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I will defend this as the best Spider-man movie ever, and a contender for a place in any list of top 10 superhero films of the modern era. Some people think that animation is a different category to live action and you can't compare the two; I happen not to agree but I'll recognize that as a valid point of view. In that vein I will say that Spider-Verse is the best animated comic-book movie ever. It is made by people who have a deep love and understanding of many comic styles and it uses lots of them to good effect. (5/5 stars, possibly the most underrated under-promoted movie of the past year)
The plot, such as it is, is really simple: in the world where Miles Morales lives, he gets bitten by the radioactive spider and becomes (a) Spider-Man. However, that reality is collided with others in which other Spider people exist and they get pulled into Morales' version of reality in order to stop this madness and set things right.
What things? Well, like the whole of existence but also some things in peoples' lives. This is part of what makes the movie shine - its ability to delve into the details of Morales's and a couple other characters' lives and work those into the over-plot. The character voicing and rendering support this extremely well, another of the film's strengths.
All of the voice actors are good, and I particularly liked the way the film re-imagined Aunt May. That's been one of my major beefs with the MCU version of Spider-Man and I was happy this film went in a totally different direction.
The film uses a wide variety of animation styles and the first time I saw a sound effect rendered on screen in text I nearly whooped for joy. I very much want to get this film on disk so I can frame-by-frame through it to pick up what I expect to be dozens of clues, homages, and references most of which go by much too fast at movie-projection speeds to catch. For example, each time another Spider-Verse character appears, they do so by popping into Times Square. Each time there are subtle (or overt) changes in the artwork, billboards, and animations going on behind the character.
There's also a couple of numerological themes happening - it's teensy spoiler so I won't say more, but do watch the numbers when you see this film.
The film does behave as though you have seen at least a couple of the other Spider-Man films and are at least somewhat familiar with the character's story and milieu. That said, the references and shout-outs are just fun things to know, not essential to enjoying this film. The only drawback of seeing Spider-Verse as your first Spider-Man movie is that everything else is going to be a letdown compared to this.
The plot, such as it is, is really simple: in the world where Miles Morales lives, he gets bitten by the radioactive spider and becomes (a) Spider-Man. However, that reality is collided with others in which other Spider people exist and they get pulled into Morales' version of reality in order to stop this madness and set things right.
What things? Well, like the whole of existence but also some things in peoples' lives. This is part of what makes the movie shine - its ability to delve into the details of Morales's and a couple other characters' lives and work those into the over-plot. The character voicing and rendering support this extremely well, another of the film's strengths.
All of the voice actors are good, and I particularly liked the way the film re-imagined Aunt May. That's been one of my major beefs with the MCU version of Spider-Man and I was happy this film went in a totally different direction.
The film uses a wide variety of animation styles and the first time I saw a sound effect rendered on screen in text I nearly whooped for joy. I very much want to get this film on disk so I can frame-by-frame through it to pick up what I expect to be dozens of clues, homages, and references most of which go by much too fast at movie-projection speeds to catch. For example, each time another Spider-Verse character appears, they do so by popping into Times Square. Each time there are subtle (or overt) changes in the artwork, billboards, and animations going on behind the character.
There's also a couple of numerological themes happening - it's teensy spoiler so I won't say more, but do watch the numbers when you see this film.
The film does behave as though you have seen at least a couple of the other Spider-Man films and are at least somewhat familiar with the character's story and milieu. That said, the references and shout-outs are just fun things to know, not essential to enjoying this film. The only drawback of seeing Spider-Verse as your first Spider-Man movie is that everything else is going to be a letdown compared to this.
