Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge

The Dragon's Challenge cuts back on the wallcrawling, webswinging action of our hero and concentrates on Japanese WWII-inspired political intrigue. How anti-exciting. Don't hire this for your kids because they'll be bored immedietly. Drama and spectacle is few and far between.

It's a boring story poorly told, which shifts to Japan half way through to allow for 20 minutes of sight-seeing (!) obviously funded by the Japanese tourist board.

Ultimately, Spidey simply captures the bad guys and rescues the hostage, who are at the top of a skyscraper, naturally. The political intrigue angle is nicely handled but for a superhero movie, we want supervillains! Evil schemes! Ultimately, the Japanese stuff in the plot is an excuse for kung fu antics that were so much in fashion at the time. A bunch of easily defeated martial artists are no substitute for a good supervillain though, especially ones who can't get within spitting distance of Spidey before he webs them up.

The special affects are fine, and the stunt work is excellent. The wallcrawling sequence with Spidey climbing a huge Japanese skyscraper is the best in the entire series; not only is it an enormous building, but when Spidey gets near the top he turns 90 degrees to check his Spider Tracer device, allowing for some vertigo-inducing P.O.V shots from a stuntman hanging upside down hundreds of feet in the air. Truly impressive stuff.

Unfortunetly, considering so much kung fu is promised, Dragon's Challenge lacks action - there is only one proper fight scene - and just a lot of running around. The saving grace, really, is the awesome music, some of the funkiest jazz known to man. Spider-Man Strikes Back (1978) and Spider-Man (1977) are far better, so catch them instead.