Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse (2018)

Animation | Action | Adventure

New York teen, Miles Morales, is bitten by a mutated spider and becomes the next new Spider-Man. Unexpectedly he crosses paths with Spider-counterparts from alternate dimensions to stop evil genius King Pin, and a threat to all reality.

MG – “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse is a fantastic comic book come-to-life approach of animation, blended into a 100% New York street culture vibe and classic Spiderman storyline. It’s ticking all the fun boxes for me. It’s an animated visual feast of arty animated experimentation. Wild colours and patterns. 3D is made to look 2D in a comic style. A lowered stop-motion-esque frame rate to give a new feel to the motion, so it isn’t always so smooth. (Mind you this took a bit to get used to at the start, and I wasn’t flattered by it at all on the big cinema screen. But the eyes got used to it and proved to be a nice technique. I’m keen to see this on Blu-ray on a TV for an improved viewing experience.)

The story is angled at more of a mature teen audience and up. It has it’s darker moments, so not completely kid friendly. Again this is the NY street vibe to keep it edgy and gritty. It’s a new edgy Spiderman, new suit, new logo. Subways, grafitti, anda city to save. It really works! There is plenty of funny moments peppered throughout, and the storyline is very engaging. This mixed with action packed camera work, and arty animated design (almost psychedelic at times) it’s really a new level of the animated feature genre. The throwback to classic 90’s Spiderman is peppered throughout the story too. Characters and the like. It’s great to see.

Alternate Spider-peeps are pulled from other dimensions to the present, unifying to stop classic villian King Pin from using his dimension-pulling super collider machine. It’s a nice storyline, and I learnt a few things too, with the whacky variety of Spider characters evolved over the decades. The Prowler character is dark and creepy too with an eerie screech. Great stuff.

Character design and vocal talent are great and really suit overall. Voice talent of Shameik Moore is perfect for the awkward teen lead Miles (Who you’d recognise from series, The Get Down). It was beyond what I expected, and the trailer was just a taste of the intricacy  and work gone into the story and visual elements of this flick. Very cool! I look forward to eyeballing some behind the scenes of the techniques.

And yep, there’s a great little cameo from the late great Stan Lee too.”

MG 8/10