I’m a comic book fan, so I’m a bit biased towards the genre. Honestly, I prefer older Peter Parker as Spider-Man as I’m used to him. So Spider-Man: Homecoming was a good movie to me, but lacked some of the things I’m accustomed to in the comics. After seeing the end credits of Venom, I wasn’t sure what I’d get as the scene was so silly. While this movie does have some silliness, there are many reasons why it won the Oscar for best animated film in 2018.
Right from the opening, alternate credits give a feeling for the raw style this movie is going for. The movie starts off with a recap of the life of Peter Parker (Chris Pine) over the years. It’s very similar to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man but it has some clear differences. We get a feel for a very triumphant life of Peter vs the evil he faces. Then we cut to Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) and his daily life. Very early on we get the feeling of a teenager struggling to fit in. He wants to be ordinary at public school, but his parents want him to strive to be better at a highly exclusive private school. After school, Miles goes to see his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali). They have a good rapport together and eventually go to a hidden area to do some graffiti. There Miles gets bitten by a spider with the number 42 on it.
The next day Miles wakes up feeling off. He ends up getting his hand stuck to a girl’s hair who is played by Hailee Steinfeld. Then he ends up in his room reading a Spider-Man comic. He sees that he appears to be going through the same things as Spider-Man. Later that night, he goes to the same place he was bitten by the spider and investigates it. While he’s there he gets drawn into a fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Spider-Man is moderately successful against Goblin and The Prowler, but then things go wrong and Peter gets trapped under some rubble. Wilson Fisk (Liev Schreiber) proceeds to finish Peter off leading to a shocked Miles fleeing only to have the terrifying Prowler pursue him.
Later at Peter’s grave, Miles bumps into someone wearing part of a Spider-Man suit who can shoot webs, played by Jake Johnson. Miles accidentally knocks him out and we get the chase scene used to promote this film found at the end of Venom. There’s a lot more to the movie than this. We get to see more incarnations of Spider-Man as many promotional materials have shown. Each character has their own interesting take on the lore and many are played by well-known actors.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse really does a great job bridging the gap between comics and accessibly through its animated format. It’s funny, action packed, and even has some deeply emotional scenes. The animation style is a bit jarring at first and I was worried about it being an issue. After a minute or two, my brain adjusted to the movement. The style overall lends itself to creating a feel like the comics with even noise lines coming out of a character’s mouth when they laughed. With how well it’s critically received, I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes the standard to measure others against. I saw it three times in theaters, so I really enjoyed it, and I’ve not heard anything negative from someone who has seen it. Rated PG.
Ryan
Read it or Weep 