Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is an animated Spider-Man film based on the popular Marvel comics character of the same name. The film comes directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman. The film features voice acting from Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Lily Tomlin, Zoe Kravitz, Nicolas Cage, Liev Shreiber and Kathryn Hahn.
When first going in to see this Spider-Man film, I was quite excited about what the experience could be. In recent years we’ve become used to seeing multiple Spider-Man franchises at the cinema, but they’ve all been live action releases. This is the first animated cinema release I’ve seen for the character and it’s actually one of the few superhero films released in recent years that’s animated, which is odd considering the comic book background these characters all come from. But it’s also a nice change.
The main character in this movie isn’t actually Peter Parker (Spider-Man), although he does feature in the film. Instead it’s focused on the character of Miles Morales who is also capable of filling the Spider-Man role.
Miles is a character that’s probably less known by the masses out there as part of the Spider-Man universe and has been kept out of the many Spider-Man films of the past and apart from the comics, I’ve only seen him in the recent Spider-Man PS4 game. If you did play through that game earlier this year, then you might have some familiarity with who this character is. But even if you didn’t play that game and don’t know Miles at all, Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse does a great job of introducing this character to the audience, slowly developing him as it goes along and also expanding quite a bit on the lore of the Spider-Man universe. In some ways, there’s more lore introduced in this film than the entire of the recent Marvel reboot of the live action character.
I don’t want to go into the plot because it can be all spoilt quite easily and I’d rather my readers go into this film as fresh as I did when I went and saw. I even recommend not watching too many trailers. But it was overall well handled and well told. Coming out of the film, I thought this was one of the better Spider-Man experiences I could have at the cinema and I’d be happy to see a sequel should Sony decide to release one in the future. As an animated film, this is one of the films I’ve liked the most, with it bringing the same freshness and charm that the first of the Lego Movies brought back when it was released a few years ago.
The voice actors are all rather good. I enjoyed both Sarmeik Moore and Mahershala Ali in this film and the two seemed to be a great match for the characters they played. There was also some great work from Hailee Steinfeld and Jake Johnson for their characters.
For those going in to see this one for the action, I’d say you get a decent amount of it, at least as much as you’d expect from an animated film. But keep in mind as well that this Spider-Man film is also more for the kids so it is generally going to be kid friendly action scenes inside and that also applies to certain aspects of the film too, with kid friendly jokes and less adult centric themes.
The animation is decent. At first when watching the film for the first half of the experience. I wasn’t too sure I liked what I was seeing. But I understand they’ve gone for a very comic book esque look to the film and as it kept going, it grew on me and I started to really like what I was seeing.
Overall I’d say that Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is a must watch at the cinema this weekend, especially if you’re a fan of the Spider-Man universe. The amount of Spider-Man lore that this film introduces audiences to is massive and one that I greatly appreciated. The story is well told and the voice acting is great. The animation is also decent. There’s not much at all to complain about when it comes to the Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse film experience and I’m happy to recommend it as something to watch this weekend.
