Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

I’ve always wondered why some superheroes become well known while there are plenty of others that are known only to fans of comic books.  You might say that it has to do with exposure.  Wonder Woman had a TV show featuring Linda Carter in the titular role.  Superman has had all manner of movies in addition to the TV show.  But what is it about these superheroes that makes them more marketable?

Spider-Man is popular enough to have had several incarnations both in the comics and on the big screen.  This is the basic premise of Into the Spiderverse.  We start out with a regular kid named Miles Morales who looks up to his universe’s Spider Man, also known as Peter Parker.  When Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider, he gains powers similar to Peter’s.  Peter would train Miles except that Peter is killed by Wilson “Kingpin“ Fisk.

Not to worry, though.  That thing that Peter was trying to stop Kingpin from using happens to be a device that brings forth five other spider-like creatures:  Peter B. Parker, Peter Porker, Peni Parker, Spider-Man Noir and Gwen Stacy.  It’s up to the six of them to stop Kingpin from destroying reality.

So, you might be wondering what it’s like to watch a movie with seven different versions of Spider-Man.  Movies with that many main characters might seem a bit crowded.  We do get to see several different origin stores, even if each lasts only a minute.  Fortunately, it’s not done enough to get repetitive.

I will say that those who have seen other Spider-Man movies will catch at least one reference to another production, such as Spiderman hanging upside-down to get a kiss.  (I might have to keep checking back on the IMDb page to see if there are any new entries on the connections page.)  It also has a very comic-book feel to it, which I imagine was deliberate.  The animation is a little unusual, seeming almost realistic at times.

While I was watching the movie, I kept thinking that it might serve as a platform for spin-off movies.  What I’ve read about the movie confirms this.  The movie would seem to be sort of a back-door pilot.  There’s a good mix of characters to support the movie and would give the studio a chance to gauge the audience’s reaction to the movie.  I would hope that Miles Morales would get his own movie.  I’d also like to see Peter Porker, a.k.a. Spider-Ham have some sort of post-Spiderverse presence.

The plot wasn‘t as heavy as I would have expected.  There are a few chase scenes, but there wasn’t a strong threat.  It seemed more like it was setting Miles up to become Spiderman while getting a chance to show off a few of the different incarnations that Spider-Man has had.  It’s almost like some sort of meta-origin story.  This is one of those movies that seems more like a pilot to a TV show than a standalone movie.  (Of course, this makes sense given the talks of possible spin-offs.)

Spider-Man is accessible and well-known enough that most people will be able to follow the story.  The movie seems geared more towards a teenaged audience, but is good for parents, as well.  It’s exactly the kind of movie parents and kids could see together.  I’ll be checking back to see what happens with subsequent movies.  It definitely has franchise potential.

IMDb page

Sphere (1998)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.


WARNING:  I’m going to give away major plot points including the ending.  If you don’t like spoilers, you might want to watch the movie before reading this review.



Let’s say that you cleared away 300 years of coral growth and found a spaceship.  What would you do?  Well, you’d probably send down a team of experts to investigate.  Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson and Sharon Stone play Doctors Norman Johnson, Harry Adams and Elizabeth Halperin, respectively.  They, along with a few other scientists, go down to said ship.  It’s so far beneath the water that it takes special equipment to get there.  Since it’s so deep, a quick rescue won’t be that easy.

What they find is a big, golden, metallic sphere.  (It’s said to be a perfect sphere despite having obvious ripples on the surface.)  Dr. Adams is the first to go in to the sphere and come back out.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t recall anything about it.  Also quite unfortunate is that strange things start happening and those strange things put the people at risk.

What’s even stranger is that the ship has signs in both English and Spanish.  Also, there are several log entries with dates like 06/21/43.  The team realizes that they’re on an American ship from the future.  Because the date is so vague, there’s no way to know if it’s from 2043 or 9943.  However, from what they can tell, someone in the future launches a ship from Earth to collect strange and unusual objects from across the galaxy.

On or around 6/21/43, it comes across a black hole and is sent back in time, where it crash lands on Earth around the year 1698, give or take a few decades.  The logs refer to it an unknown event, which leads Dr. Adams to conclude that no one makes it off the ship alive.  He reasons that if they did make it off the ship alive, they’d report it to someone.  That someone would then record that they found the ship and those in the future would know what happened to their ship.

When a storm hits the surface, the team has to spend a week on the ship or an adjacent habitat.  This gives the team a week to worry about something going drastically wrong.  Someone has to put a special code into their vehicle so that it knows someone is still down there.  If not, it goes back up to the surface with whatever data they’ve collected, presumably leaving them stranded.  At the very least, this means that someone has to leave the safety and comfort of the ship and expose themselves to whatever dangers lurk several thousand feet below.

There are also those strange things I mentioned, like a giant octopus attacking the habitat.  One of the scientists is also attacked by jellyfish.  Then there’s the alien consciousness that’s communicating through the habitat’s computers.  This whole death and destruction thing is starting to look more and more likely.  It’s definitely not a good day for any of them to be claustrophobic.

Now, you’re probably wondering if the team makes it back out alive.  Some of the people do die, leaving Adams, Halperin and Johnson to figure out what’s going on.  The thing I don’t like about Adams’s prediction is that it will likely go one of two ways.  Either he’s right or he’s wrong.  There’s no definitive proof what happens to them, which is ironically his only proof that they don’t make it out alive.  Even if they do make it out alive, there’s no reason to think that the reports won’t get buried under tons of paperwork or be forgotten about.  (The ship could have been launched 500 years from now.  How accurate are our records from 500 years ago?)

Here’s where I spoil the ending.  They do make it out alive.  They have to be put in a decompression chamber, leaving them plenty of time to ponder how lucky they were to make it out alive, which leads Adams to wonder how that happened.  He figures that they must have forgotten all about it.  Since this must have happened, they realize that they must have the powers to make themselves forget, so they make themselves forget before they can be debriefed.

I have several problems with this.  First, I can’t accept that they would be the only team to go down there.  No one in the movie explicitly states that it’s too dangerous to go back down.  Even still, you have a strange ship sitting at the bottom of the ocean with at least 40 years until the unknown event.  You can’t tell me that in all those years, not even an unmanned probe was sent down to investigate.

You’d think that they’d make up some story about how no one should go back down.  Maybe the writers figured that this was to cliché and wanted something different.  When they realized how much work this was, they went with the first thing that came to mind.

At the end of the movie, the golden sphere is seen leaving the ship and eventually the planet.  Yes, it’s possible that the sphere deleted the records, but this is something else that’s not explicitly stated.  I’d imagine that this is something that’s dealt with in Michael Crichton’s book, which served as the source material.  I would have liked some closure in that respect.  Either have someone say that no one else will be sent down or the ship was mysteriously destroyed or something.

The big oddity was that the golden sphere was the only odd thing down there.  Yes, it’s a big universe and most of it is a big void.  The future ship was a manned mission, meaning that there were people onboard.  This wasn’t some drone collecting rock samples.  We had people that could say, “Hey!  That looks interesting.  Let’s take that back with us.”

The movie was ultimately disappointing.  Yes, there was a lot of tension and suspense.  The ending was a big disappointment.  It seemed like an easy out, like they couldn’t figure out a better way to end it.  I don’t know how the movie differs from the book.  I’d imagine that there is a different ending or at least more explanation.  At least I got a review out of it.

IMDb page