Sunday, October 21, 2018

On The Air: Marvel Rising: Initiation (2018)

Yesterday, we talked about the current TV-movie, Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors, airing on Disney Channel & Disney XD. Now comes the prequel miniseries of shorts.

Marvel Rising: Initiation focuses on Ghost Spider, aka Gwen Stacy from an alternate reality (Dove Cameron, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ex-Liv & Maddie, reprising her role from a guest shot on Ultimate Spider-Man vs. The Sinister Six), who has been accused of a crime she didn't commit,  but, rather, she tried to prevent. The victim was her childhood friend.

The six minisodes set up an apparently planned ongoing series down the road. Ghost Spider gets caught in the crosshairs of not only the police, under the direction of her father, Captain George Stacy, but also S.H.I.E.L.D. and the team of Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl. Oh, what a tangled web.......!

Here's the first chapter:



The Americanized anime kicks in during certain scenes with Squirrel Girl (Milana Vayntrub), but this would've been better served in CGI, in this writer's opinion.

To better understand Ghost Spider, formerly known as Spider-Gwen in the books, this miniseries is a loose adaptation of the storyline from the books in which the Peter Parker of Gwen's world was killed, and, yup, she got blamed for it. For obvious reasons, they couldn't use Peter here, figuring some unenlightened souls might get confused.

Rating: B--.

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