If you have been looking for a good Spider-Man movie from Sony, this is it. They have made a lot of flops with the franchise, but “Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse” is fantastic. A good part of that is because they realized that it takes more than a name and recognizable characters to be a good film. Behind the helm of the writing is Phil Lord, the creator of “The Lego Movie.” With that alone, the film was primed and ready to be a hit.
Cinematically, it was fantastic. They chose to style it like a comic book, which was very interesting to watch. They had to come up with some solutions to the issues with style. For example, what happens to things when they fall out of focus? Their solution was to give everything a double vision look, like how 3D DVD movies were made to be 3D by offsetting the frame, one side is red and the other blue, but without changing the color. They even added bits to express hits or bumps, including thought and speech bubbles. The style is enough to spend the money on a ticket or to rent it online.
The story was great; it was predictable, but fun. There was a lot of subversion of expectation throughout the film. This was often used for comedic effect, which made the jokes even better. Even though it was packed with great jokes, it was able to be serious when appropriate. It was also self-aware to a great effect, without mimicking Deadpool too much. Now, the plot was, as I said, predicable, but only in hindsight. It was the type of film that you might be able to predict a few things before they happen, but the subversion of expectation does a good job of making you second-guess yourself, which kept me in suspense.
You are now entering spoiler territory, so if you do not want to be spoiled, skip to the next paragraph. My biggest hang-up for the film is how Miles just kind of becomes great at being Spider-Man after nothing more than some personal reflection. The main example of this was when he was able to use his special abilities on command just because he listened to his dad. There was no time given to show that he was training or building those skills. I would call it the Ray phenomenon, because it is the same as how Ray was great with the lightsaber, without ever handling one before. Like Miles did with Kingpin, she even beat someone who was trained. I get why they do it; it helps the film move faster, but it also strains our suspension of disbelief. They redeem themselves a little when he struggles to fight Kingpin, but just before that, we see him do this whole flipping and dodging maneuver around the might-as-well-be Hadron Collider Room. It does not seem to capture that the kid just started learning all of this.
Overall, the 117-minute film is definitely worth the money to see. The directors show a mastery in the art style and a chief understanding of writing a good film. Phil Lord, being the writer alone, is a good reason to watch it. Since the film is about to leave theaters, it might be time to preorder it on iTunes or Google to be able to watch it as soon as possible.
