Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse
IT’S A CLICHÉ, but there’s truth in clichés (which, itself, is a cliché): virtually every frame of Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse belongs in a frame. The Phil Lord/chris Miller-produced, Peter Ramsay/rodney Rothman/bob Persichetti-directed superhero flick rewrote the animation rulebook, blending hand-drawn animation and CG wizardry, fusing the aesthetic of comic books and comic-book movies in a way that that made it even more unfathomable that it hadn’t been done before.
But the standout shot — the one you’d dedicate an entire wall to — is Miles Morales’ leap of faith. Towards the end of the movie, Miles, whose control of his powers has been spotty and inconsistent all the way through, knows it’s time to Spider-man up. So he stands on the edge of an especially tall building, and launches himself off, trusting that this will be the moment when his powers kick in. And, as he falls, the camera angle flips. Suddenly, we’re upside-down, but Miles is not. As it says in the Lord/rothman-penned script, “Miles isn’t falling through the frame. He’s RISING.”
“How do we turn failure into success? Could we do it visually?” says Lord of the inspiration behind the idea. “I fell in love with that idea.
I can’t take credit for it. It’s just whatever the ambience was of whatever coffee shop I was in. I was just the vessel of that.”
That shot was locked in so early that it became the centrepiece of the film’s first teaser in 2017, a year before release, and a time when much was up for grabs, visually and structurally. But not, it seems, that shot. “I insisted on it being in the movie somehow,” adds Lord. “When it came to me, I was like, ‘I feel like I haven’t seen that yet.’ So if you can find a new way to do it, you try to cling on to it.”
But even the leap of faith required a leap of faith. “I remember when the shots came in,” says
Miller. “Someone had flipped it back to right-side-up because they thought it was a mistake. We had to re-upside-downify it again, and then it got refined for the final picture. The palette got a little bit richer, and more stylisation happened to the city between the teaser trailer and the final film. But it always felt like it was representative of the theme of the movie.”
It’s also a deeply felt and earned character moment, rich in detail. It would have been so easy for the creative team to focus on those visuals — the cobalt blue of the city sky, the neon nightscape of New York’s myriad friendly neighbourhoods
— but look carefully at Miles’ feet as he falls/rises: yes, his shoelaces, stubbornly untied throughout the film, are still hanging loose. “There was a whole discussion about whether he should grow up and tie his shoes at the end,” adds Miller. “But even at this point, it’s part of his identity.” As Miles himself says, it’s a choice. And if you’re taking a leap of faith with your shoelaces an inch away from tripping you up and killing you, then you’re truly ready to be Spider-man.
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD