Static Thoughts - History of Spider-Man TV Shows

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In case you’re unaware, today marks the fourth season finale of Marvel’s ongoing Ultimate Spider-Man animated series.  The show is one of four ongoing Marvel animated productions running through their Disney connection alongside Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Hulk & the Agents of SMASH, and Guardians of the Galaxy.  

The show has become pretty widely popular with kids, introducing a wide supporting cast of Marvel mainstays while also blending its elements with the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe while also featuring great comic shout outs, like the debut of fan favorite Miles Morales as played by Donald Glover.  We’ll see if it persists now that Marvel has an onscreen Spider-Man as well but for now, I figured we could celebrate with a look back at Spider-Man’s long, storied history on television as Marvel’s #1 franchise. 

Static Thoughts - Extreme Ghostbusters

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Edited by Robert Beach 

In 1984, Columbia Pictures produced Ghostbusters, a horror comedy starring a quartet of hilarious comedians and a ton of great genre elements.  The film was initially intended for an older audience, which is why most of the humor in the film is about sex and adult situations with the special FX action sequences packaged around the dialogue heavy gags and comedy.  However, much to Columbia’s surprise, the film proved a massive hit with kids whose parents took one look at the trailer featuring a cartoon ghost logo and claymation monsters getting zapped with lasers and decided to bring their children off to see it.  

Now with a merchandising juggernaut dropped into their laps Columbia needed to maintain interest from their audience while the sequel was in development.  Their solution was The Real Ghostbusters, a top notch ‘80s animated series premiering in 1986 and lasting till 1991.  Then, six years later in 1997; they made a sequel show called Extreme Ghostbusters.

Shaft comedy in the works

New Line Cinema has announced they’re planning to do a reboot of the blaxploitation cult classic Shaft.  The original Shaft became a hit as a sort of Black James Bond action flick in the ‘70s and is probably the best iteration of the blaxploitation genre (aside from possibly Blacula.)  The original Shaft was a strong hit, spawning 2 sequels in Shaft’s Big Score and Shaft in Africa.  Since then Shaft was remade in the ‘90s starring Samuel L. Jackson as a slickly produced action flick with a hard R rating.  This new iteration of the character has attracted the creator of Black-ish Kenya Barris as the writer and the studio has stated they’re aiming for a more comedic tone. 

This decision has been met with a pretty wide array of responses, some have voiced apathy at the prospects of a new Shaft film while others have felt downright outraged over this approach to the classic character.  Me?  I’m firmly entrenched in the angry side of the divide, this strikes me as a thoroughly tone deaf approach to the material with very little to redeem it to say nothing of setting a really bad precedent.