James’s review published on Letterboxd:
Just when you think the superhero genre has run its course, has ran out of creative ground with nowhere left to go, a movie comes along that reinvigorates and reinvents the discourse.
Even the most fatigued moviegoers are in for a surprise here, as the creative minds behind The Lego Movie and the 21 Jump Street franchises bring their fast paced, mind-melting mayhem to the world of comic book animation. I went into this fully aware of just how positively it has been received but nothing really prepares you for how genuinely fun and enjoyable it is. There's so much passion and vigour to behold, whilst the seemingly boundless creativity of its writers takes us on a wild ride of comedy, heart and entertainment that makes all the previous live action adaptations seem comparatively flat and listless.
There's been a shift recently in the genre towards the more lighthearted, self-aware and satirical, something that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse fully embraces with unrestrained daring. It currently holds an average rating of 4.5 here, placing it among Seven Samurai and 12 Angry Men as one of the greatest works in cinema history. Let's not get carried away here - it's great and is a real game changer but much like its Lego cousins can be unrelenting on the senses, at times too wrapped up in manic, sugar rush explosions of action, colour and spectacle, perhaps too ambitious to tell a truly satisfying and coherent story.
That said, the writing of protagonist Miles Morales is so smart and it never forgets to centre the story around his coming of age experiences that just so happen to include alternate dimensions and being bitten by a radioactive spider. It's just one origin story amongst many others in the same film, at a time when the origin story has grown stale, yet somehow it pulls it off and manages to be heartwarming and inspirational amongst the irreverence of its sprawling LSD infused narrative. It's great to see talented filmmakers with genuine enthusiasm for their craft taking risks that ultimately pay off, even winning over jaded cineasts like myself in the process. Touché, Pixar.
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