Watched on Blu-Ray

Just a few years ago, Spider-Man was something like the black sheep of Marvel movies. While the MCU set one record after another and the X-Men and their offshoots also found a lot of fans, the future of one of the greatest heroes looked quite gloomy. Because it was his comic adaptations of all things that made the audience run away, while the budgets increased explosively.

The lowest point was "The Amazing Spider-Man 2", which barely made a profit anymore, some rumoured that the movie rights would go back to Marvel in the foreseeable future. But it came differently.

"Spider-Man: Homecoming", created with the MCU, was a considerable leap forward for critics and moviegoers alike, and the spiderless Venom, mocked in advance, became one of the biggest surprise hits last year.

And then this. "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (in the German version "Spider-Man: A New Universe"), produced by Sony Pictures Animation, the company's in-house animation division, is not only one of the best films of the often ridiculed studio. It's also one of last year's best animated films, and without any major difficulty it ranks among the top Marvel films of 2018. And that's not a matter of course in a year that produced such events as "Black Panther" and "Avengers: Infinity War".

Like hardly any other film, this reinterpretation embraces its comic legacy and at the same time manages to deal with it in a self-ironic way while still taking the stories and fans seriously. You shouldn't reveal too much about the content in advance, because the film also lives a little from the fact that the story takes an unusual direction for superheroes. Where other adaptations usually sweep continuity problems under the carpet or make fun of them à la Deadpool in the face of numerous models and competing products, "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" is a single and unique declaration of love to the medium comic, which like no other writes "everything is possible" on its banners. And those who have seen the film will also - assuming a little childishness in their hearts - have the feeling that nothing is impossible.

This is also one of the big themes of the film: Anyone can be a hero. This fits wonderfully to the somewhat lower target group of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", which finds both identification figures and role models here. That can be moving in one moment, because heroism always means loss. It can be incredibly funny when various characters have yet to find each other, far away from what a hero has to look like. And sometimes the movie is just gaga: The story designed and partly written by Phil Lord throws everything together that works. Also throws together what doesn't work, or at least shouldn't work. And yet it never becomes pure piecework.

Fortunately, the look is not inferior to that of a general store. On the contrary: Disney's and Pixar's works may dominate the technical bar as much as they do, but what a firework of ideas explodes in front of the audience's eyes is something you have to see. Just as "Spider-Man:Into the Spider-Verse" takes up many elements from the history of the spider hero, so also the most different styles come together. Even the "regular" cel-shading look is a lot of fun. When comic elements and other techniques expand the action later on, you can feel like a little child again even as an adult, whether because of the many references or because we actually have the feeling of entering a new universe here. And that's what you have to do with a series that includes countless films and series.

To read my review right after my cinema visit, click here: boxd.it/AdzEv