Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
E Parker

Review by E Parker

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2018

★★★★½

Watched Dec 17, 2018

9/10

2018 has been such an amazing year for fans of the wall crawler. We’ve been spoiled with Infinity War, a great PlayStation 4 exclusive game, and now this movie, and I couldn’t be happier about this year being the year of the spider. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse only amplifies the amazing Spider-Man content we’ve got this year, and easily becomes the greatest piece of Spider-Man media I have ever witnessed.

Acting as a comeback tour for Sony Pictures Animation from the absolutely horrible output they’ve had recently (The Emoji Movie and The Star specifically), Into the Spider-Verse is a celebration of everything that has made Spider-Man the household name he his, and brings many of the different and super interesting alternate versions of Spider-heroes to the forefront beautifully.

Sony really brought their A-game on the visual direction of this film. Boasting an absolutely beautiful array of stunning colors, comic book presentation, character designs, and the cool melding of different animation styles among an array of different characters, Into the Spider-Verse is certainly one of 2018’s most visually striking films, and an obvious runner-up for the best overall looking animated movie of this year. Along with fantastic art direction, Spider-Verse has all the great trappings of an excellent and original Spider-Man story, amazing voice acting, a brilliant original soundtrack, and so much more that I cannot begin to gush about for fear of going on too long.

The biggest surprise of Spider-Verse was not how the visuals turned out, but with how the stakes of the story felt as if they had actual weight behind them. More often than not, super hero films have this tendency to feel ultra-sanitized and everything is beyond predictable. Before walking into most comic book movies, I’ve already put the entire film together in my head on how it’ll turn out, and often, I’m unfortunately right. Spider-Verse, on the other hand, pulls no punches; the stakes are real in this movie, and some crazy stuff happens where real emotional weight was effectively pulled with every moment of sadness, humor, and high-octane action. This is without a doubt the best written comic book movie post MCU, and I am as surprised as you are when I say that. I also cannot say enough how glad I am to see Miles finally getting his dues. Miles was flushed out fantastically in the newest Spider-Man video game, and the fact that he’s the lead in his own movie is frankly awesome! Yet for as much time as Miles gets on screen, that never detracts from every other Spider-hero getting their own characteristics and feeling at least a little flushed out in the story, even if the three “main Spider-people” get the most screen time out of everyone else.

I won’t go into this too long, but I’d just say that if you’re reading this review before you see the movie, I’d highly advise you to keep an eye out on the backgrounds in this movie. Spider-Verse has excellent Easter eggs for long-time fans of the wall crawler, and other little offshoot gags and references that are a joy to see.

If I was to complain about one thing in particular, I had issues with some of the sound mixing when seeing the film. I was able to hear most of the dialog fine, but several moments had the mixing for the music and sound effects drown out the dialog; this was an issue that didn’t appear all to often, but it was still a problem, unfortunately.

Lastly, for whatever reason, there are a couple sad moments in the movie that are paired up with some hip-hop music that feels rather forced, and if I’m to be honest, detracts a bit from the emotion the scene is trying to display. The emotional moments in this film are still effective, but when real tragedy strikes, I don’t feel an energetic trap song is the best thing to pair with that moment. Funny enough, I had other little things I was going to pick apart in my little complaining paragraph, but everything else about this movie is just so amazing that I completely forgot what I was going to say outside of the sound issues. Spider-Verse is so good, that I almost completely forgot its flaws by just being so damn amazing.

If you need a movie to take your kids to, make it Spider-Verse. If you’re a fan of Spider-Man in any iteration, you owe it to yourself to see this celebration for the character. If you’re bumbling around the theater and don’t know what to see, see Spider-Verse. I cannot stress enough how fantastic this movie is, and how it’s not only one of the bests of the year, but also the best surprise of this year. I will undoubtedly see this again, hopefully in the theater before its theatrical run ends.

Parents Guide:
Violence: 3/10
Language: 1/10
Sexual Content/Nudity: 1/10
Drug/Tobacco/Alcohol Use/References: 0/10
Intense/Horrifying Content: 2/10
Personal Recommended Age: 6+
Original rating: PG for frenetic sequences of animated action violence, thematic elements, and mild language

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