While Warner Brothers is continuing to struggle to make a decent DC film, and Marvel is doing its best to keep staleness from creeping into their now 20+ picture repertoire, Sony Pictures — specifically the Imageworks Animation branch — have cooked up a high-energy film that not only finds new ground in an over-trodden landscape, but does it while dripping with style.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse swings through an oversaturated superhero market and breathes new life into a genre that is dangerously close to going the way of the Western. With cinematic universes multiplying like Mogwai, it’s a treat to see a new spin on a story told three times over now (four when you include Insomniac Games’ PS4 masterpiece). Don’t be caught off guard if come nomination time for the Academy Awards, Into the Spider-Verse gets honored right alongside the other animated heavyweights of the year.
Into the Spider-Verse is a film that explodes onto the screen with a vibrant color palette torn straight from the pages of its source material. Each and every frame is packed to the brim with dazzling animation that may make Pixar rethink their aesthetic. The animation is just as pop-infused as the Post Malone single that bubbles up as the picture’s theme, but even with the style oozing through the celluloid, it never distracts from the substance. Character’s facial animations expertly display emotions, and if there is a struggle conveying unspoken information, the filmmaker’s fill in any gaps with cleverly placed thought bubbles. The willingness to not only embrace the genre’s comic book origins, but to celebrate it shows an awareness of current sentiment. Nerd culture is no longer something to be shunned. In fact, calling it nerd culture is a misnomer at this point. In 2018, nerd culture IS culture.
Sony Pictures have made some extraordinarily questionable decisions in the past few years (a Venom movie without a Spider-Man?), but at least someone at that studio had the wherewithal to craft this film around a new face for Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Miles is a Brooklyn-based web slinger who feels right at home in a brilliantly crafted environment. Jordan 1’s, graffiti slaps, and a poster for Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book create a completely realistic setting of which the characters feel truly present. Miles Morales acts as a perfect conduit for the audience to jump into the Spider-Verse for the first time, and hopefully Sony continues to play in this wonderful sandbox with many films to come.
The directing trio of Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman successfully brought the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man to life, and for that I want to say thanks. As someone who has increasingly been plagued by superhero fatigue in the cinema space, this film has singlehandedly reinvigorated my excitement for the genre. Hopefully the absolute freedom of animation displayed here will prove to other studios that it’s a viable medium for high profile properties. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an incredible feat of animation that stands out by feeling fresh and kinetic in a bloated atmosphere of play-it-safe cinema.
The Fan Men 