Confession: Spider-Man? Not my guy. And despite my affection for Sam Raimis adorkable Tobey Maguire films from the early aughts, the parade of same-old Spider-Man movies weve gotten in the last decade and a half havent really warmed me to him. Spider-Man memes, cutting right to the quick of what makes the wall-climbing, sticky-fingered hero such a likable smart-ass, have done a better job of that.
Thus I walked into Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothmans Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse a bit hesitant. My mood was proven unjustified from this animated thrill rides opening minutes. Spider-Verse is a dreamy, funny, self-aware, visually explosive delight, with a sharper sense of humor than the sophomoric, wearying Deadpool, a keener, more kinetic sense of action than most of the live-action Avengers films (save maybe Ant-Man), and richer ideas than most of the visually muddy, self-serious DC films weve gotten to date. It easily ranks among the more enjoyable superhero releases in recent memory—and thats in large part thanks to the charming young man at its center.
The Spider-Man of Spider-Verse—or, rather, one of them—isnt Peter Parker, but rather Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino high-schooler from Brooklyn whos got a cop father, a nurse mother, and a mysterious paternal uncle, Aaron (Mahershala Ali), who indulges his love of graffiti contrary to his straitlaced fathers wishes. His parents have sent him to a preppy magnet school, the kind New York kids have to test into; it took all of a minute for Miles not to fit in.
And his newfangled spider power—which, here as ever, always feels like a metaphor for a pubescent teens awkward phase—dont make that any easier. Miless journey as Spider-Man gets jump-started when—but, wait, we all know that story by now. Spider-Verses fizzy, mile-a-minute script, which was written by Phil Lord (of Lord and Miller, the Lego Movie duo), is well aware of our current embarrassment of superhero origin stories. Somehow, were still meeting new Avengers, still getting the inside scoop on a story that, mathematically, only seems to have so many variations.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, Lord and the trio of directors simply keep adding on more. Spider-Verse is, as its title implies, a film with a multi-dimensional angle—you can thank the villains, Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) and Doc Ock (Kathryn Hahn) for that. Ill leave the mechanics of it to the movie (like origin stories, however, plans to take over the world only seem to come in so many colors), but the result is a multiplicity of Spider-People: in addition to Miles (whos voiced by Shameik Moore), theres Peter Parker (Chris Pine), an older and chubbier Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), Spider-Woman, a.k.a. Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), the Looney Tunes–esque Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), the anime Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), and Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), whose casting probably speaks for itself.
The outcry that met 2016s all-women Ghostbusters remake has conditioned me to expect the die-hards to greet such diversity-minded tweaks with suspicion. Then, as now, it would be misplaced. Morales may be a recent intervention into the comics—he was created in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, and modeled after Barack Obama and rapper Donald Glover (who starred in the most recent live-action Spider-Man offering, 2017s Homecoming)—but the problems he faces are the problems every manifestation of Spider-Dweeb seems to have faced.
The Spider-Man myth has always been ripe for questions of identity. I cant imagine a more terrifying identity crisis than having your genes mutated by experimental spider venom. Knowingly, lovingly, Spider-Verse realizes that potential in set pieces that clack and clatter with movement and hue, and in relationships built on the basic questions of loyalty and insecurity; the world spins outward from the story of Peter Parker and Mary Jane to become a series of confrontations between Spider-Man and his many selves.
The film is beautiful. Colors ricochet throughout with a sense of danger; landscapes constantly change, expanding one second and closing in on themselves the next. Its a great argument for animating every superhero movie. It would serve as a breath of fresh air for a genre thats been a little too slow to acknowledge just how much it needs one.
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