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

I'm not going to lie, I was not interested in seeing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse at all after seeing the trailer, it just didn't click with me. Then the movie hit theatres everywhere but my country, people were loving it and I decided I'd give it a chance. Too bad my city had screenings only on Christmas and Boxing Day, I was busy with family and stuff, and I missed it. 

This umpteenth movie about your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man follows Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), a teen from Brooklyn struggling with school and friends. One night he sneaks out of his dorm room to visit his uncle, Aron (Mahershala Ali), who brings him to paint graffiti in an abandoned subway station. Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider and Spider-Man. There's already a Spider-Man (voiced by Chris Pine) but he's killed by Kingpin (voiced by Liev Schreiber). Luckily, Kingpin's dimension-crossing super-collider brings in Spider-Man from other universes, and Miles must team up with them to stop Kingpin. 

After countless Spider-Man origin movies —okay, there's three of them, but I feel like there's two too much— Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse offers a fresh, compelling take on the Spider-Man origin story with a compelling, fun and engaging plot that takes some interesting and unexpected turns and doesn't waste time with useless subplots —i.e. romance.

That said, the best part about the film is the characters and the way they and their diversities are handled. Every version of Spider-Man, whether it's Miles or Spider-Woman or Spider-Man noir, is fun, likeable and interesting as they all have their own personality that makes each one of them stand out. Mixing the character from different universes is handled so well and the interaction between characters are fun and entertaining. The villain, on the other hand, has the typical Marvel issue, he lacks depth and characterization. All we learn about Kingpin is that he is an enormous evil man. We learn something, very little, about his family, and that's it. Kingpin is such a menacing man and deserves better than this.

The voice cast does a really good job the highlights being Shameik Moore who embodies very well the personality of Miles, Hailee Steinfeld who is simply delightful as Gwen/Spider-Woman, and Mahershala Ali who is perfect as Uncle Aron —and damn his voice is sexy.

Sony Pictures Releasing

 As for the animation, it's gorgeous —it feels like watching a comic book come to life, literally, and it's awesome. It's the styling animation every movie based on a comic book should have. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse also has plenty of humour; however, while it works wonderfully in the first part, as the story moves forward and become more serious, the humour doesn't work as well. Also, the emotional scenes didn't really work for me.