Across the animation-verse, 2023 added five acclaimed animated movies to the cinematic canon. It’s a medium where a hand-drawn anime (Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron) can soar to record-breaking box office numbers in the U.S., and an eclectic mix of 2D and 3D animation (Disney’s Wish) can blend a modern animation style with traditional techniques dating back to 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. From comic book heroes, to video game icons, to fairy tale heroines, the characters were as diverse and distinctive as the art styles of their respective computer-generated realities.
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Sony Pictures Animation swung back into the Spider-Verse (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), Illumination and Nintendo warped into the Mushroom Kingdom (The Super Mario Bros. Movie), and Nickelodeon Movies oozed through the streets and sewers of New York City (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem). And then there were worlds audiences have never seen brought to life before: Pixar Animation Studios burned, breezed, and waded through Element City (Elemental), while Annapurna Pictures resurrected the futuristic medieval kingdom of a fan-favorite webcomic (Nimona).
Each year, the ComicBook team recognizes the best titles of the year across comics, movies, television, video games, and more. The winner for the 2023 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Animated Movie is…
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse!
Spider-Verse 2 is a super feat of animation: the film features six unique animation styles and 240 characters designed and modeled by nearly 1,000 artists. Like the Web of Life and Destiny, the dimension-hopping sequel threads the Marvel multiverse: Earth-1610, the home of Brooklyn’s one and only Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore); Earth-65, home to Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld); plus the native realities of the Spider-Society, a group of Spider-People that includes Earth-928’s Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), Earth-332’s Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), Earth-138’s Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), Earth-50101’s Spider-Man India (Karan Soni), and Earth-616B’s Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson).
Across the Spider-Verse webbed up $690 million at the global box office — the sixth-best gross of the year behind Barbie, Mario, Oppenheimer, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Fast X — and inspired the “canon event” TikTok trend. Canon events “are the connections that bind our lives together,” explains Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of the year 2099. “And those connections can be broken.” Disrupting the canon threatens to destabilize the entire multiverse — as does the very existence of Miles Morales, whom Miguel calls “an anomaly.”
With its blend of heart, humor, andheroism, and its revolutionary animation style, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the original anomaly — an animated movie so influential it inspired the styles of such films as The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. Similarly, Across the Spider-Verse is a technical marvel, and the best animated movie of 2023 — in this and every universe.
The nominees for Best Animated Movie are:
- Elemental
- Nimona
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — WINNER
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
