Watched: July 3, 2019

Kegger Rating: 4 Star

MM Rating: 4 stars

Kegger’s Review:

I’ve been a fan of traditional animation for as long as I can remember.  I was a bit of a skeptic when it came to computer animation.  It wasn’t until Pixar came out with Toy Story that I fell in love with that style.  Motion capture wigged me out a little bit as well, until Polar Express came out – a story I absolutely love – and my interest increased with the latest Christmas Carol from Disney. 

I guess you could say that I’m more tentative than early adopter. 

When they said that this was a new type of animation, I was a little apprehensive.  Still, I thought if the story held up, it could win me over. 

So I entered into this viewing truly skeptical. 

After the first 10 minutes, I was having trouble.  The animation confused me, to be honest, and the story was, well, boring. 

(Quick aside here: I love being able to figure out the voice actors – and one of the early ones was a pleasure to determine!  Love this actor’s voice in animation, and I love that the actor appears in so many different types of movies, animation and live action.) 

But after 10 minutes something happened.  The story found itself, and I was drawn in.  More than that, the animation just flat out took off!  It was exciting, it was a mix between what could be considered traditional, with computer animation thrown in, and the comic book style just punched its way through to make it truly interesting. 

The story itself was close enough to the Spider-man canon that it didn’t feel completely off kilter, but I enjoyed the integration overall of the different universes. 

Overall – really good movie, and I’d watch it again to see if I could catch anything new! 

MM’s Review:

Holy slow opening, Batman! Oh, sorry. We’re not doing that one.

The animation is the clear star for the first half an hour or so. I was starting to wonder if that’s what captured everyone else’s attention, too, because it really is awesome. It reminded me a bit of Borderlands, but much higher quality. I’ve never seen an animated feature like it, and I loved it.

We’re doing an origin story, and those always start slow, but this one is definitely worth it. Once we’re introduced to the characters, the actual plot gets rolling, and it’s great. All of the voice acting is well done, there’s a lot of humor, and it doesn’t get too deep in the drama or message.

The climactic scene looses a lot of impact due to being really hard to follow. The art direction loses its crispness in favor of the “multiverse” theme, and things stopped making sense. We definitely still get payoff, but it’s more emotional, and not the action scene I’d been hoping for.

I was also hoping this movie’s different take on the hero would extend to triumphing over the litany of superhero flaws that are all caused by simple lack of communication. Is it really so hard to just explain something like, “Dude was dead when I got here?” Am I the only one who doesn’t need misunderstandings about our hero to feel their struggle?

Regardless, really good movie, and it sets us up Amazingly (see what I did there?) for future adventures.