Directed by: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
Starring: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Bryan Tyree Henry, Liev Schreiber
Rated PG, 117 minutes
There are many things to like about “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” but it’s worth stopping first to appreciate that the new animated entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe features some of the most engaging and organic storytelling in any superhero movie in recent memory. The tired clichés that have marked the last decade-plus of the genre—long villain monologues, stern declarations about duty and morality, character development that amounts to an online dating profile—are largely missing here, at the expense of none of the action and suspense and half-baked schemes that somehow succeed. “Into the Spider-Verse” keeps all the things you like about superhero movies and cartoons and dumps the rest, leaving a film that will hopefully be a turning point for a genre long beset by a too-big-to-fail mentality.
The movie also takes as its source material a bizarre storyline from the Spider-Man comic books; instead of another hero-fights-villain arc taken from the canon and put on screen, “Into the Spider-Verse” draws from a recent series of Spider-Man comics that was designed like a crossover episode between several alternate universes. Fittingly, the movie is a little looser with things like timelines and characters, but consciously so, avoiding the pitfalls of comic book movies that try to explain away their inconsistencies. Bringing together six different Spider-Men and -Women (including one pig), the movie feels less like an invitation for plot holes and more like a game where anything goes.
However, unlike other ensemble superhero movies that I could name, “Into the Spider-Verse” deliberately chooses not to make everyone equally important, even though a star-heavy cast has been assembled. Nicolas Cage and John Mulaney, for instance, voicing Spider-Man Noir (from a black-and-white universe) and Spider-Ham (a pig from a not-quite “Looney Tunes” universe), steal their scenes with the jokes and visual gags that accompany their over-the-top characters, but they have so little screen time that their appearances are almost peripheral. This judiciousness works to the movie’s benefit, especially given the runtime, which is already long for an animated film; while the jokes land and the cast list is impressive, the movie is primarily dedicated to the story of its protagonist.
Our hero is Miles Morales (Shameik Moore, “Dope”), the artistically gifted son of New York City police officer Jefferson Davis (Bryan Tyree Henry, “Atlanta”). Father and son get along fine, but there’s a disconnect between them; Miles, feeling out of place at a rich private school—and thrown for a loop by his newfound spider powers, of course—just wants to hone his artistic skills and hang out with his friends. Meanwhile, Jefferson just wants his son to make good use of the opportunities that have come along, knowing that they won’t always be there. It’s a distinctly modern storyline, touching indirectly on themes of race and privilege, but at its heart it’s a familiar story of children and their parents learning to understand each other across the generation gap.
Then there are the subplots, which fit nicely with the story of Miles and Jefferson, stories of family, of connection and disconnection: Jefferson’s estrangement from his brother, who happens to be one of Miles’s closest friends; a villain’s regret over the loss of his wife and son, and his hopeless attempts to bring them back; even Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson, “New Girl”), one of the alternate universe Spider-Men, struggles to confront his own marital problems. With such an emphasis on families, the movie also suggests that the team of Spider-Men is a family unto itself, although it never explicitly says as much; the inference is left for the viewer to make.
That all this takes place against a backdrop of diverse animation styles and settings only adds to the movie’s sense of unity. Combining everything from the low frame rates and looped animations of anime to the slide whistle sound effects and falling anvils of slapstick cartoons, and including a climactic battle that takes place in a disintegrating, interdimensional New York City, “Into the Spider-Verse” throws everything in the kitchen sink, and then some. The result is colorful and messy and exhausting, but these disparate parts, like family members, form a cohesive and vibrant whole, one that would be difficult to imagine any other way.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 1/25/19.