‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ Movie Review

Josh’s Movie Review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:

While Spider-Man films have had their ups and downs, from the amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, to the terrible Spider-Man 3, followed up by the divisive Amazing Spider-Man, which was then followed up by the mostly well received Spider-Man: Homecoming, I had high hopes for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I’ll be honest, I know very little about Miles Morales, not knowing much more than he was as young kid who also happened to be bitten by a radioactive spider, and that he was not the typical white male superhero that much of the comic book world has in common.

After seeing the first 35 minutes of the film at New York Comic Con, I was pretty excited for this movie. I typically don’t enjoy animation outside of Disney movies, but this one seemed to have personality to it, and one that I could get behind. But being the tumultuous franchise it is, I was nervous Spider-Man could go awry in this film, especially with Sony handling it.

Before I get to my thoughts, a little bit about the movie: The film revolves round Miles Morales, who is a young kid who winds up going to a charter school. Through a turn of events he winds up getting bit by a radioactive spider, gaining his own set of abilities. Peter Parker is also in the movie though, in more ways than one. Through a series of events, various parallel universes collide with Mile Morales’ world, and various Spider-Man characters would wind up in Miles’ universe. The rest of the plot of the movie has Miles trying to learn his abilities and try to save the world from the colliding universes.

I have to say, this movie exceeded my expectations. The animation was great. It had a very unique feel to it, with an ambiance that was very engaging. It is hard to explain, but the animation has its own personality to it.

Character development was great as well. Miles is a very relatable character. A high school student trying to figure out his way through the world, much like Peter Parker, but with a more relevant feeling to it. We also get to see an alternative version of Peter Parker, which is less admirable than the one most of us know and love, and that is actually an interesting side to see—how Spider-Man’s life could go wrong. The voice acting was very well done as well, although it can be jarring for me, when I recognize a voice in an animated movie. I generally would rather not know who is voicing the character so I don’t have those moments of “I know who that voice is…” in my head, which takes me out of the movie.

The story itself is a bit cheesy, and a typical over-the-top comic book story, where the world will end due some crazy turn of events, but that isn’t why the movie is great. It is about the personality of (most of) the characters, and how the art style makes them interesting as well. The film tried to make the villain more relatable by a tragedy he has, but for me that part of the film did not work. It really revolved around the various iterations of Spider-Man we see, and how they interact with each other together.

I have some minor complains about the film, which mainly revolve around two characters that feel out of place in the film. This is definitely a very subjective feeling, and their placement in the film was meant to be “out of place”. I just didn’t like it myself. There is an anime character introduced, as well as a character in the vein of a Looney Tunes character, and both of those characters were really annoying to me, and also very jarring to watch within the film. I am sure many people enjoyed this aspect of the film for the jarring effect, but for me, I found it very annoying.

I loved the film as a whole though. There were a lot of funny moments between the various characters, a lot of heart and it just was a great “ feel good” movie. Miles Morales is a very deep character and I hope to see much more of him in sequels. Perhaps we will even see a live action of him join the MCU at some point. But I also am hoping we see more of other characters like Gwen Stacy’s Spider-Man.

Overall I would give the film a 8 out of 10, and I am certainly excited for the sequels and side-quels that should be coming down the pipeline.

Violet’s Movie Review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:

I have a confession to make. When I first started seeing the trailers for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I wasn’t so sure about it. First of all, it was animated. Which seemed like an odd choice for a full length feature film. I mean, if it was Disney, that’d be one thing. (I’m a huge Disney fan, in case you didn’t know.) But this was Sony. Secondly, as you are probably well aware, we have had so many iterations of Spider-Man just this millennium, from Tobey Maguire, to Andrew Garfield, to Tom Holland just a couple years ago — did we really need another version of Spider-Man so soon? It seemed like some sort of half-hearted attempt by Sony to keep themselves relevant in the Spider-Man conversation. And Sony doesn’t have the best track record of delivering quality superhero films as of late (I’m looking at you, Venom.)

Oh, how wrong I was.

Part of the reason for this “Spider-Man” fatigue I was referring to is because we kept seeing the same character, Peter Parker, remade over and over again. Although Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse includes Peter Parker, he is not the main focus of the story. Instead, the focus is on Miles Morales, a boy of black and Latino descent, who happens to also get bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes Spider-Man. Yes, this was obvious in the trailer, but I still wasn’t convinced that this wouldn’t end up being just some cut rate animated film that maybe should have been straight to DVD. Don’t get me wrong, I was still planning on seeing the movie, but I wasn’t all that excited about it.

That is, until I went to New York Comic Con, where we got to the see first 35 minutes of the film. Producers Phil Lord (who is also credited with writing the film) and Chris Miller felt like just showing random clips wouldn’t be enough, and that it would be better to show a large portion of the film so that the audience could get a real feel for it. Well, their plan definitely worked on me! No longer did I have an apathetic attitude toward the film. Rather, I was blown away by what I saw, and could not wait to see the rest of the film upon its release.

Luckily, we only had to wait a couple months, and soon enough the day came that we got to see the entire film in all its glory.

I don’t want to give the whole movie away, but I’ll give you the gist of it. High school student Miles Morales is just a normal kid living in Brooklyn, who one day gets bitten by a radioactive spider and begins to develop powers just like the already existing Spider-Man. While he’s still trying to figure his powers out, he stumbles upon a villainous plot that puts his world in danger, and soon finds himself shouldering more responsibility than he expected. However, with the help of some unlikely allies, he learns to navigate his powers and gain enough self-confidence to step into the role of his own version of Spider-Man and attempt to save the world.

One of the major aspects that makes  Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse so special is its unique style of animation. I’ve never seen anything like it. It literally looks like a comic book that has come to life (but still in animated form, of course). I’ve seen animated motion comics, but those are more still frames, while this was an open, more life-like world. It looked amazing and was kind of its own character in a way.

But the visuals alone are not what makes the movie great. The storyline is interesting and compelling. The story gets started really quickly, and there’s quite a lot that happens within that first 35 minutes — what a cliffhanger they left us with at NYCC! With the combination of the visuals, the storyline, and the music, I found myself immersed in the movie very soon after it began. Not to spoil the movie, one main concept it deals with is parallel universes — which has always been an intriguing subject matter to me. The use of this concept opened up the film for some humorous characters!

However, I think that what really makes the film special is the message that it sends. With the use of diversity not only with Miles Morales, but also with the other characters that Miles befriends, it shows that anyone can be a hero, regardless of what color you are, or your gender, or anything else. It was a nice breath of fresh air to see someone other than a white male as the leading character in a superhero movie.

I have a few minor quibbles with the movie, such as a couple of Miles’s new friends felt a little too over-the-top and silly, which took me out of the movie. But overall, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a fun, humorous, visually immersive movie that is full of heart.

My rating: 8.5/10