Review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) by Cork B — 15 Dec 2018

PROS:

- Points for originality. The mashups of all mashups!

- comraderie between Parker and Morales was well done, if buried sometimes. The escape from the Hudson lab was very well done and had me in stitches for most of it.

SO SO:

- Visual style was unique, but distracting. The ending especially was too much flashy bright lights. If I was a teenager that read a bunch of comic books, I would be thrilled. As an adult it just looked off.

- spider-reboot - how many reboots of Spider Man do we really need?

- the movie was entertaining to watch, but felt like it went on too long - especially the ending battle scene.

CONS:

- too much going on at once. I counted no fewer than 7 spider people, and an array of baddies - whenever there are an array of baddies, that means no baddie is good enough to stand on their own, and that felt true here. And 'Here is my story...' gets old after a couple of tellings.

- And the theme of 'Anyone could be spider man' seems to me contradictory to the Spider Man (original) world. What did most people who got power do in the Spider Man world? Become a baddie. Here, anyone can get bitten and become Spider Man including Spider Man's girlfriend, an Anime character and a pig. Not that that isn't funny, but at some point it just gets ridiculous.

- Of course there is the 'Luke I am your Father' scene with the uncle, but what could have been a major antagonist plot theme became a short 5 minute throwaway scene (in fairness, the Uncle Ben death scene wasn't long either, but there was no big reveal there).

- the new Spider Man has to have black street cred or something. From being a tagger to wearing untied sneakers, he must certainly resonate with the youth... or something. At least they had the decency to make Morales upright and not morally conflicted, but it just seemed like pandering. Although who knows? Maybe when Lee wrote Spider Man back in the 60s, he was catering to nerds? But now that he is NOT a nerd, I guess Aunt May has to act as Q?

- Look, if you are going to create a new character, do it. Spider girl, or spider pig, or black spider or whatever. To go through the motions of killing off spider man and then taking his place - it felt forced and distasteful.