This is a spoiler-free review, but for those wondering, there is one scene after the credits, which is a red herring so astonishing that it will have memeologists discussing it for years to come.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has three credited directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. Small wonder it feels like many movies crammed into one, all jostling for your attention. It is at once the heartfelt origin story of Miles Morales’s Spider-Man (Shameik Moore), a crazy kaleidoscope of cartoon art styles, and a comedic meta-commentary on how many Spider-Man movies we’ve had. It somehow manages to work, mostly.
Although the film borrows its title from Dan Slott and Olivier Coipel’s 2014 crossover event ‘Spider-Verse,’ Into the Spider-Verse proves to be a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli’s original “Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man” run. (One early story turn in particular will also send ‘Clone Saga’ readers’ heads spinning.) The film doesn’t shy away from the darker elements of Miles’s history, devoting much time to his relationship with his uncle Aaron Davis (Mahershala Ali), who’s a much more sympathetic character than his comics counterpart. Ali, for his second outing in a Marvel adaptation, is effectively reprising his role in Moonlight, and similarly brings the waterworks.
Miles’s main mentor, is of course, an older, slightly schlubby Peter Parker. Jake Johnson was a fantastic choice, as he makes the pathetic, more haggard Spider-Man seem effortlessly laid-back and cool. Hailee Steinfeld is also excellent as Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman, although her character falls just short of achieving greatness as we’re not as invested in her back-story as those of the main duo: we’re witnessing Miles’s origin, and the film relies so much on the audience’s familiarity with Peter’s, so we can’t help but find them more emotionally engaging. Although she’s more important than the other Spiders in the film, you’re left wanting more of her as well.
Of the rest of the Spiders, Nicolas Cage is the most fun as the hard-boiled, melodramatic Spider-Man Noir. He’s the real Spider-Ham as it were, as John Mulaney’s limited screentime leaves his portrayal of Peter Porker feeling oddly subdued. Kimiko Glenn doesn’t get to do much as Peni Parker either. Where the latter two get to shine is in the animation: Spider-Ham moves endlessly fluidly, like a Roger Rabbit Toon, while Peni is his anime counterpart, constantly bringing expressive joy to Miles’s relatively grounded universe.
The villains emerge instead as the film’s most pleasant surprises. Kathryn Hahn in particular plays a classic Spider-Man villain who’s bound to become a big new favorite for fan artists, and I was pretty stunned to hear Krondon Jones (Black Lightning‘s Tobias Whale) as one of Kingpin’s minions. Liev Schreiber’s Kingpin emerges to become menacing and complex, though I think his comical, hunchback-like appearance is too stylized for someone from Miles’s universe. As the film is ultimately about Miles finding a surrogate family from across the multiverse, Fisk’s loneliness makes him into a compelling foil for our young hero.
The best secondary players in the film are Brian Tyree Henry, who gets to stretch his dramatic muscles as Miles’s stern dad Jefferson, and Lily Tomlin, who’s arguably the coolest, most formidable Aunt May to date (sorry Rosemary Harris). May is probably the only female character other than Hahn’s who I don’t have any gripes with: Miles’s mom (Luna Lauren Velez) simply doesn’t have much screentime, and Mary Jane Watson (Zoe Kravitz) is only ever seen from other characters’ perspectives. It’s probably for the best a Spider-Women film is in the works.
I talked a little about the animation earlier, so let’s dive right into it. Blending a 2D look with 3D animation has been done many times before in video games and anime, but never on the scale seen here. The film genuinely looks like a moving comic book, and not just because of the screen tones and cross-hatching visible on some characters’ faces: the use of gradients brings these characters a depth of shading often lacking in 2D animation, which often limits skin tones to a few colors. It’s as if they were living paintings of an animatic mounted with stop-motion figures.
Moreover, the film’s comic book aesthetic just pops, and simply gets more comic bookier as it goes on. Things are pretty subtle at first, but soon Miles’s narration gets accompanied by narrative caption boxes, and the written sound effects start popping up all over the place. At one point, a character speaking Spanish gets a subtitle in a speech bubble, complete with an editor’s note of which language it’s been translated from. The film also contains the best onscreen use of the Kirby krackle to date.
Continued belowThe stylistic experiment doesn’t fully pay off, for example, the depth-of-field can strain your eyes if you aren’t focusing on the same thing as the camera wants you to, and certain shots look more like CG than cel animation, which can be distracting. The brief flickers of simpler artwork to accentuate certain action-packed moments also does feel rather on-the-nose. But overall, the film’s worth watching alone to see, and forgive the cliche, a comic book come alive. With its use of split screen and cool montages recounting each characters’ origin, the film genuinely feels like you’re poring over the pages of a comic and seeing the panels move before your eyes.
So, is it as good as Spider-Man 2? Well no: it’s simply not as focused as that film. The late introduction of the goofier characters like Spider-Ham means that you can’t help but become slightly disinterested in Miles. It’s not that Miles’s story isn’t engaging by the end, but that you wish you’d have gotten to know the more unique Spiders better. You simply haven’t had the benefit of other films starring them.
But on the flipside, with all these superheroes swinging around, the film does get to lavish most of its runtime on Miles’s own story. Refreshingly, Miles doesn’t master his powers as early on as other cinematic superheroes, and so learning to accept his great power and responsibility is his quest, as opposed to figuring out how to defeat Kingpin. And ultimately, by the end of the film, the birth of a new Spider-Man will get your blood pumping in a way the film series hasn’t since Peter Parker regained his powers in 2004’s classic.
