Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse

Well....shit!!

I may have been late to the Miles Morales party but I knew I had to buckle in day one for this movie! I was waaaay off on runtime, I thought it would be maybe an hour and forty-five minute flick, but nope this sucker is close to two and a half hours long and happily I can report for a very good reason. The story goes kinda wild, not in an incoherent or difficult to keep up with state but it fills that runtime appropriately, and it does what any sequel worth it's salt does! Expand the story, expand the world, and keep rocking on with the story. Now I thought one particular element which may cause some not necessarily backlash but just a difference of opinion is the movie starts off ADD as shit, 20 things happen concurrently at the same time and it can be quite taxing to try and absorb everything but they hit the emergency brakes and take the crack away fairly quick so it can move at a semi-regular pace. The plot is far from regular mind you, dimension hopping is a much regular occurence and you'd think with the plethora of Spider-People jammed in, it would get too bogged down but our main cast hold their ground and the attention is fully on them start to finish. And shock of all shocks, voice acting was pretty ace on all fronts! We see changes in Miles and Gwen, they bring up aging and growing up, the uncertainty of their double lives and what they want to do with their lives, they give several moments not only to quiet contemplative scenes but a good fair few scenes of their respective parents and how they feel parenting. Christ I never thought I would have seen that in a superhero movie but it's handled extremely well. It all feels like a natural evolution from the first movie and man the fact it took half a decade to get a sequel to one of the biggest sleeper hits of the comic book movie genre kinda blows my damn socks off, name one fucking movie that came out 4 or 5 years max after the last one. In a world of sequential entries in a movie series this is practically unheard of aside from the James Bond series. And clearly they made the most out of those 5 years with this animation, it goes beyond showboating how fucking good it is, not to be lewd or rude or slightly crude but they were not shy and just pulled their dicks out to gloat and my oh my I cannot deny. DAT LOOK GUD! It's friggin' ludicrous how many styles, colors, animation techniques, editing techniques, and just pure, unfiltered, raw, hook that shit up to my veins visual storytelling is employed. Like Pixar I'm sorry, you got schooled, there be no Oscar for you next year, good luck son! And while no spoilers shall cross these lips, these bastards pull a flat out Empire Strikes Back on my ass and not only did it work but I didn't see it coming. These little shits right here were like, "Gotcha'! Pay up and come see our movie next year for the end!" and I'm over here like, "Let me just go find a cash machine.". I'll be there man. So what's the rating? Well...it's a lot to take in and frankly I'm still digesting and processing all which has been displayed to my eyeballs, so for all I know the score could increase over time but for now I give it 4 stars, 8.5/10! Potential Top 10 list material? It seems like it! And next week fighting robots. Please God, Satan, Buddha, Odin, Shiva, Gaia, Cthulu, Flying Spaghetti Monster, anybody, please let it be good!

Spider-Man Into The Spiderverse

Yeah after all the hype and seeing the new Miles Morales game I figured this was the first stop to better understand it all.

I mean, for a character that hasn't even been around for a decade and yet even for a non-Marvel fan to know how beloved such a character is like Miles Morales is kind of rare. But how was the movie? Pretty good. I still say Isle Of Dogs should have won at the Oscars, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like this movie. It's just such a fresh take on the superhero genre and if anything fun and light to where people of all ages can enjoy it. I have to say it already got me just by bringing up so much of the Sam Raimi movies which I watched as a kid and was my first exposure to the character, and after that I was rolling with everything. So our story starts with Miles as he goes about his daily life before the ususal radioactive spider, yadda yadda, you know this but things get crazy and things get nuts, when a cross dimensional experiment occurs and pulls 5 parallel universe spider people into Miles' world and they have to go save the day and get everyone not so far from home. Fun plot, but still has it's moments. It's a lot for Miles sometimes and the movie doesn't shrug off the emotional bits for any of the characters, I mean after all that was kind of the main thing about Spider-Man, a superhero with a relatable life and dilemmas, to which this movie sticks with. I'm not entirely sure how they picked the incarnations of the various web slinging crimefighters but I like it. We got Spider Gwen which is cool, easily my favorite of the bunch the all black trenchcoat wearing Spider Noir, friggin' anime girl with mech suit included (Nice!), and the pig. I don't think I need to say much more about the pig. We also get a good medley of villains, with Kingpin who I know zero about and Doc Ock who I know a bit about and is voiced by complete wife material Kathryn Hahn. Oh my. There's a lot to talk about in this movie so I'll keep it brief but there's at least 2 more points I want to make. I dreaded the animation style, the first time I ever experienced this dropped frame rate style was in Tron Uprising, because of course it was, and...I hated it. I could not for the life of me get over it. It looked so stilted, unnatural, and a touch lazy if I was being unusually cruel. Yet surprisingly, I barely even noticed it here it looks so fluid and has that rich comic book look to it, text boxes and all so I am honest to God thrilled I didn't hate it and maybe it will grow on me in other media. The soundtrack while very modern and almost entirely unknown to me still worked, though you can bet your ass when Biggie Smalls and the f***ing St. Elmo's Fire theme started playing I was jammin' like nobody's business. And yeah, we have to talk about Stan. Turns out I was wrong about the Teen Titans Go movie and this was the last one he had, and holy hell even to a person like me it still cut a bit. Just because I'm not exactly the biggest fan of Marvel or the MCU doesn't mean that I don't like Stan Lee, I have too much respect and admiration for the man to do such a thing. He always said that anyone could wear the suit, and the message at the end that anyone can be a superhero is incredibly true even if you're not inspired by the stories superheroes have. One of my favorite reviewers, like ever, said that superheroes are the modern day knight errants. They go out and do good deeds, help people, and right wrongs. And I will fully say there is not enough stories out there about the positive impact of superheroes, it's either about heroes punching one another or some ultra super mega earth shattering event, and that just isn't the right thing to focus on. This movie did it right though. And really and truly, it has my deepest respect for that. 4 stars, 8/10, I'll see you tomorrow.