Okay, we're now officially on our second rebooting of a Sony produced Spider-man universe, which makes our third rebooting overall, and if you frequenters read my Spider-man Homecoming review, you might be aware that I am, personally, all Spider-manned out. The character and his story has been retread over and over and over again, and I'm kinda getting sick of the webslinger. Peter Parker just doesn't really...
Wait... Miles Morales. He's not the main series Spider-man... Hmm. All right, what are the odds that a movie deliberately trying not to be like previous Spider-man movies will restore my faith in Sony's attempts to milk the character for all the money they possibly can? I mean, those odds still aren't great...
Which doesn't matter, I suppose, considering Sony played them anyway and produced one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen. I'm serious about that. This film plays in the space normally reserved for the top tier MCU movies and The Incredibles. You, just, you have to see this in theaters. It's amazing.
The biggest "wow" about Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse is obviously the visuals. If you've seen any trailers, you'll know this is a pretty striking movie to look at. They combined just about every animation style into something so utterly unique every frame stands out. It honestly does look like a comic book brought to life, an aspect helped by the occasional use of actual on-screen narration boxes and multi-dot coloring used in printing gold and silver age comics. You may worry, based on that description, that this means this movie will really only appeal to fans of comics, and not more main-stream audiences at large. After about 30 minutes of watching it, though, I was convinced that this is the movie that makes comics appealing to main-stream audiences, as opposed to appealing only to a subset of them.
That's aided by the way it's written, which is very comic-booky and very fourth-wall-breaky in that particular comic book way (an aspect used extensively in the Deadpool films, for those that are wondering). The action, characterization, and plot development progresses in a very "superhero comic" way, but it's one of the best instances of that style out there. The characters are relatable. The culture on display is accessible but non-stereotypical, giving us a look at characters that aren't often represented in such a high-profile way on the big screen. It's all done super duper well, and the end result is a well written superhero movie, probably the best "comic book" movie ever made, and overall just a high quality film.
And yes, it's got wide representation, including an analogue for people who just haven't seen life going their way. It's got great humor and lots of interesting but minor subversions. It's got an actually fairly relatable villain (one of them, anyway), and side-characters in the hero's life that feel real, even if they're only on the screen for a few minutes. It's an origin story (technically like six of them, but I'm not giving you details on that), it sets up a lot of room for sequels, but it feels like an utterly unique labor of love that resulted in a work of narrative and visual art.
Simple fact is I want to see more of this. I actually want sequels to this movie, which outside of most of the MCU and some of the X-Men franchise, is not something I can say about too many movies involving superheroes, let alone one that leans so heavily on inspiration from its comic ancestors *cough*The Hulk*cough*. I'm actually probably gonna buy this one, and I highly recommend it. Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse was a beautiful way to distract myself from the fact that I still have to wait three months to see Captain Marvel.
Aww, crap, just reminded myself again... Welp, back to the theater I guess.
Wait... Miles Morales. He's not the main series Spider-man... Hmm. All right, what are the odds that a movie deliberately trying not to be like previous Spider-man movies will restore my faith in Sony's attempts to milk the character for all the money they possibly can? I mean, those odds still aren't great...
Which doesn't matter, I suppose, considering Sony played them anyway and produced one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen. I'm serious about that. This film plays in the space normally reserved for the top tier MCU movies and The Incredibles. You, just, you have to see this in theaters. It's amazing.
The biggest "wow" about Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse is obviously the visuals. If you've seen any trailers, you'll know this is a pretty striking movie to look at. They combined just about every animation style into something so utterly unique every frame stands out. It honestly does look like a comic book brought to life, an aspect helped by the occasional use of actual on-screen narration boxes and multi-dot coloring used in printing gold and silver age comics. You may worry, based on that description, that this means this movie will really only appeal to fans of comics, and not more main-stream audiences at large. After about 30 minutes of watching it, though, I was convinced that this is the movie that makes comics appealing to main-stream audiences, as opposed to appealing only to a subset of them.
That's aided by the way it's written, which is very comic-booky and very fourth-wall-breaky in that particular comic book way (an aspect used extensively in the Deadpool films, for those that are wondering). The action, characterization, and plot development progresses in a very "superhero comic" way, but it's one of the best instances of that style out there. The characters are relatable. The culture on display is accessible but non-stereotypical, giving us a look at characters that aren't often represented in such a high-profile way on the big screen. It's all done super duper well, and the end result is a well written superhero movie, probably the best "comic book" movie ever made, and overall just a high quality film.
And yes, it's got wide representation, including an analogue for people who just haven't seen life going their way. It's got great humor and lots of interesting but minor subversions. It's got an actually fairly relatable villain (one of them, anyway), and side-characters in the hero's life that feel real, even if they're only on the screen for a few minutes. It's an origin story (technically like six of them, but I'm not giving you details on that), it sets up a lot of room for sequels, but it feels like an utterly unique labor of love that resulted in a work of narrative and visual art.
Simple fact is I want to see more of this. I actually want sequels to this movie, which outside of most of the MCU and some of the X-Men franchise, is not something I can say about too many movies involving superheroes, let alone one that leans so heavily on inspiration from its comic ancestors *cough*The Hulk*cough*. I'm actually probably gonna buy this one, and I highly recommend it. Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse was a beautiful way to distract myself from the fact that I still have to wait three months to see Captain Marvel.
Aww, crap, just reminded myself again... Welp, back to the theater I guess.
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