When I first heard they were working on an animated Spider-Man movie I thought "Okay, might be fun," but really did not think of it as anything big.
The trailers came out and I thought "Okay, this looks better than I was expecting," yet I was still not taking it too seriously. I had little faith they were going to do anything special with it. I figured it would be just another attempt at Sony Pictures getting their money's worth from having the rights to Spider-Man cinematic universe. They have been so hit or miss with what they have done with it so far, I was not seeing a full animated movie as being promising from them.
So now on Rotten Tomatoes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has 62 reviews and is at 100%. Now that is a truly rare event. Normally by 62 reviews there are a few who didn't like a movie, no matter how good it is. Several reviews call it the best animated movie of the year, which is saying a lot. A Sony Pictures animated film is getting better critical attention that anything from Disney and Dream Works... Okay, maybe this is going to be a much better film than I thought. I had originally planned to hold off until it made it to DVD, but now I'm thinking I'll have to see it in the theater.
For those who don't know, I'll give a quick explanation of what the Spider-Verse is.
In Marvel comics, there are an endless amount of alternate dimensions and from time to time their basic characters get to explore these alternate realities. Well a few years ago Marvel did a huge comic book event where they explored a great deal of alternate versions of Spider-Man/Woman/Pig/Monkey/Robot. Many had been introduced before, but there was also a huge batch of fully new ones such as Spider-Punk and fan favorite Spider-Gwen. It was a lot of fun and I felt a well done story line. The concept is that there are 'Spider-totems' in the various realities as part of a greater balance.
Right now they are running a follow up story with some new Spider-person created for it. Not as epic as the first one, but it has so far been fun.
Now the main character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is Mile Morales, who was an established Spider-Man well before the events of the original Spider-Verse. In the comics there was an alternate world called the Ultimates Universe, which was what the Avengers of that world were called. In that reality Peter Parker was the original Spider-Man, but ended up dying. In the aftermath Miles Morales ends up taking up the identity. After various big, cosmic events that rearranged realities, that universe has been merged with the main Marvel Universe and Miles Morales is Spider-Man, but the original Peter Parker Spider-Man is still doing his thing as well. So we now have two heroes calling themselves Spider-Man running around and some times teaming up.
From what I have seen, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is not going to follow any of that though. While it is clearly using the characters and the basic concept, the story appears to be fully its own fresh take.
Right now the plan is to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in the theater to see if it does live up to the reviews. I'm sure I'll enjoy it no matter what, but there does seem to be some high expectations being placed on it now.
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