Fun watch pretty much, even it misses real emotion and significant depth

Rating: 6/10 (1 July 2019)

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" is an American animated movie from 2018, so still relatively new and fresh and actually this was the dominating film at awards ceremonies last year from the genre. It won the BAFTA, Golden Globe and eventually Oscar as well, not to mention managing a rare clean sweep for all its nominated categories at the Annie Awards. I will spare you the names of the many writers and directors here, as you can check them out for yourself, but the voice cast sure was spectacular. Lead actor Moore is not too famous and Johnson (who voices Peter Parker) is probably also only known to New Girl fans, but Steinfeld, Ali, Tomlin, maybe Pine and of course Nicholas Cage (Kick-Ass anybody?) should really be known to non-film buffs too. Maybe a few others as well. I mean there wasn't a voice performance that really stood out, but they were all rock-solid. Maybe American viewers will recognize them better. In terms of their voices. Or won't because they did such a great job. Let me say initially that I watched the version that runs for under 2 hours slightly and not the one that gets closer to the 2.5-hour mark. Still a fairly long movie for the animation genre. But it never feels that long, it rolls really smoothly thanks to a good story at its core, constant comedic delight and distraction, memorable characters as well as great attention to detail. There are only minor criticisms I have here. One would be that the father-son story struggled for a long time to really become as significant as they wanted it to be, even if right from the beginning there are solid comedic moments like when he takes him to school and says something like "I love you" in front of everybody and towards the end, it is also nice as well. Another, maybe my biggest, was that really how he developed his strengths and talents felt way too sudden. There should be a slow path to his craft where we see him struggle and fail with using his webs, his invisibility, his electric shocks etc. but it was fairly rushed. Oh yeah, and I was a bit confused Gwen Stacy was also the alternate universe Spider Man really. Or the part about his dad hating Spider-Man.
So much for the negative, now for the positive: This film was looots of fun all in all. Many highly enjoyable sequences and those that did not do too much for me, like the big battle scene vs. Kingpin towards the end were at least visually on a truly high level. You can also see that the film does not take itself too seriously although it had the right to do so. Kingpin's looks are the best example. And then the 4(?) alternate universe Spider Mans. I mean the anime girl was so much fun and it was actually pretty sad when she lost her vehicle near the end and also to see how they were bonding with her and understood her pain. Film noir Spidey (Cage) was a lot of fun with his Rubik's Cube. Spider Woman was good too, even if the female character that impressed me more was Olivia Octavius, maybe also because of how surprising it was they went for a female version of her. In general, the film used many interesting references from the franchise, Green Goblin has a brief presence, Doc Ock is in it for longer. The losing one's uncle part is of course a memorable parallel and still I did not see it coming. I wonder who Spidey Pig lost. By the way, if you thought Spider Pig was already amazing in the Simpsons movie, then you will be amazed by this one here. Oh god he even is a cannibal as we see on one occasion, but he has really many fun moments. The film's wit and courage can be seen so many times. The best example is probably that Peter Parker dies early on in here and somewhat ironically, this is the moment when he really enters the movie (from another dimension) and is seen constantly on screen to be somewhat of a teacher, but more than that, actually more of a friend in fact to the one who is about to take PP's place in this new dimension. This crucial story point of Miles being bitten around the same time when Parker dies was one of the best things about the film. There again it is not a special moment or so, he just pushes the spider away as if it was nothing. Funnily enough this is when it all started when he was hanging around with his uncle, later on his enemy, but still beloved. The one thing missing here was perhaps Jonah Jameson or maybe he was also in it so brief that I missed him. I think not though.
I already mentioned the great attention to detail. This applies to the moments when the film moves forward story-wise, but also these small moments, be it a hommage to Stan Lee that most Avengers movies can only dream of quality-wise, the most funny pig comment with the actual pig standing right next to them or just really minor things like talk about "great expectations" literature-wise vs. no expectations. No idea why I remembered this so closely. I think usually these films stand and fall with the main antagonist, but this is really more about becoming a hero and defeating the bad guy on the way. Kingpin is okay, but he never truly steals the show. Also interesting his own background story why he wants to open the portal to another dimension not knowing that even if he can get his wife and son back this way, they are still doomed, so everything is lost in any case for him. Now looking at the animation, it was good overall in terms of characters, pretty spectacular in terms of special effects on many occasions and to me it did look a bit like a video game in the calmer more restrained moments. By the way, most random snippet of information, there is also an actress names Morales in here. You could also think that there is more of a focus on ethnicity with the protagonist being a mix of Black and Hispanic, but there really isn't and I certainly liked that. No need to shove any forced messages into our face here and make a cringeworthy try-hard impact to fit in with the current political climate. Instead, the film elaborates on friendship and togetherness more than anything else and another great idea behind it all is that this film does not take place in the dimension where Peter Parker is key. Or at least not after he dies. It does not take place in the dimension where we live in, even if it feels this way sometimes. Now overall, a really good film and almost a must-see for animation lovers. It is definitely better than the very overrated Incredibles sequel from last year that did a lot wrong that this film here did right. I still think it is maybe not as outstanding as you could think from all the awards recognition it received and also if you take a look at the rating here on imdb. Sure, during its best moments it is better than 3 stars out of 5, but all in all, that sounds pretty accurate to me as the really big emotions they sometimes tried to go for weren't really evoked when it comes to my subjective perception. Also not by any definition the best animated movie of all time, which it was here on imdb for a while. It is pretty revolutionary with the idea of different dimensions and the execution, but Top10 is the limit I'd say. And it's not my favorite Spider-Man movie either. That would still be Maguire's first vs. Dafoe. Perhaps it is approximately on par with the sequel there. All, in all a positive recommendation with no hesitation, just don't expect true greatness.