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Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative minds behind
The Lego Movie, bring their unique talents
to a fresh vision of a different Spider-Man Universe. An absolutely inspired and
compulsively entertaining work that is jam-packed with smart humor, eye-popping
visuals and a story that takes the time to examine the Spider-Man mythos in a
manner that its predecessors have largely eschewed over the years. It's the kind
of pure storytelling that's often lost in a maelstrom of special effects,
villains, hype and hoopla. But clearly, when it's done right, it can be as
enjoyable as it is truthful, to reality and the comic book canon. Here is a
movie that takes its comic book roots and embraces them with such glee, the
result is perhaps the quintessential Spider-Man film.
Miles Morales is the kind of kid you could swear you already know, or are, or
were. He’s talented, creative and bright, but feels perpetually out of place.
Bound for greatness beyond his circumstances, in a way the people around him can
see, but unsure of himself or whose footsteps to follow. He’s earnest, anxious,
winsome, sweet. Great taste in hip-hop, zero game. And that slouch of his
shoulders, the make-myself-invisible hunch, as he’s carted away from his
gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood to a rich kids’ school he finds overwhelming
and would rather flunk out of immediately, please? That’s achingly familiar,
too—though perhaps not to the audience superhero movies usually center.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is not about Peter Parker. It’s about the
kind of kid who rarely gets to wear the mask in superhero movies, despite how
often the genre stakes its ideals on the claim that anyone can be a hero. These
movies aim to inspire, and often succeed, but have been slow to live up to
Marvel progenitor Stan Lee’s pithiest definition of the figures they elevate,
the ones that now dominate popular culture: “That person who helps others simply
because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is
indeed without a doubt, a real superhero.” Until Black Panther, movies adapting
Lee’s co-creations (and their rivals, and their rivals’ rivals) seemed to
require another criteria: That the selfless do-gooder is also probably white.
It’s a surprise, then, that of all the studios in the superhero game, it’s Sony
(starring Miles Morales, a Marvel Comics character, here voiced to winning
perfection by Shameik Moore) challenging the genre’s and its own studio’s years
of adherence to that colorless mold. Spider-Verse looks rather different from
other animated films you’ve seen. Every frame pulses wildly with trippy bursts
of visual innovation, creating the impression of a living, riotous comic book.
It uses the medium to spectacular effect, putting us inside Miles’ head as he
navigates heartbreak, his new powers, and learning to trust himself enough to
save others in present-day New York City. It is absolutely what animated movies
will be copying for the next few years, blending CG, hand-drawn animation, and
newer techniques Sony’s dead-set on actually patenting. It’s the film’s
compassionate portrait of Miles and his world, though, that perhaps feels most
groundbreaking. There has simply never been a hero for kids like him on a stage
like this.
Miles’ story—originated by comic-book writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist
Sara Pichelli in 2011, when few comic-book heroes of color headlined their own
series—is told here with grace, and shaded with enough specificity to make him
feel like a person, rather than a remix of three generations of big-screen Peter
Parkers. He’s Spider-Man, to be sure, and the touchstones of that mythos are all
here—good kid learns moral responsibility through personal tragedy, shoulders
burdens no one so young should have to, fails again and again yet finds the
strength to get up after every fall, etc. But a half-Puerto Rican Black teenager
from working-class Brooklyn faces obstacles to self-knowledge and a hero’s
mantle different from Parker’s. Spider-Verse, to its credit, gives him the room
to figure it out in his own time, his own way.
That’s no small feat considering how many other Spider-People crash this movie,
each from an alternate-dimension New York City. There are two Peter Parkers, one
the quippy, young hero of Miles’ New York (voiced by Chris Pine, whose teeth you
can practically hear sparkle through the microphone), and the other a
past-his-prime sad sack weighed down by the realities of adult life (Jake
Johnson). There’s Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Ham aka Peter Porker
(John Mulaney), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn, voicing an anime character aided by a
giant robot), and Spider-Man Noir, a black-and-white-rendered gumshoe out of
1933 whom Nicolas Cage voices with a somber intensity hilariously at odds with
the manic shenanigans around him.
Spiders Ham, Peni, and Noir provide surreal comic relief and not much more. Gwen
is a compelling presence (and it’s a delight to see her dimension rendered in
the same angsty electric hues as her comic-book title), but we learn little
about her, really, beyond her founding trauma. And that’s fine. This is Miles’
story, and the film’s packed to capacity as it is. There’s just enough room for
the mentorship he forges with the older, paunchier Peter (“janky old broke hobo
Spider-Man,” as Miles puts it) for it to become the heart of the film.
For those not familiar: In the comics, Miles becomes Spider-Man after being bit
by a radioactive spider and witnessing Peter Parker’s death at the hands of the
Green Goblin. The film’s version of events plays out similarly, except that
after Parker dies, the Kingpin tears open a rift in space-time that dumps
another Peter, said janky one, into Miles’ orbit. Beaten down from a divorce
with Mary Jane, financial woes, and midlife-crisis regrets, this Peter is no
natural mentor. (He and MJ split, we learn, because she wanted kids but he was
afraid of, ahem, the responsibility.) Still, he learns as much from Miles as the
teenager does from him in their mission to restore order to the universe. His
haplessness helps Miles realize that even role models don’t always know what
they’re doing—the revelation we often need to begin trusting our own flawed
judgment. That may be why, when Miles finally takes that first leap of faith and
thwips alone into the dark, it feels so freeing.
Miles’ world is rendered vividly enough for moments like that to feel uniquely
his, rather than like echoes of Parker’s story. The Spanglish that fills his
home feels mercifully natural. Just the stuff that kids in Spanish-speaking
households grow up hearing half in one language, half the other. His clothes,
his taste in music, the posters on his wall, the art he spray-paints—all of it
feels defined, coherent enough for a single, specific personality. An ordinary,
special kid.
“Anyone can wear the mask,” Peter tells us early in the film. “You can wear the
mask.” It barely registers, we’ve heard lines like it so often. But by the end
of Miles’ journey, that kid’s driven the point home more effectively than any
onscreen hero to date, certainly more than Peter could in 2018, lovable though
he is. A title card with Stan Lee’s definition of a hero flashes onscreen just
before the credits roll. By then, it’s barely necessary. We already believe
it—and a little more in ourselves, too.
If there are any negatives, it's that maybe it's 15 minutes too long and it has
a few too many loud and overly busy climaxes. But it's hard to knock a film that
has this much heart and embraces its source material so energetically. It's not
just the best comic book film and animated film of 2018, it's arguably one of
the greatest superhero films of all time.
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