2018: The Year of the Spider

So this year we had two of the Spider-Man franchise’s most successful offerings, in the forms of a video game and an animated movie.

Into the Spider-Verse is a funny, trippy, visual delight.  It’s probably my favorite Spider-Man movie to date.  The animation is amazing, with a comic book style that never stops being impressive.  The characters from the different universe have their own animation styles as well, making things even crazier.  The writing is hilarious – I wasn’t expecting the movie to be so funny, and for me that was going the extra mile.  This movie would have sold well based on the visuals alone, but they put in the effort to give it a good script.  It’s also very self-aware.  At one point my wife pointed out an overused trope during the movie, only for the movie’s characters to point it out as well five minutes later.

The Spider-Man video game is equally impressive.  There’s not much I can add to the hundreds of glowing reviews out there, but I still want to give it its due praise.  The graphics are beautiful, the controls are intuitive (for the most part), and the overall sense of freedom is one of the best things I’ve experienced since GTA3.  Between missions I love just swinging around the city at different times of day, seeing what sort of trouble I can get into.  I always wanted to play something with the feel of a GTA game, but where you’re the good guy.  To be fair, some of the previous Spider-Man games used a similar template, but this one’s execution is nearly flawless.  Okay, so there are a few special moves that make me feel like I need extra fingers, but that’s a tiny quibble against an otherwise wonderful game.

It's especially funny to me because both the movie and the game were produced by Sony.  After the MCU’s “Homecoming” blew Sony’s “Amazing” series out of the water, it seemed like Spidey was at his best when kept in Marvel’s loving hands.  It almost feels like this is Sony’s way of saying, “We can do better, just give us another chance!”  Granted, they also gave us Venom this year, so they haven’t totally figured out what works and what doesn’t.  But at least there’s hope, now, that more quality Sony offerings are on the way.

All right, Sony, make with the Spider-Gwen movies and games!