Dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
Into the Spider-Verse is definitely the best animated film of the year and holds its own against some of the better live action ones as well.
In this movie we meet Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore, an Afro-Latino teenager from Brooklyn who loves art, passionately sings along to songs he doesn’t know the words to, and desperately wants to return to his local school because he feels awkward at his new private school. Within minutes on screen, Miles feels like a dynamic, modern and fully realized teenager. We get glimpses of his personality, interests and culture just watching him run to school in his favorite Air Jordans (shoes intentionally untied). There are many familiar names and artists in the backgrounds of shots if you keep your eyes open. (I spotted the cover of the Weeknd’s Starboy album and a Chance the Rapper poster, but I’m sure there were tons more that I missed.) Miles’ relationships with his father (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry) and Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) are both richly textured and complex. Considering how much screen time was actually dedicated to them, the impact his family made was incredible. My only request is some more time with his mother in the sequel, who we didn’t get to see much of.
Aside from talking about how much I love and adore Miles (which is a lot), odes should be written to the animation in this movie. It’s bananas how good it is. While animation has come a long way recently and we seemed to have mastered the art of photo-realistic water, Spider-Verse pushes so much further and more creatively than any other I’ve seen recently. When I saw the trailer, I was sold from the first second but the movie delivers in a way I could not have predicted. I frequently just turned to my friend at my side to go “holy crap, this looks so good!”. It’s vibrant, incredibly colorful and seems to change and adapt in accordance with the needs of the scene. Occasionally it was very flat and felt like reading a comic book on the big screen and at other points it shifted to appear almost 3-dimensional. At several points in the movie, I just took a moment to appreciate the gorgeous animation of Miles’ hair. It was coily and visibly kinky and I could see it. It wasn’t a loosely drawn afro shape, it looked like a Black person’s hair and I appreciated every second of it. Fair warning to anybody with any type of light sensitivity though, the visual are beautiful but they are a lot.
The plot of the movie is fairly simple and straightforward but it works because it gives all these characters and Spider-people a chance to breathe without having to worry too much about tangents and plot threads. After Miles is bitten and his powers begin to appear in increasingly ridiculous ways, he turns to the recently appeared alternate universe Peter Parker for guidance. Unfortunately, that Peter, voiced by Jake Johnson, is the older, broke, depressed millennial version of the hero he’d idolized so much. Thankfully Hailee Steinfeld’s Gwen Stacy is there to add some competence and to give Miles a sounding board with someone his own age. Spider-Ham (John Mulaney, in what may be the most perfect role for him), Spider-Man Noir (Nicholas Cage), and Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) all make an appearance- and while they don’t have the arcs given to Miles, Peter, and Gwen, they all are given the time to make an impression.
There are actually several villains in cahoots, all led by the towering and block-shaped Kingpin. Those of us familiar with Daredevil on Netflix may be a little disappointed to hear anyone but Vincent D’Onofrio coming out of Wilson Fisk’s mouth, but Liev Schreiber imbues him with all the menace and intimidation that one expects from him.
The movie was packed chock-full of feels but I was truly unprepared for the emotional gut punch that was the Stan Lee cameo. When the filmmakers (and Stan himself) recorded and animated his scene, there was no way they could have known that he’d pass away so soon before the film’s release, but in light of his death the scene brought tears to my eyes with alarming speed. Then just as quickly as I was crying, I was laughing- because even though this movie isn’t scared to delve into those darker emotional moments, it always rebounded effortlessly into lighter fare.
This year has been a great one for movies but it’s also been great for movie soundtracks. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve been playing the Black Panther album on repeat since February, recently I’ve been obsessed with the Miles Ep from Blindspotting, and now the Spider-Verse album is here to conclude the year with a bang. I dare anyone to walk out of this movie and not want to blast “What’s up Danger” as loud as you possible can.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a masterpiece. The animation alone is exquisite and award-worthy but that is hardly it’s only remarkable feature. The voice-acting is incredibly on point, every actor infusing so much personality and heart into their performance that all of the characters feel like real people. Phil Lord did an exceptional job crafting these characters and balancing their storylines. In other team-up movies, we’ve seen the dangers of introducing too many characters at once and simply expecting the audience to like them because they’re the protagonists. But Lord knew who his star was, he knew who the supporting players were and he gave them all the right amount of time to shine and develop. I plan to see it in theaters as many times as my budget will allow and I hope those theaters are full every time.
10/10 Radioactive Spiders