Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Nine: Spidey Goes Hollywood

Spidey Goes Hollywood

First Aired: November 7th, 1981

Synopsis: Hollywood director Sam Blockbuster is trying to make a Spider-Man movie, but is having terrible luck in making it. Mysterio reveals that he's behind the "bad luck", and threatens Blockbuster to get the real Spider-Man for the film. He wants to defeat Spider-Man on camera and then use the footage to make millions. When Spider-Man hears about Blockbuster's request, he's reluctant to sign up until he finds out that Aunt May is trying to pawn her jewellery to pay for her house. He goes to Hollywood with Iceman and Firestar via bus because Blockbuster is cheap. Along the way, they pick up Bruce Banner of all people, and Spider-Man says he'll get Bruce a job on the movie set. Once they're in Hollywood, Mysterio starts trying to defeat Spider-Man using the mechanical props of the film, but Spider-Man is saved by Firestar. Mysterio is enraged, but upon overhearing that Iceman and Firestar want to meet certain celebrities, creates robot duplicates of them to take care of the other heroes.

Iceman and Firestar are led away by the robot celebrities, who trap both heroes and are able to temporarily defeat them. While Spider-Man deals with more of Mysterio's attacks, Bruce Banner, who by now has worked out that something is up, tries to talk to him, but is forbidden from doing so. The stress turns him into the Hulk, and in his rampage he inadvertently saves Firestar who then saves Iceman. All of the heroes unite as the Hulk destroys a Hulk robot Mysterio made, and Iceman and Firestar reveal that Mysterio's behind it all, since he revealed himself when they were defeated. Spider-Man defeats Mysterio, and arrests Sam Blockbuster even though he was coerced into the plot. In the aftermath, the real celebrities that Iceman and Firestar admire show up, and want to hang out with the heroes.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• In the comics, Spider-Man was led to Hollywood with the promise of a movie he'd be acting in way back in Amazing Spider-Man #14, the first appearance of the Green Goblin (and which also had a Hulk appearance). It shouldn't be confused with Amazing Spider-Man Annual #4, which had Spider-Man go to Hollywood again with the promise of acting in a film, and which featured Mysterio as one of the villains.
• Throughout the episode, Mysterio's helmet is shown as being dark-tinted to the point of being black. I think it's not a bad idea, but the colour clashes badly with the rest of his outfit.
• What the heck is the movie Spider-Man's acting in about? We see a scene of him rescuing someone from a fire, a scene of him rescuing a damsel in distress from a ripoff of King Kong's hand, a scene with a mechanical shark, a scene with him fighting aliens in space, and a scene with him fighting the Hulk. That's one hell of a mashup of genres.
• Firestar trusts the robot celebrity she's with until he ends up leading her into a trap, which is understandable. Iceman, by comparison, almost immediately goes, "Hey! You're not reacting to my cold; that justifies me freezing you!" and tries coating her in ice right away. Good thing for him that she was a robot and not, you know, a human, because that's one hell of an overreaction to such a small thing.

Review: Mysterio's doing very little in the way of illusions and trickery, Spider-Man's acting out inane scenes in a movie that doesn't really make a lot of sense, and Iceman and Firestar care more about meeting celebrities in Hollywood than protecting their friend, but would you believe that in spite of all of this, this episode kind of works for me? Mysterio's scheme is, of course, insane, but I can't say that I've got issues with Spider-Man being threatened from time to time. It helps that it almost feels like a background detail after a while, with there being more focus on the other characters. We've got a rotating cast of Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar, Bruce Banner, and Sam Blockbuster, so there's plenty of plot to go around.

Probably the best part of the whole episode is seeing Bruce Banner get suspicious as the plot goes on, knowing that he'll end up Hulking out before the end, which builds anticipation for how he'll end up doing so and what impact it'll have on the plot. While he ultimately didn't have that much to do - his appearance here was probably more for promotional reasons than plot ones - it was still enjoyable to see, as was him utterly curbstomping the Hulk robot Mysterio uses in the climax.

So, yeah. It's definitely got its flaws, and I've definitely seen better episodes. I'd like to see a Mysterio who's a bit more actively involved in fighting Spider-Man, and ideally we won't have to have the shenanigans with Spider-Man getting tricked into acting in a movie next time that happens. But this could have been a lot worse than it was, and I can't say I had a bad time watching it.