December 19, 2018 3 min to read

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

As a fan of pop-art, style and animation, I’m blown away. As a fan of cohesive narrative and character development I’m left disappointed at what could have been.

by Zach Saul

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse is the story of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) the most recent addition to the spiderman universe, who’s bitten by a radioactive spider and forced into action after the death of Peter Parker. Parker was killed by Kingpin, an all-powerful “suit” who build an interdimensional portal to try and reunite with his family. Soon after Parker’s death Miles is confronted by spider people from dozens of different dimensions including Peter Parker who he thought to be dead. Kingpin’s (Liev Schreiber) particle accelerator allowed him to find his fallen family members, but also unleashed an army of Spidermen and women who raise hell to save the city of Brooklyn. To defeat Kingpin, Miles, Peter Parker, Spider-Gwen, Spider Man Noir & co. must team up and destroy the collider.

In evaluating Spiderman Into the Spiderverse I’m torn. As a fan of art, animation, and technical innovation I am blown away by what Phil Lord & Christopher Miller have achieved. The blending of pop-art, graffiti, and distortion graphics was gorgeous to look at and might be the most significant visual achievement of the year for an animated film. It’s no wonder Sony has already made moves to patent the animation techniques. The filmmakers clearly wanted us to feel like a comic book was coming to life as opposed to the film being a loose adaptation of a comic storyline. On those terms—Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse is a roaring success.

However, I cannot regard Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse the same way I do the best superhero films to the past few decades because it doesn’t transcend the genre in the way Nolan’s The Dark Knight or Mangold’s Logan does. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse is a movie that’s not pretending it’s for anyone other than comic book diehards - given it’s incessant meta-jokes, & references. As a viewer I would have prefered they spend the time they spent recanting the plot of the past 5 Spiderman movies giving some of the villains an introduction. Superhero flicks are as good as their villains, and while Kingpin has tons of potential he isn’t given the screen time he deserves for us to understand the dichotomy between him, the superheroes, and the city of Brooklyn. I think it’s a film appreciators of great art should absolutely see because visually it has achieved something significant, but in terms of narrative and character development it’s severely lacking.

The Good: Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse is clever in its stylistic choices, and uses two dimensional comic book structures sparingly—but with purpose to punctuate the movie. The characters feel like they’re leaping out of the comic book frames throughout the movie - and the action scenes especially are a spectacle to be admired.

The Bad: I understand that we’ve had a Spiderman movie every year or so for the past two decades - but that doesn’t excuse Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse spending only a ten second scripted monologue developing each character. Phil Lord and the minds behind Lego Movie have a history of fast, frenetic pacing in their films; and while I understand it’s a stylistic choice that distinguishes their work I found it disorienting and even lazy in certain sequences. For viewers who don’t own mint condition Spiderman first editions, it’s hard to care about these characters if we don’t understand them outside their superpowers.