The Ultimate Comic Book Crossover

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2019)

Over the last 16 years we've seen a lot of takes on Spider-Man, from three different actors, who were all good in their own ways. Now comes the most original and imaginative take yet, with no less than six version of Spider-Man, including Spider-Man Noire, Spider Gwen, Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham, and of course Miles Morales, Ultimate Spider Man.
The basic premise is that multiple versions of Spider Man from different universes meet up and unite against a common foe so that they can get home and prevent the walls of reality from crashing down. This will all make more sense if you have some familiarity with the comics, particularly Ultimate Spider Man and the recent Spider-Verse crossover. But even if you've never cracked a comic it's easy enough to follow. Which is pretty impressive given that this movie has six heroes, six major villains, and a complex plot that hinges on theories of the multiverse. Narratively this movie does a really good job of covering a lot of ground in very little time.
And it knows that not every character needs a lengthy origin story. In fact, the ones we do get become something of a running joke. And there are a lot of good jokes in this movie. Much like Tom Holland in Homecoming, Miles is hilariously awkward and inexperienced. His hallway encounter with Gwen is simultaneously one of the best, and most cringeworthy, meet cutes in recent years. There are plenty of jokes at the expense of Peter B Parker's visible paunch, and much is made of how (literally) black and white Spider Man Noire is. And Spider-Ham is downright hysterical.
The action scenes are fast paced and frantic, with the almost hallucinatory final battle being a real treat. Add in some standard but well-done family drama, some suspenseful close calls regarding the heroes' secret identities, and some genuinely surprising plot twists, and you get a well-rounded, highly entertaining picture.
The only real complaint I have is about the animation. For the most part it's quite good. I particularly enjoyed how Spider-Ham and some of the others are frequently animated in their original comic book style. But there are some times where the character's faces look sort of lifeless and well, weird. And in some of the faster paced action scenes, people and objects seemed to go slightly out of focus and blur around the edges. At first, I thought I'd walked into a 3D screening by mistake, but a quick scan showed that nobody else had on those funky glasses either. Maybe they were trying to go for a "motion comic" look, or maybe it was just the projector, but either way it was rather annoying.
As to whether this is the best Spider-Man movie yet, I honestly don't know. Homecoming set the bar pretty high. And it had Tony Stark. But this movie has Spider-Gwen. And a talking pig. And it's a wildly ambitious crossover that succeeds at all of its goals. It may be part of a well-worn genre, but Into the Spider-Verse has a lot more vision, wit, and originality than most movies this year. DC take note.