Review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) by Calvincrack — 16 Dec 2018

One of the best MOVIES I've ever seen. I was smiling from start to finish, except the times when my jaw literally (and I mean literally) dropped from how beautiful the visuals are. The film is just so creative, and that all starts with the screenplay. This is an Oscar worthy screenplay that balances all of its threads in nearly perfect harmony. And my god is it funny. It's the funniest movie of the year without even being billed as a comedy. That's the power of Lord and Miller. They know how to tell a "Hollywood story" (and by that I mean broadly palatable) while still injecting it with extremely irreverent humor. Basically the perfect combination for a super hero movie.

The acting is perfect, the animation is the best I've seen..... but what needs to get shouted out so big here is the cinematography within the animation. They deliver a beautiful work of art in every frame. Everything about this movie is firing at a high creative level, and yet it blows by you so fast you want to go back and freeze frame it just to appreciate the beauty of what they are showing you. I will certainly do that once I have the film at home. You could absolutely watch this with the volume off and still get most of the story due to how strong the visual storytelling is.

I could go on and on, but I want to point out one moment that stuck out to me. It's the scene where Peter B. Parker takes Miles to his favorite restaurant because it shut down in his dimension but still exists here. It's the exact sort of thing I would do, so I found that really touching. This movie has a lot of beautiful moments like that and that's what elevates is beyond just a great comic book movie, to great movie-movie. The character development, the jokes, the emotional moments for the characters. It all works.

It's a genius movie that deals with some trippy ideas (especially for younger audience members), but has so much fun that you never think twice. I realized 45 minutes in that I was watching one of my new favorite movies and the rest of the movie just confirmed it.

I'm very happy kids will have this movie to watch because it contains a powerful message about how many potential "versions" of you there are, but it's up to you to be the best one you can be.