Review: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" Reinvents the Superhero Narrative Perfectly

Scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

With over a half dozen superhero movies released annually, it does seem difficult to answer such a simple question: what makes someone a hero? It takes an act of bravery for sure, but most films feature familiar archetypes fighting supernatural forces more than getting to the heart of how the person watching the film could ever imagine themselves on screen. It's exactly what makes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse so revolutionary and one of the quintessential superhero films of the decade. It isn't just that the animation pushes the boundaries of conventional CGI, but that it manages to find the humanity within the style and bring something new to something oh so familiar.

When audiences think of Spider-Man, they're more thinking of Peter Parker: a kid from Brooklyn who has long been defined by white men like Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland. There's nothing wrong with these portrayals, but the idea that Spider-Man can only look like that has long been disconcerting, especially given that comic book adaptations have far exceeded Parker. There's also Miles Morales: a black teenager who takes on the role albeit with some reluctance. There's even Gwen Stacy, who is a female equivalent. So the question going into Spider-Verse should be more directly: why is Parker the only Spider-Man that movies tend to focus on? In an era where the MCU has began to embrace cultural diversity, why make Parker the prototype for Spider-Man? As the film quickly establishes: there is no good reason for this. In fact, there's a lot more to the lore than Parker.

When supervillain Wilson Fisk (Liev Schreiber) opens up a portal to other universes, he causes a series of Spider-Men to enter the dimension that Miles (Shameik Moore) lives in. Everyone already knows the story (they got bitten by a radioactive spider), so the film chooses to more explore more esoteric mythology. As much as the film is about Miles learning to become a hero, it's also about the idea of a diverse community coming together to fight a capitalist figure. What's more incredible is that while the characters range from an anime girl with a robot named Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) to a Looney Tunes-esque pig named Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), they all have similar stories. While this could be seen as lazy writing, what it actually does is show that there's a deeper connection. Anyone could be a superhero, no matter their size or species. It's just a matter of wanting to.

It helps that what Spider-Man mythology is explored in depth is from a perspective that hasn't been rebooted three times so far this century. It's from Miles, who loves graffiti and has trouble fitting into a new school. There's also conflict between him and the two men in his life: his father (Brian Tyree Henry) and Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), with the former being a police officer and the latter being seen as a bad influence. It's the fight between law and crime that flows through Miles' blood, and it informs a lot of his story going forward. Even as he's taught by Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), an alternate Spider-Man with a streetwise sensibility, there's a slow unraveling of the world that is fascinating. Even in a time where Avengers: Infinity War features multi-hyphenate galaxies, the world of Spider-Verse seems like a hard sell for audiences and is a miracle that it ends up as well as it does. It helps that beyond the special effects and genre-mashing characters there is Miles. He grounds everything in a story that may sound familiar to those who know Parker's origin, but is specific enough to his life that it takes on different meaning.

There is a joy put back into Spider-Man as a character in this film. For starters, animation adds more depth to the world that he inhabits. The simple act of crawling up and down walls is now allowed to be shifted, turning the side of a building into a walkway. The film has fun with these new perspectives and always knows to indulge in the ridiculous. This would technically be plausible to a live action environment given CGI computer capabilities, but it would still look too fictional to be real. In Spider-Verse, it's just another piece of the puzzle, creating a world of infinite wonder placed alongside the conventional animation of Brooklyn. Even the way that the black-and-white character of Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage) gels with the colored world gives a contrast that hasn't really been explored in these type of films. What could be seen as simply putting everything in a blender ends up working because of how committed the film is to creating something expansive, that goes beyond film techniques and uplifts ideas from the comic book page. For decades, things have ironically been more plausible in those stagnant boxes. Spider-Verse is one of the first to realize correctly how to make it work on a giant scale.

It also helps that the entire universe/s are equally creative in their details. Much like the different characters ranging from classical Spider-man to film noir, anime, and Chuck Jones-ian, the film incorporates a feel of a 21st century world that even the best of the superhero genre hasn't been able to capture. The soundtrack, which proudly advertises this on Apple Music, is a blend of "cross-racial, cross-gender, cross-generational, cross-dimensional" in a way that embraces hip-hop with more conventional music. In a world where anything can happen, it's welcoming that every piece of fabric within the film feels that way. There's details that feel like they exist beyond the frames and it only adds to the wonder of Miles' story. While it may seem too radical for some, it's still an infusion that feels like it's trying to push superhero cinema beyond what it's been capable of. For anything that the film does sloppily, it deserves points for pushing aesthetic, narrative, characters, animation, and every other field to a new level.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is one of those films that feel too good to be true. In an age of superhero fatigue, it's the one that shoots adrenaline down its throat. It wants to believe that American superheroes could be something greater, which includes being more personal to narratives outside of what's been covered. There's so many more stories to tell, and they all have the power to make us sympathize and feel. Even at its wackiest, the film feels grounded in a sense of jubilant embrace of the future, where we will see someone like Spider-Ham fighting alongside Gwen Stacy and whatever Spider-Man is still too crazy for the big screen at this moment. There's a bigger world out there than what we give credit for. Thankfully, this film feels like a gateway drug into a deeper, more kaleidoscopic ecstasy.