I know you’re all thinking, “Do we really need another Spiderman movie?” I know because I was thinking that too. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse felt like Sony’s attempt to hold onto the rights of the character and keep Marvel from taking Spiderman back. To I think everyone’s surprise, not only is Into the Spider-Verse close to the best Spiderman movie ever made, it’s one of the best films of the year, period. This movie is so good it makes room for Homer Simpson’s favorite Spiderman.
Though Peter Parker plays a role in this Spiderman movie, the hero of this story is Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), whose name Spiderman Comics readers might recognize. The Brooklyn based kid lives an ordinary life with his mom (Luna Lauren Velez) and police officer dad (Brian Tyree Henry), listening to music and going to a killer charter school. Things all change when Miles, while spray painting with his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), gets bitten by a genetically enhanced spider. While Miles is discovering his powers, Wilson Fisk (Liev Schreiber) and Docter Olivia (Kathryn Hahn) have ruptured the space time continuum, which brings multiple Spiderpeople into Miles’s universe, including Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicholas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), since Peter Parker (Chris Pine) already exists in Miles’s universe. The Spiderpeople then team up to stop Fisk, and put their universes as they were.
Into the Spiderverse captures all those amazing memories of see and experiencing the superhero world for the first time. There have been many movies that have gotten close to feeling what it is like to flip pages of a comic book. Sin City, and anything Frank Miller as created, probably come the closest previously. It’s saying something that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is probably as close as a movie will ever come to capturing the joy of reading comics. Some of this is obvious, like inner monologue coming out in the square comic book text boxes or words like POW! showing up. Other pieces are more subtle, like a character walking while the buildings slowly fade away into the background. All this brought me back to reading those comics when I was a kid, eagerly turning the page to see what would happen next. In addition to capturing the comic book experience, the special effects and animation are pretty amazing too, using colors to splash the screen with vividness and energy in really fun and exciting ways. You’ll be constantly dazzled at what is going on in the background of Into the Spiderverse.
That is, if you’re not already dazzled with the really fun deep dive into our favorite web slinger Phil Lord has written for you. Special films in a genre are usually twofold: they create the rules of the genre, or they upend and comment on the rules of the genre. Spider-Verse is clearly the latter. Most people will want to compare Into the Spider-Verse to Deadpool, but I’m pretty sure The Lego Batman Movie is a more apt comparison. Lego Batman movie dug deep into the psyche and lore of what makes Batman tick, and told a meta story about the Caped Crusader. Into the Spider-Verse does the same thing, but for Miles Morales’s Spider-Man. Miles’s origin story is totally meta, driven by the death of another superhero, ironically. What makes Miles so interesting (other than his skin color) is that he taps into one of the things people love about Spider-Man: his inability to trust his own powers because he’s an awkward teenager. We see him want to help, but unable to do so because he hasn’t harnessed his powers and found his self-confidence yet. So Miles seeks it out from other figures in his life, including his dad and his uncle Aaron, as well as Peter B. Parker. Each of these people leaves lasting impressions, both good and bad, on Miles, and sometimes with Shakespearean levels of gravitas. While all these life lessons are being taught, we’re seeing Peni Parker put her father’s soul into a robot, or Spider-Ham doing a Porky Pig impression while Peter B. Parker has to wear sweatpants because he’s let himself go. Like all great meta movies, Into the Spider-Verse mocks some parts of the Spiderman franchise while digging into why we love the character so much and delivering a satisfying Spiderman story at the same time.
Peter Parker’s Spiderman was my first Superhero I really loved, because he was so easy to understand and identify with. Despite all the plot shenanigans of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the movie still presents another relatable teen trying to find his place in the world and finding the confidence to do it. My big question though: why are there so many genetic experiments going on in New York City? You’d think with all the journalists and police presence there, it’d be hard to hide something that big.