2018 Rental Roundup 3: Into the Spider-Verse, Ralph Breaks the Internet

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

All right, people, let’s do this one last time.

A movie based on my favorite comic book event of all time, 2014’s 36-issue “Spider-Verse”. It was a glorious celebration of Spider-Man’s history from his TV shows to his many side characters and status quos to his Hostess Fruit Pie ads. It wasn’t pitch perfect, but it was such an embarrassment of riches that I didn’t need much perfection.

Distilling that all down into a newcomer-friendly movie could have really blown up in Sony’s face. Thank goodness somebody decided to just staple the Spider-Verse concept onto a Miles Morales origin story and not worry about the Web of Life and Captain Britain Corps and Spider Totems and Clone Sagas and the Inheritors of Reality and such. Miles in the main man. There’s a minor focus on two more Spiders, with four others deeper in the background as the story unfolds. And then two more in a post-credits sequel tease.

2018’s Best Animated Feature Academy Award winner is the real deal, folks. And Sony would do well to give up on live action and franchise the heck out of the endlessly renewable concept of the many, many alternate-universe Spider-Men

Granted, iteration would make some of the nice little touches more pedestrian. A good example is in the visuals: Once you get past the main trio of Spider-Men (and Woman), the remaining Spider-…People each have a unique animation style to make them clash with the world they’re in… even down to their framerates.

(Though creating the space to differentiate the framerates of people and things from other universes has left Miles’ home turf obnoxiously janky.)

Verdict: Must See (5/5). Looks like Sony caught the old DC bug; the people running their animation studio have all the good writers.

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Ralph Wrecks Breaks the Internet

Remember the first movie’s bookending with the-same-thing-happens-every-day montages? It turns out the second one continued for 6 years. We missed nothing before the sequel started.

But Ralph Breaks the Internet isn’t about stagnation. It’s about learning to embrace change, taking risks and growing as a person. Somehow.

It’s also about trying to guess who paid whom for all the real-names used in the Internet portion of the movie. Hint: Google ain’t playing.

What’s refreshing in the movie is that there really isn’t an antagonist. There’s a race against the clock, and some proper man vs. self stuff going on, but every time we meet a new character online (except Mr. KnowsMore), I was expecting them to become the bad guy. And not in the Zangeif way.

I mean, it’s the Internet, right? I was shocked that everybody wasn’t out to get Ralph and Vanellope.

In the end, we get a lot of Internet jokes that, while they won’t have a permanent shelf life, are about as evergreen as an Internet reference can be. We also got an opportunity, as seen in the trailers, for some quick friendly fire on classic Disney movies (voiced by mostly the original cast, because when the Mouse says “jump,” you ask “how high?”).

It’s disappointing that Fix-It Felix Jr. and Sgt. Tamora Jean Calhoun were heavily sidelined in this movie after having such a fun B-plot in the first. It seems like they were trying to have a B-plot back at the arcade, but it either mostly got cut or just simply didn’t develop in scripting.

Verdict Go for it (4/5). It’s got a lot of mature lessons without being too preachy, even if it’s a little over-the-top getting there.