OVP: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Film: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Stars: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Lily Tomlin, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage, Brian Tyree Henry, Liev Schrieber, Kimiko Glenn, Chris Pine, Oscar Isaac
Director: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Animated Feature Film*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We close out our look at the animated feature nominees of 2018 (if you missed our other articles click this link to peruse past nominees in the category & past discussions of this specific Oscar race) with the movie that actually won the trophy.  In the year where Black Panther broke ground and became the first proper superhero movie to win an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, the animators' branch also broke ground and gave out their first Oscar to a traditional superhero (technically Big Hero 6 was the first comic book film to win this award, but it didn't do so as a well-known tentpole).  Spider-Man may be the most oversaturated Marvel character in the movies (give or take Wolverine), and so seeing such a character win the Oscar either meant that the Academy was crying "uncle" & giving in to the hoards, or it was a nod that we'd finally found a movie that was worthy of such an honor.  Thankfully for us, it was the latter as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has things to say, and does them beautifully.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on teenager Miles Morales (Moore), an "average" teenager who fights with his father (Henry) and worships his cool, seemingly harmless uncle Aaron (Ali).  One day, while hanging out with his uncle, Miles is bitten in the subway by a radioactive spider and becomes, well, you know the story of Spider-Man.

This is, however, where the story of Spider-Man retreats from the "Uncle Ben/Aunt May/Gwen Stacy/Mary Jane Watson" story so well-known that only Martha & Thomas Wayne can feel the same level of nausea for having had to live through the Groundhog Day of a situation over-and-over again.  Instead, we get a relatively complex (especially for an animated film that is at least on-the-surface targeting younger audiences) introduction to a multiverse, where multiple different people are playing some version of Spider-Man (Johnson, Steinfeld, Mulaney, Glenn, Cage, Pine, & Isaac all take on the role in various guises ranging from the traditional Peter Parker to Peter Porker, a porcine version that is voiced by Mulaney & is probably the film's greatest comedic highlight).  We also get a host of different villains (including Kingpin, Prowler, Scorpion, & Green Goblin), with Kingpin serving as the big baddie of this film, but unlike almost any other comic book picture that has too many villains and too many heroes, it doesn't crush under its own weight.

This is because there are two true threads in the film that continue to carry it forward.  The first is the relationship between Miles & his father, complicated but filled with unspoken love, Henry & Moore both play this relationship with a realism that is so alien to animated features.  I loved the reality of a teenage Moore, who had clearly adored his father just a few short years ago, trying to reconcile his relationship with himself and his new idols with that of his old one, his police officer father.  That he chooses, in his own way, to pursue a similar line-of-work is handled in a way that never borders into cliche, and actually ends up being a cool story.  This "accept the world you live in" message is abundant throughout the film, but it perhaps comes across best with Miles realizing the family he has is the one he needs to swear to protect, and it genuinely feels fresh rather than a retread.

Perhaps the more fascinating element of the picture might be the visual feast we're given throughout the movie.  Gorgeously animated (hats off to the trio of directors who pulled this movie together), the picture combines multiple different animation and drawing styles to create a sumptuous banquet of colors and characters.  I was obviously partial to Cage's Spider-Man Noir, but the battle with Kingpin with a swirling vortex of color and sound is splendid, and even in a year where Pixar put out a movie & Wes Anderson was crafting very distinct cities in Isle of Dogs, it's hard to argue that the film wasn't the most breathtaking animation we saw on screens in 2018.