by Prabhnoor Singh
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse could be considered one of the greatest animated movies of the year, especially with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 97 percent. People always say that you can’t replace or beat the originals, but Sony proved them wrong with Miles Morales’ journey from zero to hero, literally.
Miles had just started going to a new school and he has no friends, he’s a nobody, he’s zero. This movie also takes its time telling us all about each individual character and their development throughout the entire movie. We get to see characters from other comics such as Spider-Man Noir, voiced by Nicholas Cage, and Spider-Ham, voiced by John Mulaney. The main character, Miles Morales, starts off the movie with his family and the complex relationship he has with his father who is a cop. On the superhero side of things, when Miles is bitten by a genetically-modified spider, things start to go in the opposite direction…in a good way.
In a typical movie, many villains would just be introduced with just their “evil” plans, but the writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman gave Kingpin a deep personal backstory. This is one major reason this movie was great; the writers put a lot of time and money into their villain rather than spending it all on their heroes. When Kingpin’s plan brings the Peter Parker of another universe eventually to meet Miles, he had brought together two people with completely different ideas.
That’s exactly what brings the humor into the movie. Miles asks Peter to mentor him, but Peter is no Yoda and grows impatient with Miles which causes a lot of banter. Eventually, Peter and Miles meet others just like them and decide to team up to get home to their own dimensions. This is when the movie starts to get emotional. Miles progress to become a superhero is coming along slowly, but to Miles that’s fine. He wanted to take some time with learning each ability, but the others didn’t think that was a good idea. He needed to learn all of his abilities if he was going to help them get home. As the movie progresses, Miles becomes more diligent and mature which leads to him unlocking his full potential and swinging across the streets of New York City.
Even though this movie is focused on Miles, it still introduces the lives and backstories of all the other heroes in this movie no matter how big of an effect they would have on the movie. Also, the animation in this movie was brilliant, making it seem like you’re watching a comic book being brought to life. IGN even stated, “Into the Spider-Verse is a visual experience unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
So my verdict on this film is that it was one of the greatest movies of last year, and maybe one of the best movies I’ve seen in my entire life. I give it a solid 5 out of 5 stars. A ten out of ten. A fresh tomato.
