Spider-man - Into the Spiderverse (2018 )
I came home exclaiming this is one of the best films I've seen in a LONG time. First the choice to do it with animation - an absolute must. The budget would gave been insane to pull this off as live action, given the story line and effects, so in that they made the right choice. With that choice, it limited something, but opened up a lot of other ones. First the opportunity to give it a comic book texture rather than a Pixar style smoothness. It took about 20min for me to adjust to blurred backgrounds (kept thinking it was a 3D effect intended where you don't where glasses, but it was intentional to match how comic books may not define the background distinctly and keep your focus on characters who remained clear and in focus). This also means there are action sequences and fights that get very comic-booky, which created sometimes a 'yeah, that fits this texture and story' and sometimes created a 'disappointing cheapness for a film'. All in all, it worked, and worked well. Sound track was a bit eclectic, IMO. Not themed like a collection of 80's songs in some movies - all were current artists and tracks, and all fit the scenes very well, but I don't see people buying the soundtrack - just the single tracks that appeal to them. Still, it was all good and apt for the scenes. For the story, in a nutshell Kingpin is trying to build a super collider that will pull multiple universes together so he can recover his family that he lost in this dimension. The first test of it has Goblin push Spider-man into it, resulting in a half dozen spider-men getting pulled into our dimension. Plot follows that the handful team up and try to get home while destroying the collider. Not too deep, not too shallow for a comic book story, but it's enough to support the 2h film (yes, 2h for animation - it's not just a kids film, though there were a ton of kids brought to it). The real meat of the 2h is actually filled with our central character, Miles Morales, a young teen who also gets bit by a spider and gains powers albeit slightly different than Peter Parker. The film really focuses on Miles, being a smart teen, discovering powers, meeting Peter Parker (who then dies and asks Miles to destroy the collider), discovering the other spider-men, coming of age and saving the day with the team. It does a very, very good job with characters - Miles in particular. Even if you know nothing of anyone beyond Peter Parker, you'll enjoy the cast of characters here. The concept of a multi-verse isn't too far fetched to grasp for younger audiences, keeping the story plausible, but all the spider-men come with their own uniqueness and how their dimension is different. I won't spoil the spider-men characters, but even the smallest (wtf kinda) versions have a few good lines and don't distract. You may recognize a few voices (Liev Shreiber as Fisk-Kingpin, Nicholas Cage as one of the smaller character spider-men, and Lily Tomlin as Aunt May who is actually a cool kick-ass rather than a naive old lady - there are others, but these stood out to me, though none storm through the screen, they fit nicely into their roles). With the parallel dimensions, we have Miles have an uncle issue (like Uncle Ben...hey, so did Luke Skywalker, hmmm). There are other parallels, as to be expected, as well as a few other villians thrown in that are not as expected from our traditional spider-man universe of one, but it all works. Highly recommend this one. 9/10 (I never give a 0 or a 10).