AwardsWatch Podcast #185: Reviewing ‘Spider-Man: Across the Universe’ and our Top 5 non-Disney/Pixar animated films ever
On episode 185 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, AwardsWatch Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson and AwardsWatch contributors Nicole Ackman and Josh Parham to review Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and give out their Top 5 Non-Disney/Pixar animated films.
Before diving into the Spider-verse, the gang went over the first month’s results of the 2023 Summer Movie Draft. After four titles released, Team Ryan has taken the lead, scoring more the 300 million dollars at the box office so far than the films selected by Team Erik. But there is still plenty of time for Erik’s team to come mount a comeback, as this summer’s box office seems to be rather unpredictable.
Moving over to the main review, it’s been five years since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse debuted and not only became known as one of the best films of 2018, but is considered by many to be the best Spider-Man film ever released and an absolute masterpiece. So Across the Spider-Verse had a lot to live up to but based on the groups conversation, and our review on the website by Sophia Ciminello, this is a sequel you aren’t going to want to miss and sets up the potential of what could be one of the greatest trilogies of the 21st century.
After the review, the team gave out a list of their Top Non-Disney/Pixar animated films, inspired by the release of Across the Spider-Verse. It was a difficult list to make given that there are so many titles to choose from, thus the selection varied amongst the group, with selected titles including Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Iron Giant, Wolfwalkers, The Lego Movie, Your Name. Listen to the show to find out the full lists given by the AW team.
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This podcast runs 2h03m. We will be back next week to do something new, a tier ranking episode where the podcast crew will rank each Best Picture winner. Till then, let’s get into it.
Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).
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