of whom actually worked on the show. 

So, what you get are Spidey stories that feel like they take place alongside the ones in recent big screen history, except everyone looks extremely comic book-y. When there are big cameos from the likes of Doctor Strange or Iron Man, they look plucked directly off the page, a far cry from the more "realistic" costume design of the films. Everyone involved seems to have had a blast pulling visual references and characters from the source material, unencumbered in the world of animation by concerns over whether or not something would translate to the screen. That means when Peter is trying out a bunch of different toyetic costumes from Oscorp, they get to pay homage to the Slingers costumes of the '90s that usually would be reserved for obscure DLC in the video game, or more modern looks like the Future Foundation suit from Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four run. 

It also means Peter's supporting cast from the movies has been replaced with several similar archetypes, but each played by a variety of lesser known Marvel characters. His best friend is Nico Minoru (voiced by Grace Song), from The Runaways. His Flash Thompson-esque jock acquaintance is Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd), just one of several characters whose very appearance stokes dread or suspense the moment a casual viewer googles their name and finds out where the show may take them in the future. Because even though the show does play fast and loose and fun with the mythology, it still knows Peter's life should be as rife with potential tragedy as possible, making space for the right balance of soap opera strife in his personal life and future catastrophe in a world still dealing with the Sokovia Accords.

If this approach has a weak point, it's in the vocal performances. Lead Hudson Thames continues his solid work as Peter from "What If...?," making the role more his own than ever before — but most others deliver unmemorable work. (Charlie Cox sounds like he recorded his dialogue on an iPhone from the set of "Daredevil: Born Again.") The two standouts, it must be said, are a delightful little turn from "Hannibal" veteran Hugh Dancy as Doc Ock and Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo as Norman Osborn. The former is having a ball chewing scenery as Octavius, but the latter is so far ahead of everyone else involved, it would be a crime to not let him take a stab at the character in live-action in the future. Yet Norman being this interesting brings up the series' biggest weakness.

There's a reason Peter's origin being left in the background of his MCU appearances bristled fans and vexed purists. When you remove Uncle Ben, the particulars of his death, and the key phrase "with great power comes great responsibility" from Peter's arc, he becomes a more aimless, less resonant, and perfunctory sort of presence. It made sense, due to Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr.'s chemistry, to bond Peter to Tony in the films. In some ways, it felt like it was filling the Uncle Ben void — as in, the mentor figure Peter no longer had. But then the movies made it seem like he never even had that mentor figure to begin with, begging the question, how and why did he become Spider-Man in the first place?

"Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" corrects this by, in its opening moments, directly referencing Ben and his passing, then throughout the show having Peter openly voice recollections of his fallen father figure. We now know for certain we're in a world where Ben existed and now no longer exists, so Norman is presented more explicitly as filling the void. Only the show can wring drama from whether or not having a billionaire giving him gadgets and cool outfits is even a good thing, something the films didn't seem to think necessary. It ends up being a very fascinating exploration of Peter and Norman's dynamic that plays particularly well if you have been reading Zeb Wells' work on the "Amazing Spider-Man" comic for the last few years. 

But at the end of the day, the show still chooses to abstract the origin. It once again deliberately obscures the very simple, very impactful throughline that has made the character endure for over 60 years. Without spoiling the admittedly thrilling revision to exactly how Peter gets his powers in this timeline (it's pretty fun, if a little derivative of the "Spider-verse" films), they have made it so that Peter doesn't get his powers until he's already lost Ben. He appears no have no complicity in his death, robbing the character of his core motivation for putting himself in harm's way repeatedly. 

The show can still be entertaining without this vital, moral tether, and it often is! But nearly every gripe one could have about the storytelling, especially in how Peter's conflicts always feel questionable when held up to scrutiny, can be traced back to this fundamental misread of the character. It forms a spider web of hairline fractures throughout the plot that don't so much as ruin the show as tinge it with a pervasive sense of loss over what might have been.

"Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" lands on Disney+ on January 29.