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Into the Spider-verse

What I liked: I guess I should not be surprised that a movie called the Spider-verse includes every reference to Spiderman ever. The surprising part was that all the references were all presented with the right level of humor so that I liked the Spiderman dance, to the constant origin story re-telling, the ridiculous merchandise, the spider songs, and of course the whole spider family. I really liked all the costumes, both spidey costumes and villain costumes. Prowler was nicely ominous and Doc Ock had a nice twist, the arms appeared to be a pneumatic system which makes them nicely compressible and lightweight so they would fit in an airline overhead bin, The pneumatic system also gives me some concerns about storing the arms in the same suit compartment as their buzzsaw attachments, but I am not a brilliant physicist. I liked the ridiculous onsie and the graffiti. It was fun to have all the iterations of a hero: the new comer trying to figure out the powers, the standard amazing hero, the washed up jaded hero, the over the top hero. The animation style was really interesting and definitely captured the comic book feeling and it was pretty fun when they incorporated multiple styles from the the different dimensions. Any movie that includes the line "That is a terrible plan!" is a winner  in my book. A close second was "Kid, drop the body" and the acknowledgement that the spidey shed was pretentious. I laughed a lot in this movie and had a good time.

What I didn't: Let's just appreciate for a moment the absurdity of gathering all iterations of spiderpowered heroes from all different continuities and dimensions together. Let us further appreciate that in all of the wide possible universes Aunt May lives in the same house, making her easy to find. Kingpin has a relatively reasonable plan and motivation but no one knows why all the other villains are on board. Isn't Prowler supposed to be a Spiderman ally? He made a good villain, I was just surprised he switched sides suddenly. I'm not totally sure what Doc Ock's plan was. She started off seeming like she might be concerned about creating a blackhole that would tear the universe apart and at least aware that other effects would be less than permanent. But then she goes all in with the let's destroy the universe plan and she doesn't even seem to be getting anything out of it. I just feel like if I were going to destroy the universe I would at least want a commemorative T-shirt or something. Scorpion isn't too bright so that's understandable but what was green goblin's excuse? Tombstone and Kingpin did not have cool outfits, they should have been upset since they were hanging out with villains with great costumes (and theme music).  I am concerned about a lot of foundations in New York. I'm pretty sure Aunt May's house and Fisk Tower were compromised but really given the size of construction and explosions, there is probably widespread structural damage and given the number of scientists and engineers in the spider canon, you would think they would dig out someone else's foundation rather than their own. I didn't like the out of focus animation effect, it was disorienting and used a little bit too much.

Who should watch this? This is a fun movie for kids and adults. There are a few deaths for reference setting the kid age cut off. It is fun for people who know lots about Spiderman and people who don't.

Would I watch it again? I had a lot of fun, I would be happy to watch it again.

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