Stop pointing your fingers at me!

★★★ out of ★★★★

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Runtime: 117 minutes

MPAA: Rated PG for frenetic sequences of animated action violence, thematic elements, and mild language.

I can't believe I'm telling you this now. I missed the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in theatres when it was still playing in 2018. Three years later, I finally got to see this animation from Sony Pictures Animation. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is admirable, but mistaken. Let me explain.

Teenager Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a smart teenager from Brooklyn, is forced to apply in an elite New York boarding school. While struggling to find his place in life, school, friends and family, Miles gets bitten by a radioactive spider during one of his adventurous trips to an abandoned subway tunnel. He gains powers like the original Spider-Man. However, he has some newfound abilities - will not spoil - and meet multiple other Spider-Men-and-Women like him, coming from multiple dimensions. These alternate Spider-people came from a Super Collider from Kingpin (Liev Schreiber). If the Super Collider operates again, everything will be destroyed. And I mean everything. Miles Morales must co-operate with his new acquaintances and stop the Super Collider.

This all sounds out of a comic book, right? It feels as if pages of a comic book were visualized onto a large and eardrum-bursting cinema screen. There is an amazing color palette, accompanied by a glitch effect, text box and bubble text like 'BOOM!' which left me fascinated in the first few minutes. Spider-Verse uses a different style of animation: a colorful one that is a creative, innovative and has a very unique feel. However, after the breath-taking first act, the second act starts to get a little disappointing.

From here to the third act of the film, it prefers style over substance. We are introduced to three characters: Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Ham and Peni Parker. I'm really stressing on this part, because I don't feel comfortable with these hit-and-run characters. They are here just to join the fight scenes and go back home, with almost no character development. Luckily, the third act arrives in time to give us a sense of urgency about this race for time to shut down the Super Collider, which at the very least is relieving.

Now, I'm not here to criticize about what I want the movie to be, but what it achieves. Similar to Batman Begins, I was not emotionally stricken. Sure, there are some dialogue that may elicit tears from the viewers, or the story and characters proved great to them. Not on my watch. Nothing really transcends further than the simple dialogue, and it generated a pseudo-emotion in me.

However, I still admired that the main characters didn't receive the same treatment as the side characters. Miles Morales was sufficiently developed, Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) at least had some form of connection to the main character, Gwen Stacy (Hailey Steinfeld) served as a helpful friend and Morales' parents and uncle also had their moments too. Not to forget, we are accompanied by Kingpin, a bulky man dressed in a black suit, whose purpose in operating the Super Collider was to bring his family back. I wanted to see more of his backstory, nonetheless.

There are certain scenes like a sun-drenched setting with beautifully animated deciduous trees, where Morales and Peter B. Parker glide around with their spiderwebs. In fact, there are more scenes like this, for example, Morales in his black-themed suit falling upside-down, viewing the busy yet vivid city. It'd made you wish these scenes lasted a little longer.

This wasn't a film that was the all wonders it made out to be. I believed the hype and was waiting to be impacted every single second. It didn't turn out so. However, I'm at the very least, impressed by the animation quality that I might give it a second view a few months from now.

Trailer: