Animated Spidey spins a welcome adventure
Inventive, refreshing and visually stunning, this movie spins a welcome tale
Spidey was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt about that.
And good riddance. This century alone has seen three SpiderMan movies starring Tobey Maguire (with a planned fourth cancelled); two Amazing SpiderMan movies with Andrew Garfield (with two more cancelled) and Spider-Man: Homecoming featuring Tom Holland, who also pops up in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. A sequel is in the works, sadly not yet cancelled.
And yet ... this newest SpiderMan is such a different beast, it has escaped the web of its wellmeaning predecessors.
It has no pre-boarding baggage — you can go in knowing nothing and still have a blast — and neither does it feel like the first leg of a journey that’s going to involve several more potentially cancelled flights. Once this animated plane is in the air, it feels like it’ll never come down.
And how does it do all this with a dead Spider-Man? Why, by dipping a tentative toe into the murky waters of that old yet endlessly refreshing spring, the alternate universe.
In comic books it gave us Bizarro World, where everything is backward, and Red Son, in which Superman landed not in Kansas but on a collective farm in Ukraine.
Into the Spider-Verse is set in an alternate world where the NYPD is the PDNY, Coca-Cola has become Koca- Soda and packages are delivered by RedEx and its competitor, USB.
Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore, is your average Brooklyn teenager, until he gets bitten by a radioactive spider and develops superpowers, just as the “real” Spider-Man (Chris Pine) is breathing his last breath.
The event that ends SpiderMan’s life is an experiment in physics that opens a tear in space-time, letting all kinds of Spider-Folk into Miles’s universe.
Chief among them is Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), from a realm where Spidey let himself go after he and Mary Jane had
split up. He’s barely up to posing for pictures in Times Square now, but it’s also clear you can never fully take the “do” out of do-gooder.
He’s willing and able to help. Also, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), a.k.a. Spider- Gwen, who hails from a place called Earth-65, which gives you some idea how crowded the multiverse can get.
It’s a pleasing enough premise, but it’s the execution that truly sparkles, courtesy of co-directors and animators Bob Persichetti, Rodney Rothman and Peter Ramsey.
The look combines elements of CGI, hand-drawn animation and a heavy dose of pulp comics, with its use of multiple panels on the screen, dialogue and sound effects in boxes, and the fourcolour process that gave comics in the middle of the last century their iconic “dotty” look.
It’s almost painfully overwhelming in the film’s opening minutes, but once you attune yourself to the techniques it’s downright thrilling.
Perhaps it’s a function of the three-person directing team (IMDb.com doesn’t list a cinematographer), but there are camera moves in this film I’d never seen before.
Or at least I think so. SpiderVerse moves at a dizzying pace, not so fast that its plot doesn’t cohere, but certainly not inviting viewers to sit back and delight in its beauty.
That will have to wait for streaming or DVD, and the ability to stop the frame and examine the rich, joke-filled backgrounds. (Example: A Times Square billboard advertising a Simon Pegg movie called From Dusk Till Shaun.)
The movie also makes use of depth-of-field techniques not often seen in the crisp world of computer-generated animation. Backgrounds blur and shift out of focus.
And while the state of the art is often to try to make audiences forget they’re watching a glorified cartoon, Spider-Verse actually doubles down on the format, revelling in what it can do.
And yet for all the humour — and there’s plenty — SpiderVerse is grounded in some real emotions, not least loss and regret, though in a refreshing reversal, it’s the chief villain (Liev Schreiber) who has the family-tragedy backstory. There’s also a truly kick-ass Aunt May voiced by Lily Tomlin, just when I thought that Marisa Tomei had owned the role for all time.
And there’s a nice message that anyone can be a hero, although — let’s be honest — an alliterative name helps.
And finally, here is a universe where Stan Lee hasn’t yet passed away, and yet no one has heard of Comic-Con. I might have to move there.
A journal entry Shameik LOS ANGELES Moore wrote as a teenager laid out one of his dreams — to play Spider-Man on the big screen. That dream is now partly realized with Moore serving as the voice of the webslinger in the animated film Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse.
Moore plays Miles Morales, a biracial Brooklyn teen who gains an array of superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. Morales melds his superpowers, including enhanced hearing, wallcrawling and camouflage abilities — while putting his own stamp on the character. Gone are Peter Parker’s blue-and-red outfits, replaced by a red-and-black version and a cool pair of sneakers.
Moore’s ambition was to be the face of Spider-Man in a live-action film, something he still hopes will happen. But for now, he’s happy to serve as the character’s voice.
“The story now is coming out through me. So with great power, comes great responsibility,” he said, referencing an oft-repeated line from the Spider-verse of film and comics. “It’s a black SpiderMan, and he looks like me.
“It’s a new time in Hollywood,” said Moore, who is 23 and of Jamaican descent. “Not only are we in live-action superhero movies, but they are animating us now,” he said. “I’m honoured to be the first black Spider-Man (in a film).”
On Dec. 9, the Golden Globes nominated Into the Spider-Verse for best animated film, and it has generated some Oscar buzz that could lead to a superhero showdown with Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet. It boasts a rating of 99 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and has drawn rave reviews for its visual style and deftly managing of a storyline that features six distinct versions of Spider-Man. The multiple Spideys team up to thwart a plot by Marvel supervillain Kingpin, who hatches a plan to wreak havoc across multiple realities.
Moore almost had a divergent path to becoming Spider-Man. He first auditioned to play the webslinger years ago with other multiracial candidates, but the role of Spider-Man and his alter ego Peter Parker ultimately went to Tom Holland, who made his debut in Captain America: Civil War, anchored the stand-alone film Spider-Man: Homecoming and had a key role in Avengers: Infinity War.
Moore’s fascination with Morales started after seeing Donald Glover voice the character on Disney’s Ultimate Spider-Man a few years ago. The character was introduced in comic books in 2011 after then-U.S. president Barack Obama and Glover, inspired by Morales’ creation, sported Spider-Man pyjamas on a different TV show.
Moore recalled how director Rick Famuyiwa, who cast him in the 2015 film Dope, considered him to play Morales in a live-action film, but he said those plans were scrapped after “somebody in power got switched around” and Famuyiwa decided to make it an animated film.
Producers of Spider-Verse said they went the animation route because computer graphic illustrators could mimic comic book movements better. With the process of blending CGI and handdrawn animation, it took three years to develop Into the SpiderVerse.
“Our animation is so exaggerated that the best stuntman in world couldn’t do it,” said Chris Miller, who co-produced the film with Phil Lord, one of its co-writers. The filmmaking duo is known for 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie. “At least in this film, he can move the same way as the comics. If anything, this doesn’t box out a live-action Miles movie. It actually brings more awareness to it.”
Moore says he hopes it happens sooner than later.
“I’m very physical. I don’t need the mask to do flips,” he said. “I won’t need a stunt double ... But if they take like six, seven years, I’ll be older and won’t be able to play it.”
Regardless of awards or box offices success, Spider-Verse cast members believe the film will inspire audiences. The movie explores Morales’ biracial culture and upbringing of the character that swings around the city wearing Air Jordan sneakers.
“I can’t imagine if I was a kid and there was a black or brown Spider-Man. I would have been so excited,” said Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali, who is the voice of Morales’ uncle Aaron Davis, a.k.a. Prowler. “This opens doors for a different generation to sort of believe in different possibilities. There’s a generation that came into the world knowing Barack Obama was their president, and never thought it was strange or a huge feat. Hopefully, this can be the same.”