I am a massive Spider-man fan, my current favourite film of all time is Sam Rami’s Spider-Man 2, and I love all the other live action movies that have come out so far since (maybe excluding The Amazing Spider-Man movies but i’m due a rewatch of those). To say how much of a fan I am, it’s honestly surprising that I hadn’t seen this film yet given how well regarded it is, but I hadn’t seen it on streaming until now so I decided to wait. Now the film is on Amazon Prime though, I decided to give it a shot and see what all the hype is about.
This movie has a really intriguing and (At time of its release) unique and exciting idea of combining different spider-people from different dimensions together to fight a huge threat. This is an awesome idea for fans of the comics I feel because they are more familiar with stuff like this, but for (pre No Way Home) movie fans I think it’s even cooler because it’s so alien and new. Miles Morales is the of course the leading protagonist for this thing, i had always heard he was a great and fun character, but I knew next to nothing about him beyond that though. Have to say that I loved Miles in this thing, he’s such a grounded and real feeling person which helps make this film relatable when it’s such a wacky idea with such a crazy art style. Without Miles I don’t think this film would’ve worked anywhere near as well as it does, because his development as a character and learning of how to utilise the powers of the Spider, make for such an interesting viewing and makes him an extremely gripping and grounded character. When watching this movie I found myself not caring as much for the other characters, villains and plot, and most of what I was loving was to do with Miles and how he is being developed throughout the film.
While I would definitely consider Miles the main character of the film, he is certainly not the only protagonist as we of course have all the other spider-people too. First off there’s the first Peter Parker from Miles’ dimension, who we may not get to see a whole lot of but his role is probably the most crucial, excluding Miles Morales himself. Peter 1 is basically only in the film to die, which sounds a bit pointless but it’s this event that starts the spiral of events and kickstarts Miles’ development from zero to hero. Then there’s Peter 2, who while I do feel is probably the least interesting of the lot (because he’s just very average), is still great because he acts as Miles’ tutor, and their dynamic once Peter 2 stops being an ass hole is wonderful and electric. Gwen Stacey is easily my favourite spider-person, other than Miles. She is such a likeable and cool character, and her role in this is just lovely as she acts as a badass, but also feels real, which helps humanise the group at times, particularly Miles. The pig is my least favourite of the lot… Just fukcing stupid let’s face it. Then there’s the noir Spider-man, who I loved, I thought the idea was really cool and interesting, the performance from the voice actor was great and he looked really awesome too. I do like that character, but I will admit that he didn’t do a whole lot, in fact he probably did / said less than the shitting pig. And finally there’s Peri, who was just sort of in the background for the most part, she was somewhat fun, and I thought her hacking ability was cool, but outside of that she didn’t have a whole lot of purpose really.
The villains of this film are where my main issues with it lie if I’m honest. The main problem is that there’s just too much going on, there were so many villains, all of which had their cool aspects but in this film felt overshadowed by each other and none of them ended up standing out in my opinion. Kingpin was the main villain, leading the force against the Spider-people, I think the look of KIngpin is great and he looks really menacing, but nothing about what he does makes me see him as terrifying or threatening really. It’s difficult because everything from the look and the voice actor are great, and the villain himself is cool (thinking about Daredevil anyway)L but he just doesn’t really do enough in this to feel threatening… Which is kinda odd because he causes the death of the first Peter Parker. Dock Ock is also underwhelming too, maybe it’s just because I adore Lfred Molina’s performance as the character in the live action films, but I do think that this version of the character feels a bit too comical to be threatening, and I also hate the design because it feels too weirdly organic, rather than technological. Scorpion was definitely my favourite villain in the film, this is my first time seeing this villain and he’s quite cool… so much so that I’d love to see him in live action one day if they could make it work. And the last main villain was Miles’ uncle, Aaron. When in the suit, Aaron is probably the most threatening of the villains I think, but the thing I love most about him is when it’s revealed he’s Aaron, it lends to this idea that Kingpin has control of so many people, and it turns the fight into a more personal one for Miles Morales.
The big thing about this film that sets it apart from others is that it’s animated, and more specifically the art style they went with for it. I have mixed feelings on the animation though, I think visually it looks absolutely stunning, The use of all the colour and the comic stylisation is just awesome and it looks amazing. My only issue with the animation style is the way it’s actually animated, because while I think the stop motion style is unique and interesting, it made for a jarring watch I think and sometimes made action scenes hard for me to follow. It wasn’t a big issue because the film still looks incredible, but it was a noticeable problem though. The soundtrack was great too, don’t have much to say on it but I did wanna mention that it was excellent.
Overall, I liked this film, and I can see why it’s as loved as it is, but I do think it’s quite overrated to be honest. The stuff that works best in this film is all the personal aspects, showcasing Miles’ character development and his transition into becoming Spiderman. But I do feel it’s bogged down a lot by all the multiverse stuff, the other Spider-People feel like wasted potential, and there are so many villains that it just feels crammed with too much stuff. If this film had focussed solely on Miles and Peter 1, I think it could’ve been fantastic and could’ve wonderfully lead into the Spider-Verse in it’s sequel, but instead what we get is a mess that is trying to be too many things at once. It’s far from a bad film, it’s just not as great as people claim it to be in my opinion.
Writers' Room Reviews 