Review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) by Nikolayg — 15 Dec 2018

A visually beautiful, superbly crafted, well acted, Spider-Man movie that encapsulates all the crazy multi-universe stuff that's been going on in Peter Parker's world (or I should say, worlds) in the Marvel comic books for the past couple of decades. I would give it a 10 for its heart, it's capturing of the various character personalities, and the skill with which it introduces us to the complex tapestry of multiple universe stuff while still finding plenty of time to tell a good story.

However, I take off two points (I was tempted to take off 5) for one gigantic, and I mean gigantic, gaffe.

If you've kept up with the Spider-Man comics, you know there are multiple parallel universes within the Marvel scheme of things, each one with tweaks and modifications: in one, Peter Parker died and Miles Morales was then bitten by a super duper spider and became Spider-Man; in another, Gwen Stacy was bitten by the spider and became the super hero; her Peter Parker died, too. In our universe, of course, the biggest event in comic book history took place some years back. Gwen Stacy, to whom Peter Parker was engaged, was murdered before his very eyes by the Green Goblin. Spider-Man comics have reiterated and revisited and reminded us of this tragedy consistently ever since. Everyone knows about it. In fact, part of the reason the comic book telling the adventures of parallel universe Gwen has been so successful, is because it is so wonderful to see a version of Gwen who is still alive and, who to boot, is a super hero in her own right.

So it is nothing short of bizarre when in the movie, Peter Parker, our universe Peter Parker, doesn't even recognize his fiancee's twin from another dimension. She recognizes him, but he's oblivious. This just doesn't make sense. It's like a parallel universe version of Lois Lane showing up and Superman not recognizing her. It's a gaffe the size of the Grand Canyon. And a huge disappoint in what was otherwise an nearly perfect comic book movie.