Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Official Australian release date: 13/12/18. Viewed: 14/1/19.

Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Actors: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: PG

     

‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ doesn’t really fit into the MCU, but it doesn’t need to – it works as a stand-alone animated film, so long as you have some knowledge of the Spider-man world. That’s what this film does well – stay true to Spider-Man’s character, but have multiple versions fighting to save the world. It’s PG, but there’s not too much violence. There is, however, plenty of multi/parallel universe/reality issues, so be prepared to try to explain that to kids!

Basically, Miles (Moore) lives in a world where the Kingpin (Schreiber) kills Spider-Man while using a supercollider to try & bring his family back to life. The supercollider creates a rift in the space/time continuum, resulting in multiple Spider-people being taken from their universes – slightly-older Peter Parker (Johnson), Spider-Women/Gwen (Steinfeld), Spider-Ham (Mulaney), Spider-Man Noir (Cage) and a manga Peni Parker (Glenn). Miles has only just been bitten by a spider and is dealing with some family troubles with his Dad (Tyree Henry) and Uncle Aaron (Ali), when all this is trust upon him. It’s up to him to help the original Spider-Man and all the alternate Spider-people to get them home and defeat Kingpin and Dr Octopus (Hahn).

The film does a great job of bringing in familiar faces – Aunt May (Tomlin), Mary Jane (Kravitz), Gwen, Kingpin, Dr Ock, Green Goblin, Scorpion – and a very fitting final cameo from Stan Lee. All the other Spider-people are distinct and have their moments. There’s some excellent animation and a nice mixture of comic-book scenes and some nice emotional moments. Great ending & I’m glad there’s a female Spider-Woman and black Spider-man for kids to look up to now. Also a nice tribute to Spider-Man creators Stan Lee & Steve Ditko at the end – timely since they both passed in 2018. This film would’ve made them both proud.

Overall: A fun, different, great comic-book film.

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.