Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Ten Second Review: Go and see this film!
I have a bit of a love hate relationship with Spiderman. As a kid, I read Spiderman comics and I enjoyed the Toby Maguire films (the first two at least). In a time where the superhero films I was allowed to watch were the old Batman films and the Batman Animated Series, Spiderman was a cool and young character that I really enjoyed as an antidote to the moody and dark Batman. By the time I was a teenager, and ironically more able to identify with Peter Parker’s life, I’d grown to find the character a little stale. The Andrew Garfield films were essentially the nails in that coffin. Spiderman didn’t seem cool, vibrant and fresh but instead tired and a bit exhausted as a character. The Tom Holland iteration sparked a little flame back in to the character but what had grabbed me more was seeing a comic like Spider-Gwen reach the level of popularity it has. The art brought back in that vibrancy and the character had a lot of potential to revitalise the Spiderman universe.
What this film does is realise the potential that these newer and still fresh feeling versions of the spider-stories have and literally build a film that lets the old guard hand the reigns over to the new characters.
We open in a universe where a blond Peter Parker is the one and only Spiderman of New York City. Miles Morales, a kid form Brooklyn with a love of art and graffiti, is starting at his new school and feels out of place. He turns to his uncle to ask for help with what he should be doing with his life. They go and find a quiet spot so that Miles can show his uncle his talent. While he’s painting a spider bites him but he brushes it off and doesn’t think anything of it. When he wakes up a changed man he goes back to find the spider and sees spider man fighting the Green Goblin and Kingpin. Kingpin is trying to open a portal to other universes and when Spiderman foils his plan he kills him once and for all. Miles soon discovers that when the universes were bridged the spider people from different universe had converged in his world and that he was now the one and only Spiderman (of his own universe). The whole crew will have to work together to try and stop Kingpin but can Miles learn how to use his powers so that he can help them all get back to their own universes…
From the production logos to the credits (and I mean including them) this film was amazing. About a month ago I wrote about how fun it can be to write negative reviews and while that is true it pales in comparison to seeing a film that makes you feel truly happy and then being able to tell people about it. It appealed to the adult film lover in me with its unique tone and mastery of craft and the kid in me by taking a character I used to love and making it feel cool and fresh all over again.
It will be impossible to talk about all the stuff I enjoyed the film but if I don’t begin to focus on something in particular this review will just devolve into a string of sentences generally praising it. To avoid that we’ll start by talking about the music. It makes sense to start with the music cause it was one of the first things from the movie we were given. A couple months back they released a song from the film called Sunflower. It features Post Malone and Swae Lee’s signature fluid sound that can make it hard to understand everything he says. The film opens on Miles singing this song and, along with the audience, humming the bits where you aren’t really sure what Swae lee is saying. Immediately you begin to identify with Miles and how human his character is. The Film took every opportunity from the outset to use the music as a storytelling device and a tone-setter for the film. It was funny when it needed to be and very literal in other places. Where a comic book tells you a sound effect or the characters thoughts (which this film also did) they used the music to tell you what was going on. The music also suited the film. It wasn’t just sweeping strings to create hero shots, although they threw one or two in, and it wasn’t out of place pop hits that pander to a mainstream audience. The music, like the film, felt fresh and on the button. They didn’t just make a b-line for what’s in the charts but what’s actually on the pulse. This seemed to be a theme throughout. While it made sure to pay homage to the character and was an incredible love letter to the medium of comics, it didn’t feel like it had constrained itself to be what you were expecting.
This makes for a good jumping off point to talk about the role that comic books play in this film. More than any other “comic-book-film” this actually feels like watching a comic book. The first Deadpool felt like watching the character fully realised in film but it didn’t feel like watching a comic. This manages to do that and it does it beautifully. The texture of the picture looks like printed paper, the focusing is distinctly sharp in places and almost looks as though it was phasing in others, and the use of text on screen as sound effects or in boxes was so perfectly done that it felt like glancing over a page. It was not done to the point that you were tired of it or that it lost its sheen and there were points where if you blinked you would have missed it but the consistent hum of this commitment to the style really pays off in the final product. The clear love for the form they are imitating comes across in what ends up being a truly unique piece of filmmaking. For a film that is based on existing characters, origin stories we all know and in-jokes for its audience, it manages to feel fresh, original and devoid of pastiche.
I saw a review that demeaned the film by suggesting it was less of a film and more of an “experiment”. To be honest, in a world with endless MCU instalments and a growing array of painful DCEU films, I’m quite glad to see a picture that feels like it knows its audience would like something a little different. It is an experiment but those experiments often end up being the films that stand the test of time. In the age of the Universal Classic Monster films, it was an experiment to have a film where Dracula, the wolf man and Frankenstein’s monster were all in the same film. Might seem par for the course now but at the time it was a risk and an experiment.
I’ve seen a couple of great films this year and some that seemed like had that tried hard to make the wrong decision at every turn (I’m looking at you Predator and Mile 22 and The Nutcracker). I’m glad that we didn’t just get another superhero film that followed the same formula but happened to be animated. I’m glad that the filmmakers chose to try something else cause the result might not be the best film of the year but it easily wins being my favourite. Whether you like comic books or not, whether you like super hero films or not, whether you’re eight, eighteen or eighty; go and see this one. It’s something a little different with a heart of gold story; what more could you want?!
