Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse

Or: You Are Not Alone.

I hate to write reviews for movies like Into the Spider-Verse almost as much as I love to watch them. There’s no way to get a grip on it, my powers of description scrabble against the elegant curves of story and the (I do not use that word lightly) awesome flights of animation, in inverse proportion to our hero, Miles Morales (Shamiek Moore), runs and crawls and soars over the edifices of New York.

A sharp kid with street savvy but uncommitted to a lot in life, Miles, prefers to graffiti his art with his too-cool Uncle Aaron (Mahersala Ali) then follow the strictures of his by-the-book cop father, Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry). The old formula follows: radioactive spider chooses to nosh on him, dramatic death laying a path to responsibility, and a supervillain with a nefarious plot (here Willson Fisk (Liev Schreiber) with a potentially reality-ending particle collider). But, new to the wall-crawling business, Miles must take command of his powers, and find the courage to use them, if the day is to be saved. Luckily (and sterlingly on the part of story master (pretentious but no better word for it) Phil Lord), the collider has sucked in other spider-folk from across the multiverse (and the real-life comics where all sorts have taken up the mask), bursting Athena-like from the head of Stan Lee and his heirs (not literally) and on to the big screen with pizzazz, style, humor, and heart.

To go further would risk cracking the delightful box of chocolates that Lord and co. present to us. The story is neat, well-paced and nifty, the characters expertly drawn (special mention to Lilly Tomlin as a keister-kicking Aunt May and (I’ll stand by it) the best use of Nicholas Cage yet as the boisterously hammy Spiderman Noir (“I drink egg creams and fight Nazis.” what more can one ask for?). Mile’s journey from boy to hero is decently plotted, with few of the usual shortcuts that water-down an origin story and with setbacks that feel natural rather than forced. The humor is top notch and the dramatic twists spark perfectly.

But the animation! The animation, dear reader! From the palpable depth of New York, to the high-speed rush of chases and fights (especially evocative when Miles flees the nightmarish armored mask, The Prowler), to the hilarity of comic-book thought bubbles smattering the scene and the final fights in which all get-out literally breaks loose. It’s a visual feast and we sample a wide range of sweet, salty, and filling styles.

Maybe more than any other of the genre though, and for all its flights of fancy, Into the Spider-Verse hammers home the need that anyone can be a hero. A handsome photographer, a crumbling divorcé, a teenaged dancer, a hardboiled detective, a young girl with gage tearing smarts, an Afro-Latino Brooklynite, and even a cartoon pig. So long as you stand up for what’s right, even in the face of failure, you can wear the mask, your invention and integrity become your superpowers, you too can be a Spider-man.