Ian Huang

YOO it’s Ian, and this time we’re doing a movie review. This is out of my expertise, so I’m excited. Today, we’re looking at Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I’ll start with what I liked. The first 30 min was very enjoyable for me. Miles is a cool character and definitely a relatable teen kid. I liked the whole family dynamic with the dad that joined the force and uncle who miles is more comfortable around. Of course, it would be criminal of me if I did not mention the ultra-tight visuals, animation, editing style, and music. It’s all packaged up into such a clean product that is a joy to experience. Unfortunately, my biggest problem with this movie was the plot. I think multiverse movies are very hard to pull off because when you have so much going on from different worlds colliding into one, it makes it much harder to give depth to everything. For me, the Spider-verse essentially became a lot of fan-service (not the sexual definition). Which is fine, it was enjoyable to see all the different Spider-people do their things, I just wasn’t very invested in them—not even Beta Peter Parker or Gwen—because there was not much bonding time between those two and Miles. I think they could’ve done that in exchange for the appearances of Anime Parker, Bacon Parker, and Noir (Noir is actually sick btw, picking Nicholas Cage for the job was perfect). Another thing was just that some moments were just not very believable or weren’t explained very well, such as all the spiders figured out to gather in Aunt May’s house or Miles’ invisibility and shocking powers appearing out of nowhere. For that, they didn’t even take the time to understand how it happened or how to control it, just accepted it. The motivation for Big Chunk the Villain went by a little too quickly as well; we’re only given a flashback to his family’s death, and now we’re supposed to believe that he persuaded hundreds of people to help him build a multidimensional machine just to bring those two people back? It’s just not very believable, in my opinion. I didn’t feel much tension from him as an antagonist. A tension I DID feel, however, was between Miles and Gwen. Scratch what I said about her before, I do kind of care about her. Even though I’m already pretty sure they get closer in the next movie romantically, I could feel what the directors were trying to set up with their 1-second too-long interactions and staring at each other. They’re just almost awkward together without it being cringe, and it makes me want to see them together more in the next movie. Oh, and Uncle Aaron’s death happened. We only saw one day of him and Miles together I believe, so I couldn’t feel awfully bad for him either. Overall, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a visual and editing masterpiece with a very awesome vibe and a relatable main character. The plot was iffy and hard to get invested in, but seeing the different Spider-people together was still fun nonetheless. This movie is still unlike any Spider-Man movie I’ve seen and I have to give it props for that. It’s getting an 8/10 from me, and I will be watching the sequel. Ian out.