A blast of craft and storytelling
You wait months for a decent superhero movie, and then two show up in the same holiday. Boxing Day opener Aquaman was a perfectly fine way to waste a couple of hours but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is something else again.
This is a whole new take on what a superhero movie can be allowed to be. Or at least, it’s an approach we haven’t seen from a Hollywood studio in decades. And it’s a little ripper.
Spider-Verse – it’s right there in the title – takes place in what comic-book writers like to call an alternative universe. It’s Earth, in the present day, but everything is just a little...off.
The first clue is that the police cars in New York City are branded ‘‘PDNY’’. And the second clue is that Spider-Man is a young AfroLatino kid named Miles Morales.
Like original Spider Man Peter Parker, Morales was bitten by a genetically mutated spider. And like Parker, he has to struggle to work out what is happening to him, and then how to use his new found super powers for good.
But Morales at least has Peter Parker around to help him. Only trouble is, Parker is a slightly washed-up and embittered guy, with no desire to team up with a younger sidekick, especially when there’s a tear in that pesky spacetime continuum, allowing several more Spider-beings to come into our world.
Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse does many things very well, and some things superbly. The writing, plotting and dialogue is fresh, original and mostly defies superhero origin conventions.
We recognise the familiar beats of the established Spider-Man story, but in the Spider-Verse, everything is given a new twist, allowing many of the expected moments to function as a parody of the hoary old storylines films in this genre are generally welded to.
Spider-Verse has dialogue that sparks, delivered by characters with relatable personalities, working through problems unlike any I’ve seen written into a superhero movie before.
The fact that Spider-Verse is also one of the most inventive and beautiful animated films ever made, almost seems like too much of a good thing.
Shameik Moore (The Get Down) voices Morales/Spider-Man with an appealing enthusiasm and sense of wonder. We believe in this kid from the moment he arrives on screen, and the relationships he has with his parents, friends and colleagues seem natural.
Around Moore, Jake Johnson, Zoe Kravitz, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Nicolas Cage, Liev Schreiber and Lily Tomlin all do terrific work.
Spider-Verse also makes room for one of the deftest and mostpoignant Stan Lee cameos you’ll ever see.
Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse is a blast of craft and storytelling. In an overcrowded and mostly predictable genre, it is exactly the superhero movie I didn’t even know I needed to see.