Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Starting off a movie review by pointing out that movies are a visual medium is as moronic as you can get. But for me, it bears mentioning here because there's a difference in how the visuals affect the movie when the movie is live action or animated. With live action, there's only so much manipulation one can do with the world. Black and white, various filters, different film stock and lenses ... but in the end, it's all still real people interacting with what appears to be a real world. As long as the special effects and design aren't so poor as to remind you this is all a movie, the visuals won't be a distraction. Animation doesn't have that luxury. It NEEDS the visuals to compliment the film's style, while not being so glaring in their presentation as to harm the movie itself. Look at the difference in quality between the rich, lush, human-like animation of Disney's Beauty & The Beast versus the jagged, stylized, almost campy animation of Disney's Hercules. Look at how expressive and nuanced Wall*E was using robots, and look at Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, where every human, while scarily realistic when they don't move a muscle, looks like a dead-eyed store mannequin the moment they try to express an emotion. Which brings us to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, and ... I'm sorry ... I know I'm in the minority here, but ... The animation here SUCKS. SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS. Not sucks like Food Fight, which was obviously done on the cheap. But that may make it worse, because this movie SHOULD look better, and it just doesn't. It's animation is choppy, like a video game running at a low frame rate. Sometimes, images are blurry or out of focus; sometimes it's in the foreground, sometimes the background, but it's never consistent. I've heard that the animation was a stylistic choice, that it is choppy because Miles is scared and unsure of himself and his powers, and becomes smoother when he finds his confidence. Two problems with that: one, that doesn't happen until 20 minutes left into this TWO HOUR MOVIE, which means you're stuck with a frame rate like an NES game with too many sprites on the screen for an hour-forty. At that point, the stylistic choice is crippling over 75% the movie. That's bad design, regardless of the subtext they were aiming for. And two, that would be fine if MILES was the only one affected. But by making everybody effected, it just looks cheap and unfinished. Not helping matters either are comic book panels, thought balloons and other touches trying to make this feel like a comic book. If I want the feel of a comic book, I'LL READ A FUCKING COMIC BOOK. I don't want to be reminded of ANOTHER medium when I'm watching a movie; it breaks the immersion. It reeks of overly clever, self-satisfied design. And speaking of being overly clever? The fourth-wall jokes. This isn't the Animaniacs. Referencing the other movies, the joke about Spider-Ham saying "that's all, folks" and wondering if that's legally allowable ... UGH JUST STOP. This is not earned in any way. It's shoehorned in there as some kind of Easter egg/wink-and-a-nod, and it sticks out like a tree in the desert. Again, the writing and design teams hamper this movie by being so in love with their own sense of humor and clever design, it actively gets in the way of the movie and what it's trying to do. And that's a shame, because, beyond the god-awful eyesore animation and the cringe-inducing meta bullshit is THE BEST DAMNED SPIDER-MAN MOVIE THERE HAS BEEN. Seriously. They manage to cram a metric ton of themes and complex emotions into this movie; Miles is scared of this new set of abilities he has and feels a responsibility to live up to Spider-Man's legacy after his passing. But weighing on him are expectations from his parents -- especially his dad, a police officer who does not like Spider-Man or respect his vigilantism -- that he doesn't feel like he can live up to. He also idolizes his uncle, who just wants Miles to live his best life ... and then that all comes crashing down when Miles discovers his uncle is working for Kingpin as a super-suited henchman. Now, he's got duty and responsibility at war with familial bonds and disappointment. Meanwhile, you have Peter Parker from another dimension. He's older, in his late 30's or early 40's. He's got a gut. He left Mary Jane because she wanted kids and he's afraid of the responsibility, but he still loves her and wants her. His dealings with Miles force him to reckon with the concept of being a father and show him it isn't all that bad ... but when faced with the choice of going back to his home dimension, he's too afraid MJ will have moved on, so he offers to sacrifice himself so the other Spider-people can get to their homes. He is every bit the noble superhero you'd expect, except when it comes to his own life; there, is he a normal human being. Afraid, unsure. None of the other Spider-people get nearly as much of a story arc, which is a shame. This movie doesn't take advantage of its two hour run time well enough; Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker and SP//dr, Peter Porker, and Spider-Gwen all get minimal backstory. Just enough so you know they all lost someone, so they all know how each other feels. Shrug. It isn't bad, but I'd have liked to get to know them, rather than four of the six Spiders feel like grunts to throw at Kingpin's army of goons and second-tier supervillains like Scorpion, Tombstone and The Prowler. Still, those tiny bits from those others contribute to the movie's overall story arc of dealing with love and loss, duty and responsibility, knowing who you are and being comfortable with yourself. It's all, for the most part, very well handled, even if there are some plot issues (Why is Green Goblin like Godzilla? Where does Tombstone disappear to? How would Spiders from the 1930's and the THIRTY FIRST CENTURY be able to navigate 2018 NYC without having a panic attack, let alone get to Aunt May's house? And why would they know who Aunt May is, anyway?). But this movie's biggest sin is unavoidable. It's ugly to look at. It's ugly to watch in motion. It's jagged, stilted and hiccupy. Were the visuals even half as nice as the script, this would be a four and a half star movie. But the animation is so unbearably terrible, I can't in good conscience recommend this movie to anybody without being a SEVERE Spider-Man fanatic.