Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse was the latest trend in animation movies. It earned a 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and won an Oscar for best animated feature, among many other awards.

So the question stands: Should animation films be on the same tier as live action?

The answer is yes.

Into the Spider Verse is one of the most artistically outstanding comic book films out there. The unique art style mixed in with the traditional hype of the comic book style truly made this movie unique.

The public tends to judge a movie’s status by the way in which it was made. For example, a live action comic book movie is guaranteed to be considered for multiple awards, whereas an animated comic book movie is seen as a children’s movie.

The truth of the matter is that they both can display the same deeper meaning within them. As a matter of fact, an animated movie helps to convey the same emotions and experience as the real comic, but the live action takes away that type of experience.

Lately we have seen many iconic animated films be recreated as live action movies. For some to say that animation is not as groundbreaking as live action is simply false. If these stories weren’t so beautifully made, then no one would feel the need to recreate the magic of these animated features.

Sometimes the original story leaves a deeper impact, no matter if it is live action or not.

Only with animation can an audience truly get the full effect of this imaginary world. Sure, live action brings it into reality. However, that is not what an audience seeks when they go to see a comic book based movie. And if it is, then they are looking at the wrong genre.

Animation helps lift the characters off of the page and brings them to the audience. Here the artists have much more freedom to be creative and expressive. After a while, many of the live action films begin to look the same.

This is not to say that live action is not well done. They are very well done, however, the fact that society does not deem animation worthy of being top tier is comical. 

Spider-man: Into the Spider Verse was awarded for the effort and outstanding work the artists put into it. An example being both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature, a feat that is hard to achieve as an animated film.

It’s time for people to stop seeing animation as inferior and time to begin recognizing the effort and heart put into every animated film. Maybe then audiences will allow their imaginations to wander and expand more into this fantasy world.