Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
March 18, 2019
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack
Before Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse was released, there was some trepidation among the fans. It wasn’t connected to the MCU and Sony’s non-MCU Spider-Man offerings have been weak to awful. However, the film earned stunning reviews and even went on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Is it as good as this? Or was it praised because it topped low, low expectations by such a large degree?
The film begins with a short prologue where Peter Parker talks about being Spider-man and how much he loves it.
We then meet Miles Morales, a typical Brooklyn teenager who used to go to a typical Brooklyn school. However, he got lucky and got a lotto scholarship to a boarding school in town. To be more accurate, his father and mother think he got a lucky break, but he hates going to this school and is trying to flunk out. Things start to look up when he meets a girl, Gwanda.
That night, instead of doing his assigned homework, Miles heads over to his Uncle Aaron’s place. They chat about things at school and how Miles doesn’t have any game. Uncle Aaron decides to take Miles on a little adventure to a room below a subway station, somewhere where he can practice his art of graffiti. Once done, Miles is bitten by a spider, but thinks nothing of it.
The next day, things get weird. I’m not going to go into details, but “weird” is an understatement, especially when pigeons are involved. To figure out what’s going on, Miles decides to head back underground to figure out what happened with that spider. He wants to confirm that was just a normal spider. It wasn’t. He continues to explore the place, but before he can get answers, he runs into the middle of a fight between Spider-man and the Green Goblin. Spider-man manages to save Miles at one point and realizes Miles has powers. (I guess Spider-sense can sense that.) He offers to help Miles train so he can use his powers effectively, but he has to destroy a massive particle collider first. Unfortunately, the Prowler is there to stop Spider-man from ruining the Kingpin’s plans, which involve opening parallel dimensions. The machine is activated, but during the fight, Spider-man is pushed into the beam causing instabilities, to put it mildly.
There’s an explosion and Spider-man is badly wounded. He asks Miles to finish the job by inserting a USB drive into a control panel, but before Miles can do that, the Kingpin finds Spider-man and kills him. Miles manages to escape the Prowler and make his way home, but the next day he knows what he has to do. He has to become the new Spider-man. He just needs a teacher. That’s when he meets Peter B. Parker, who was a Spider-man but from another dimension.
Apparently there are a lot of them, but we’ve hit heavy spoiler territory at this point.
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is a hard movie to review, because there is nothing that truly doesn’t work, so there’s almost nothing meaty to talk about. The closest I could see to a legitimate complaint is the animation style, which is certainly stylish. The film mixes 3D and 2D animation and takes additional steps to stand out. There is a lot of animating on the twos, which is when you only animate every one in two frames. This makes the action less smooth, but gives it an illustrated look. The film takes this further by using comic book paneling and even using captions for Miles’ inner monologue, for example. Furthermore, different characters are animated in different styles. It all adds up to create one of the most styles animated films you will see. However, it might be too stylish for some people.
At this point, one could assume the film’s style overtakes its substance, but that is not the case. The film has one of the deepest stories of any super hero movie to date. Granted, it is an origin story, so it does deal in some of the clichés that genre has to offer, but the film has a fresh enough cast of characters that even this wasn’t a real problem. Miles isn’t your typical super hero, as he is both interracial and bilingual. Additionally, there are not one, but two female heroes in this movie, while the roster of villains is also diverse. In other words, the movie world is as diverse as the real New York city and this diversity is celebrated in the film’s main theme, anyone can be Spider-man.
One last note, there’s a Stan Lee cameo in this movie; no surprise there. Normally these cameos are very funny. This time around, it’s devastating. His first line is “I’m going to miss him.” In the movie, he’s talking about Spider-man, but it applies just as much to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both of whom passed away last year.
There are two additional ways to watch the movie. The first is was with a filmmaker commentary track and the second is in an Alternate Universe Mode, which has deleted scenes, alternate characters, etc. There is also a short film with Spider-Ham called Caught in a Ham. We Are Spider-Man is an eight-minute look at the cast of characters and the message of the movie. Spider-verse: A New Dimension runs for five minutes and it is about the inventive look of the movie and how they tried to emulate the look of comic books. The Ultimate Comic Cast runs 15 minutes and is about the voice cast. Designing Cinematic Comic Book Characters: Heroes and Ham is an 8-minute look at the character design of the heroes, while Scoundrels and Scorpions runs for 5 minutes and looks at the villains. A Tribute to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko runs for nine minutes and it is exactly what it sounds like. The Spider-verse Super Fan Easter Egg Challenge is five minutes long and shows some of the Easter Eggs in the movie. Finally, there are two lyrics music videos.
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is the best animated film from 2018 and some are calling it the best super hero film of all time. I’m not going to go that far, but it is a must have for fans of either type of film. Additionally, the DVD / Blu-ray / 4K Ultra HD has more than enough extras to be a Pick of the Week contender.
Video on Demand (Movie Only)
Video on Demand (4K Ultra HD)
Video on Demand (With Bonuses)
The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Marvel Cinematic Universe