‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ is one of 2018’s most entertaining films

Posted on December 21, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

I’ve often lamented over the years the death of traditional, hand-drawn animation in feature films, but one complaint that I haven’t really voiced is the fact that with all of the major studios now exclusively producing computer-generated animated features, they all pretty much look alike.

Sure, the character designs vary considerably from one film to the next, but the essential look of the movies is the same. One of the few radically different feature animated films was “The LEGO Movie,” and its spin-offs, which used computer animation to quite flawlessly replicate stop-motion animation, making everything look like it was made using actual LEGO blocks.

So, it’s not surprising that its writers and directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were also involved with Sony Animation’s latest effort, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which is the most visually unique film to hit theaters from a major domestic studio since the advent of computer animation.

Even better, the movie, based on a very unusual run of the “Spider-Man” comics, delivers a hilarious and heartfelt story that just might be one of the best “Spider-Man” films to date, including the live-action ones.

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