Movie Review: Into the Spiderverse

Spiderman Images Copyright Marvel and Sony Pictures.

I'll admit that when I first saw the trailer for Into the Spiderverse, I was mostly disinterested. I thought the multiverse angle might be interesting, and I was glad to see a Miles Morales Spiderman instead of the repeated Peter Parkers. However, despite that there are other animated movies that I like, an animated super hero film didn't interest me a lot. Especially not after having spent so many years watching the live-action ones. Additionally, seeing yet another Spiderman reboot sounded exhausting to me.

But I do love a good multiverse story, so between that aspect of it, many positive reviews from friends, and an unexpected free day, I decided to check it out. I was not disappointed.

Scott Pilgrim image copyright Universal Pictures

Comic Book Movie

The movie *really* felt like a comic book. They did a good job with
the animation style and the effects to make it seems comic-book-like, and I think that's something that couldn't have been achieved in the live action format (the closest thing I've seen to capturing a comic-book feel in live action format was probably Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (which almost feels more like a video game than a comic book), and Into the Spiderverse far outpaced Scott Pilgrim in this one regard.)

Of course, a part of how they accomplished this involved a lot of flashing lights, so, epileptics: be forewarned.

The comic-book feel really gave the movie a unique way about it that is interesting and makes the movie worth checking out for that factor alone.

Familiar Faces

The movie has a lot of characters from the spiderman universe. Far more than I anticipated going in. There were many of the more well-known spiderman villians represented across the movie. Most of these were not fleshed out in great detail, allowing the focus to be on the primary villain instead of splitting the story and attention between villains like Spiderman 3 did. Still, even without them being major characters of depth, it's nice to see familiar faces and to watch the action scenes play out with the variety of powerful villains.

Spiderman Images Copyright Marvel and Sony Pictures.

Origins and Sequels

While most of the spiderpeople of the movie are established as spiderpeople, the movie is still an origin story for Miles Morales. Unlike a lot of other origin stories though, this one didn't feel like it was just being told to set up Miles as Spiderman--the story itself was engaging and had merit and interest beyond just his becoming Spiderman. (I feel like a problem that a lot of superhero origin movies have is that they spend so much focus on getting the character to become a hero that it gets boring and the rest of the story seems less interesting/like it's only put up to cause the hero's journey.) 

So, my point is that Into the Spiderverse doesn't really feel this way (which isn't to say that it doesn't have any focus on Miles becoming a hero, because it definitely does. It just doesn't feel like that's the sole reason the story is being told.

That said, I feel like one of the reasons we have origin movies is so that we can have the movies that follow them. The heroes are set up so that we know more about them when we see them again. And, after having watched this movie, I'd be happy to see another one.

However, I'm not sure if the nature of the movie lends itself to a sequel, despite being an origin story. Because of the multiverse-centric nature of the plot, it seems like in order to have a sequel that brings in the characters, you'd have to keep having multiverse-centric stories. While multiverse stories are interesting, if it's the only type of story being told in a series, I feel like it could get tiresome and redundant very quickly.

But, I could be wrong. Either way, I am interested to see what happens with the future of this series, if it does, in fact, become a series.

Spiderman Images Copyright Marvel and Sony Pictures.

The Different Spiderpeople

I think that, since it's such a large part of the movie, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the various spiderpeople that show up in the movie. I'm not going to list or explain them all; you'll have to go see the movie for that.

What I will say is that it is an interesting thing to have these different entities all existing within the same story. Obviously, it's a large part of the conceit of the story itself that all these spiderpeople are in the same place.

I like that they are all very distinctly different, since having too many similar characters would be redundant and possibly irritating. Something I thought was interesting with them is that some of the spiderpeople came from universes with different 'rules,' so to speak. They operate based on the rules and abilities of their own universes. This is distinctly in opposition to how things work in Miles's universe, but it makes sense within the context of the movie.

I thought this was a clever trick that works throughout the movie, be it played for laughs, used to the characters' advantage, or utilized to move the story forward.

Conclusion

I highly enjoyed the new spiderman movie and felt like it was something that, while not earth shattering, is a bit different from the other superhero movies out there right now. If you like superhero movies, I would definitely recommend Into the Spiderverse.