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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Review
Image Credit: Sony Pictures
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Directed By: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman
Written By: Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman; Based on the Marvel comics and characters created by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Brian Michael Bendis, and Sara Pichelli
Runtime: 117 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for frenetic sequences of animated action violence, thematic elements, and mild language
Shameik Moore – Miles Morales/Spider-Man
Jake Johnson – Peter B. Parker/Spider-Man
Hailee Steinfeld – Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman
Liev Schreiber – Wilson Fisk/Kingpin
Kathryn Hahn – Dr. Olivia Octavius/Doc Ock
Brian Tyree Henry – Jefferson Davis
Mahershala Ali – Aaron Davis
John Mulaney – Peter Porker/Spider-Ham
Nicholas Cage – Spider-Man Noir
Kimiko Glenn – Peni Parker
Lily Tomlin – Aunt May
Zoë Kravitz – Mary Jane
Luna Lauren Velez – Rio Morales
Lake Bell – Vanessa Fisk
Jorma Taccone – Green Goblin
JoaquÃn Cosio – Scorpion
Marvin Jones III – Tombstone
Chris Pine – Peter Parker/Spider-Man
Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse marks the first big screen animated feature into the world of the legendary Wall-Crawler. It’s a highly stylized, unique action-adventure romp that captures the feeling of becoming Spider-Man and offers up a fresh story involving Miles Morales, who later donned the mantle of Spider-Man in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man.
Young Miles Morales (Moore) is a budding artist transferring over to an upper-class private school in Brooklyn, much to his chagrin. His police officer father, Jefferson (Henry), is a stern but reasonable man whose trying to push his son further, but Miles is more interested in creating art and wants to go back to his old school.
One night, Miles meets up with his family’s estranged uncle, Aaron Davis (Ali), and they go to an underground, secluded area of Brooklyn where Miles can tag a wall. While there, Miles has an unwitting encounter with an Alchemax spider, which bites Miles and grants him similar powers to Spider-Man and some other unique abilities.
Miles’ spider powers manifest themselves, he attempts to return to the scene of the spider bite only to discover that the area is not far from a massive battle between Spider-Man, the Green Goblin, and the Prowler. This Spider-Man is Peter Parker in his 20s who has been on the job for about a decade and is still in the prime of his life. Things are going well for him until this one slip-up. Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) is attempting to activate a SuperCollider to open other dimensions. After being gravely injured by the fallout from the device, Peter gives Miles a kill key to disable the device because reactivating it could destroy the entire city. Unfortunately, this is the one battle Spider-Man was unable to walk away from, and Miles believes he must pick up where Peter Parker left off and assume the role of Spider-Man.
However, Kingpin’s SuperCollider had some strange side effects as the device yanks denizens from other dimensions, including another Spider-Man. This is Peter B. Parker (Johnson), the Spider-Man in his dimension. While Chris Pine’s Peter appears as the idyllic version of the webhead, Jake Johnson’s Peter suffers heavily from that “Typical Parker Luck.” Johnson’s version of Peter Parker is older, more jaded, and more cynical than the one who died, but he is still Spider-Man. After a rather painful meet cute between the alternate Peter and Miles at the other Peter’s grave, they form a reluctant mentor to student partnership to destroy the SuperCollider and return Peter to his dimension.
Co-directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman have created an impressive, rousing animated adventure with Spider-Verse. The film is imbued with its own unique style. There has never been a CG animated feature that looks quite like this. The animation looks like a mix of comic book and pop graffiti art brought to life onscreen.
Miles’ love for graffiti art mixed with a classic, iconic comic book style makes Spider-Verse a more thrilling, unique visual style that’s seldom utilized by CG-animated features. The appearance of the other Spider heroes later in the film allows the animators to showcase different animated visual styles. Peni Parker (Glenn) resembles a 2D anime style, Spider-Ham (Mulaney) is reminiscent of classic Warner Bros. cartoons, and Noir (Cage) is drawn all in black-and-white and visualized in a 1930s hard-boiled, pulp style.
The main drawback to the animation for Spider-Verse is that, at times, the look is visually jarring. Sometimes the character movement looks a bit choppy and less fluid. Additionally, the visual resembles looking at a magazine or comic book art with a magnifying glass. So, the screen is filled with Ben-Day dots, and the edges of the character models are doubled over. The presentation makes the film experience similar to watching a 3D film without the 3D glasses.
The visual style excels in using comic book-esque panels, word balloons, and onomatopoeic text to underscore amazing, kinetic action scenes or backstory interludes. The filmmakers utilize an editing style as an homage to comic book storytelling that’s exponentially more effective for Spider-Verse than Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie. That style backfired because the editing choices didn’t match what was happening onscreen. They were tonally at odds. In Spider-Verse, the comic book editing is completely in-sync with the story.
One of the most exciting aspects of Spider-Verse is the showcasing of Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, as a great villain for Spider-Man. Kingpin, who originated as a Spider-Man rogue, finally returns as a heavy for the Wall-Crawler in Spider-Verse. Liev Schreiber delivers a fantastic vocal performance for Wilson Fisk, who receives an appropriate, unique, and larger-than-life design for the story. The character has an appropriately emotionally tragic backstory that rings true to the comics. If this is the only time Kingpin gets to appear as a villain in a Spider-Man film, the creative team made Kingpin’s appearance count.
Due to the nature of the narrative, everything happens and changes rather quickly, as there is a ticking clock at work. There isn’t much time to let the plot breathe. The film could have dedicated a bit more development to underscore Peter and Miles’ relationship dynamic since that’s the central bond and relationship of the narrative.
As entertaining as it is to have the other Spider heroes in the story, their appearance takes a lot of focus away from Miles and Peter. While Miles emergence as a hero who carries on the legacy of Spider-Man is the main point, the second and third acts get mired in establishing subplots for the likes of Spider-Woman, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and Peni Parker.
Spider-Ham, Peni, and Noir are incredibly entertaining, but they are tertiary background characters. They function as comic relief, one-note gags, and they easily could have been cut from the story. Gwen Stacy (Steinfeld) at least has some actual agency and a place within the story throughout the entire runtime.
The humor in Spider-Verse works well. Since this is a hyper-stylized animated film, co-writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman can get away with copious amounts of fourth-wall-breaking humor and meta-jokes. The story depicts a universe that’s very aware of the Spider-Man mythos and plays around with that, such as a pointed poke at one of the more infamous scenes from Spider-Man 3. Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller imbue a similar post-modern self-referential style found in The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman movie but dialed down a few degrees in Into the Spider-Verse.
Spider-Verse excels in pushing the everyman, coming-of-age story through Miles. This is an origin story, but mixing in the other Spider Heroes, along with an older and more jaded Peter as his mentor, does a good job of underscoring Miles’ journey as upholding the legacy of Spider-Man. Frankly, Spider-Verse even manages to hit certain emotional notes better than Marvel Studios’ own Spider-Man: Homecoming.
