Nearly every type of story, in nearly every form, has been told about spider-man. You’d be hard pressed to find a single person that doesn’t know at least one detail of his origin. At some point, its inevitable we’re going to hit a point where one day there will be almost nothing new to say about one of comic’s most iconic heroes. “Spider-man: Into the spider-verse” recognizes this, so it makes the brilliant decision to not focus on a character with over half a century of history. Instead, Into the spider-verse focuses on a hero who is much newer and much less familiar to fans of the web-head: Miles Morales.
When the movie opens, we’re introduced to Miles as an Afro- Latina teenager who has no powers and no connection to spider-man. He’s a normal kid, nervous about his first day at a new school and is extremely awkward talking to girls. One of the central messages of the movie is that anyone can be spider-man, and Miles is the living embodiment of that idea.
Fairly quickly, Miles goes through the standard Spider-man origin story. However, the wrinkle in this one is that spider-man already exists in his world. Peter Parker and his heroic alter ego have been around for years, but as soon Miles meets him, he promptly dies. Miles is left making a promise to Peter to protect his city, but has no one left to tell him how to do so.
This is where the spider-verse in “Spider-man: Into the spider-verse” comes in. In marvel comics, there is something called the multiverse, which is essentially an infinite number of parallel earths, each with different versions of spider-man and other famous heroes. In this movie, n nearly every parallel earth, spider-man is a different character. We meet a 40-something-year old and much grumpier version of Peter Parker; Gwen Stacy, who in her reality took up the mantle of spider-woman; an anime spider-girl with a giant robot; a hard boiled 1930’s detective, and, I kid you not, Peter Porker, the spectacular spider-ham. (No, you did not read that wrong. There is a spider pig.)
Yet, while the different versions of spider-man and how they interact with each other are comedy gold, the emphasis on Miles is what makes this move so special. Writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller make the wise choice of focusing on how Miles struggles to become spider-man and be the hero everyone wants him to be. Over the entire course of the movie, he has been spider-man for about two days. He’s so new to being a superhero that he sticks to literally everything he touches and accidentally goes invisible whenever he’s afraid. He’s a young kid who is out of his depth, and not coincidentally, like most teenagers, has no idea who he wants to be. When we first meet him, Miles’ lone clue into his identity is that he knows he likes to leave his shoe laces untied. He has to learn what it means to be Miles Morales before he can ever hope to learn what it means to be spider-man. It’s a compelling arc, largely because we get to discover who Miles is right along with him.
Now, while Miles is undoubtedly the movies central focus, he’s not the only thing that makes “Spider-man: Into the spider-verse” so unique from the standard superhero outing. The humor that comes from the different characters in this movie — mostly old man Peter and spider-ham — is so specific to the history of spider-man that it would be impossible for any other movie to try and replicate its style. Lord and Miller utilize our decades long knowledge of spider-man history just to completely subvert and flip it on its head. For example, take this exchange between Miles and Peter.
Miles: “But with great power –
Peter: “Comes great responsibility. I know, I’m tired of hearing that.”
This is just one minor example of how this movie operates. It references scenes from other spider-man movies, comics and even commercials to deliver as many laughs as it can, often at its own expense. At one point, a picture of a spider-man popsicle flashes on the screen, which was surely taken from google images. Of of the most remarkable aspects of Into the spider-verse is that it couldn’t pull this off without some of the fatigue many fans have been feeling towards seeing the character show up on the big screen yet again in a new iteration.
On the other hand, what most will be discussing once they leave the theater is this movie’s wholly unique style of animation. It’s not an understatement to say Sony pioneered a completely new style of film-making with this movie. It’s gorgeous and looks like it’s ripped right out of a comic book. Boxes with the character’s thoughts show up behind them. When you see an explosion, the word boom flashes before your eyes. Literal pages of the comics pop up on screen. This move is as close as it can possibly get to becoming a living, breathing comic book.
While “Spider-man: Into the spider-verse” ends up capitalizing on decades of spider-man nostalgia, at the same time it contributes something entirely new to the wall crawlers storied history. Equal parts funny, gorgeous and touching, even those with spider-man fatigue will not want to miss it.
Grade: A-
