Review One
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is, by every imaginable metric, a truly great movie. It is easily the best of the thirty-seven Spider-Man movies (although 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming was as close as Hollywood had ever come to getting the character properly right) that have been made in the last twenty years. But it is better than that; it is among the best superhero movies ever made, every bit the equal of biggest box-offices successes like Black Panther, The Dark Knight, and the various Avengers movies.
At least a significant portion of its success is being an animated movie. This movie almost certainly would not have worked as a live-action film. But untethered from the weight of CGI and the need to make it look real – whatever that means – Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse thrives by embracing everything that its animation allows it, including expansive fights, wild scenery, and outrageous characters (Liev Schrieber’s Kingpin looms as much as John Mulaney’s Spider-Ham is weird).
The plot revolves around Kingpin’s desire to reunite with the wife and son that he scared away to their accidental deaths. He believes that, with the help of Doctor Octopus’s supercollider, that he can open up enough alternate dimensions to find one where his family survived the car accident that killed them in his. Spider-Man attempts to stop him, but ends up getting killed; before he dies, young Miles Morales finds Spider-Man, and Spider-Man realizes he isn’t alone in New York City. Miles has been bitten too and is slowly coming to understand that he is powered, although differently than Spider-Man himself. But with Spider-Man gone, Miles is left to adopt the mantle as the city’s new savior. He is joined by other versions of the character, each pulled through the wormholes created by Kingpin’s and Octopus’s supercollider. The wormholes are unstable though and threaten the city; Miles is left to learn from the other versions of the character while figuring out a way to stop Kingpin and Octopus. That learning includes enduring his own version of the character’s origin story and a series of lessons about both his incredible abilities and his very real limitations.
If all of that sounds like comic book fluff, so be it, especially because, had the movie been left in the wrong hands, it almost certainly would be the sort of inscrutable storytelling that cannot substantively connect with audiences. But in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, the storytelling matters because the characters themselves are made to matter. Morales is a fifteen-year-old kid who is trying to understand who he is. Morales’s father wants the best for his son, even though pursuing it is pushing him away. Kingpin is a heartbroken man whose brutality cannot fix his situation. And the other versions of Spider-Man are similarly troubled; they can save the city and they can save the city and they can save the city, but they cannot translate those heroics into the sort of happiness they are longing for. This is particularly true of Jake Johnson’s alternate universe Spider-Man, a hero genuinely heartbroken by his own failed attempts to make a life with his version of Mary Jane Parker.
It has frequently been the case that superhero movies have lacked the sort of characterization that made their troubles worth caring about. It happens – X-Men‘s Magneto sought to prevent a being the victim of a second Holocaust; Jessica Jones was tormented by the man who made her a murderer; The Dark Knight‘s Joker wanted to watch the world burn – but it is a rare achievement. Superhero movies more often offer us collections of characters that we are told to care about without being given a reason to. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse avoids this calamity while managing to make at least three of its characters genuinely worth caring about; the end result is a movie that resonates in a way that most of its ilk do not.
And that is why, by every measure, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse a towering achievement within the genre.
Review Two
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is the kind of movie that my children can happily enjoy without reflecting on the movie’s underlying cultural statement, but rest assured that it is in there. The movie features seven versions of Spider-Man: Miles Morales’s, Peter Parker’s, Alternate Universe Peter Parker’s, Peter Parker’s Spider-Man Noir, Gwen Stacy’s Spider-Woman, Peni Parker’s SP//dr, and Peter Porker’s Spider-Ham.* Only two of them are traditional in the sense that they mirror the versions we have traditionally seen on the big screen. The rest of them are diverse and different and interesting, most notably Miles Morales. There is no escaping the fact that he is every bit the teenager that Peter Parker has always been, but he is also his own (young) man: different haircut, different language, different cultural touchstones, different abilities. Gwen Stacy’s Spider-Woman appears to be the strongest of the bunch, making far greater progress in a fight with Doctor Octopus than do any of her male counterparts. And speaking of Doc Ock, Otto Octavious is now Olivia Octavious, still every bit the mad scientist with super-strong biomechanical arms, but now a woman instead of a man.
Here are two quick things about this phenomenon:
The first is that most people seem to genuinely enjoy this movie.
The second is that it is not entirely difficult to imagine some corners of the internet going absolutely ballistic about all of this. If people lose their minds about the possibility of Idris Elba playing James Bond, it is entirely guaranteed that some absolute dorkuses are currently grinding their teeth into sugar at…a Hispanic Spider-Man…a Woman Doc Ock…Sad Peter Parker With A Gut?!?!? This outrage is performative, absurdist bullshit, and should be ignored as the childish whining of selfish, entitled brats. If they genuinely believe that modern interpretations of classic characters are characters that are not worth enjoying, let them sit at home and cry into their collectible figurines.
The rest of us can very happily enjoy ourselves.
—
*There is an eighth and a ninth version that appear in an amusing post-credits sequence, but they are unrelated to the broader story.
Everything in this movie is represented by something that (AFAIK) existed first in the comics and was well received as part of the larger SpiderVerse. Whiners and ragers are most likely just butthurt because their favorite version was not the centerpiece or the most powerful.
I loved that Miles looked up to both Pizza Gut Peter and Gwen as peers and mentors.Report
Doc Ock as Olivia Octavia was new, no?
But yes, the characters themselves didn’t care. And the kids in the theater didn’t care. The only people who care are, frankly, insufferable losers who genuinely believe that art (that they care about) is set in concrete, never to be changed.Report
Yes, This version of Doc Ock is new (I had to look it up), but gender swapping heroes and villains is so common these days I just assumed she had some basis in the comics.
