Full disclosure, I wasn’t crazy about seeing this. Even if a halfhearted sense of FOMO has been trumping any onset of superhero fatigue for me these past few years, there are only so many iterations and reboots of Spider-Man you can go through before the spiel gets tiresome. Which makes it all the more ironic that this visionary plunge into the Spider-Verse features not just one, but a half dozen of them. And if the reception hadn’t been so universally ecstatic, there is a good chance I wouldn’t have ended up watching it. However, as things stand, the now Oscar nominated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” revealed itself to be a magnet for a much broader audience than merely ardent comic book nerds. It’s heartening that word of mouth can still make or break a film sometimes.

I did a bit of research after the fact on the unique animation and the laborious process employed to fuse a number of styles into a single package. It’s undeniably impressive on paper. But I just couldn’t get into it. The whirlwind of colors results in an overpoweringly busy canvas that is challenging to fully absorb, especially during the bombastic final boss fight. I saw it in 2D and the often-blurry backgrounds and the distracting, purple color tint around the characters made me suspect they were playing a 3D version by mistake. I asked around, and the consensus was that this was partly a deliberate creative choice and quite possibly the result of a poorly calibrated projector. I might see it again with that in mind, because my musings about whether putting on a pair of 3D glasses would improve my experience kept taking me out of what was going on.

Having said that, both the insane premise and the sharp writing are terrific and I found myself enjoying the film in spite of my misgivings about its look. It's frequently laugh out loud funny and the various incarnations of Spider-Man from different universes assembling to take down supervillain Kingpin makes for a treasure trove of creative hilarity. I’d give a lot to see a live-action or animated spin-off all about Nicolas Cage’s noir Peter Parker taking down criminals in rainy 1930s New York, while morosely contemplating the futility of life (“Sometimes I let matches burn down to my fingertips just to feel something, anything”). The emotional core of Miles’s strained relationship with his overprotective father, a police officer, and his uncle, a cool dude voiced by Mahershala Ali who provides his admiring nephew with a creative outlet for his graffiti artworks, is deeply moving. And I loved the unshaven, exhausted version of Peter Parker who screwed up his marriage to Mary Jane in his universe and has trouble squeezing into his suit thanks to a rather pronounced pizza belly.

There are several moments when the film gets to exhibit just how cool it actually is. When Miles leaps off a building, finally confident enough to assume the mantle of Spider-Man that has been left vacant in his town, it leads into one of the most badass scenes in any film released in 2018 (“What’s Up Danger” is one hell of a pump up jam). Every superhero deserves that one sequence where they realize how to take control of their powers, their confusion and fear drops away and all that is left is someone totally euphoric to be swinging from building to building a few hundred feet in the air. This film captures that exhilaration, the potent spirit of adventure synonymous with a character like Spider-Man. Just like in his Marvel incarnation played by Tom Holland, he works best as an impulsive kid, with parental troubles at home, insecurities about fitting in at school and struggling with the challenges of puberty just as much as the apocalyptic threat of some lunatic opening up a corridor to another dimension.

But perhaps most critically, this and “Black Panther” are the clearest signs that suggest the era of homogeneity in superhero films is approaching its end. Miles Morales is a terrific flag-bearer for a new generation of comic book adaptations that celebrate different cultures and revolutionary ideas rather than recycle the same boilerplate several times a year. In spite of my qualms with the style, I am looking forward to giving this another watch soon.