I really liked that they made her Doc Ock, that took me completely by surprise and Kathryn Hahn does a great job giving her a voice.Report
@oscar-gordon Absolutely agree. One of the best things about it was that it toyed mightily with the usual “Bad Guy Has An Underling Doing His Bidding” storyline by making that underling one of the comic’s all-timers. She was a great addition.Report
She was fishing spectacular. Right up to the moment when she said “and I’m going to love watching.” I was completely taken in by the dizzy hippy scientist trope they hid her under. On top of that she was an absolutely amazing version of the villain.Report
Not a superhero fan (to put it mildly), but I love the fact that Spidey’s theme music is still the song from the 60’s cartoon.Report
@mike-schilling I suspect you might really, really, really love the post-credits sequence.Report
I loved this movie, but more importantly, my daughters did. I have serious superhero movie fatigue, but diving so deep into the silly and fun aspects of Spider-Man, while also bringing in some of the newer versions of the character, was a real pleasure.Report
@roland-dodds As a dad, how did you do during the father-son conversation scene?Report
I was fine and my kids were too young to care about any of that stuff. They just wanted to see Spidermen/women do things. I have a pretty close relationship with my father, so it didn’t hit home all that much.
Here was my daughter after the movie; she still talks about it. Interestngly enough, she wants to be Spiderman even though there were female versions of the character on screen. When we play, I have to be Spider Gwen.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsReport
I love this movie. My teens loved this movie. It was a great storyline and the characters, despite being superpowered, were so very *human*. I loved the scene with Morales and his dad way before the spider bite. It was short, but really connected you to them as people you could relate to. You can even sympathize with the villian, even feel a little sad for his loss when he loses (this btw is one of things my 14 yr old remarked on, and also one of the things he liked about Amazon’s new Jack Ryan).
The new Doc Ock was a nice twist too, though her motivations were less clear.
I just *finally* got around to seeing Aquaman and the contrast is striking. Yes, you get to like Arthur Curry and his dad (esp the scenes were Momoa plays to his natural persona), but the others aren’t nearly as well developed. And in a lot of places the CGI got either clunky or distracting, so as much as I very much enjoy watching Momoa with his shirt off, it might have been better as an animated movie. The places it fell most short by comparison though were in too much action, not enough character development.
Also, while it was nice that Mera and Atlanta were fairly badass, the old storyline could have used a bit more gender bending. (My daughter was muttering ‘You’re royal too, Mera. Why can’t you challenge him?’)Report
@bookdragon The father/son scenes were so, so, so well-done. I asked Roland above how he did. The middle one – with the door between them – was (to me anyway) the heaviest of them, and the most, “Oh my god, these are real characters that I care about very much!” moment.Report
Miles Dad, and Aunt May, were both essential supporting characters. I loved both of them, Dad for the struggles he was having trying to balance everything, and May for stepping up and being that person who providing much needed support.
I would have loved a post credit scene of May having coffee with Miles Dad.Report
That scene would have been awesome!
I loved the way May was depicted in this. A strong, wise older woman rather than poor aunt May who had to be protected (as she was in the comics when I was a kid)Report
Yes! When she’s like “Oh look it’s Liv…” I just lost it.Report
I hit that point just with the drop off at school scene. I joking threatened my son (who is very much in the teen embarrassed by existence of parents phase) that I was going to get his dad (who does drop them off) a police loudspeaker lol.
But the through the door scene did hit me as really moving. It was really well done, both in dialog and in the way the scene was drawn.Report
Doc Ock was all about the Mad Science. Kingpin was her means to funding a dimension breaking Super Collider.Report
Yes, but that made her the least human of the characters. Her motivation seemed to be just “I’m a Mad Scientist”Report
@bookdragon Isn’t that part of the Doc Ock character though? Being so far gone into obsession and madness that humanity has been left behind?Report
Later on, yes. The movie was already packed, so I can understand why she wasn’t given more motive (even what she hoped to prove/gain by breaking the multiverse). And I will say it was well played to have her look initially like a head scientist who might be unhappy and turn on Kingpin. It made the reveal as Doc Ock all the more dramatic.Report
@bookdragon My memory might be shot, but I thought she had tried to pump the brakes on Kingpin’s insistent testing of the Super Collider? Didn’t she try warning him that he was risking calamity?Report
I’d characterize it more as a “we’ll do it, but full disclosure; just so you can’t claim I didn’t warn you if a black hole opens up, well, a black hole could open up.”Report
That’s the Mad Engineer side of things, which hits surprisingly close to reality with regular engineers as well. Why did you build such a dangerous tool? Because I could! Why did you use/let someone use it? I had to know for sure that it worked! This is how the world ends…Report
The thing that I’m most happy about Into the Spider-Verse is that its the first time we get to see thirty-something Peter Parker, which was how I first encountered him. Never got used to teenage Peter Parker.Report
I was especially taken with how the movie both acknowledged that 30 something Peter was somewhat sad and pathetic while not even for a moment depowering him or removing his skills. He was still brilliant, still an extremely gifted spider man, just also a guy who’s personal life has fallen apart.Report
A point driven home in his flashback, as he gets sucked into the portal, and he’s more concerned with his slice of pizza.Report
Well those things happened to him a lot and you don’t want to go on an interdimensional journey hungry. When Miles’ original spider man died he was twenty fishing six!Report