Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Jordan King

Review by Jordan King Patron

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2018

★★★★★

Rewatched 30 Aug 2021

Stan: [as Miles buys a Spider-Man costume] I'm going to miss him.
Miles Morales: Yeah.
Stan: We were friends, you know.
Miles Morales: Can I return it if it doesn't fit?
Stan: It always fits. Eventually.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is everything you could ever want from a comic book film and so much more besides. A dizzying, dazzling, daring leap of faith of a cinematic experience which understands everything that Spider-Man has been, everything that he will continue to be, and a great deal more than most other artists would ever be able to visualise in terms of who he can be. It’s effortlessly cool, yet painstakingly crafted, with every single frame adorned with the human touch of hand-drawn animation and every shot conceived with the simple aim of eliciting emotion and evoking the uniqueness of the experience of reading a comic book and watching the panels pop and come to life before your very eyes. It’s a film about legacy, and about responsibility, and about the indomitable human spirit and the importance above all else of being good and being true… to be plain, it is a film which uses the gauze of the fantastical and the superheroic to peel back the curtain and explore the fragilities and the fortitude of humanity.

Into the Spider-Verse makes me laugh (“Hey”, “It CAN get weirder”, “Sometimes I let matches burn down to my fingertips just to feel something, anything”), it makes me genuinely cry (“I love you, you don’t have to say it back though”, Uncle Aaron’s final scene, the extraordinary leap of faith sequence), and it makes me remember all of the reasons why I love the character more than any other in comic book history. Whether we’re talking Peter (or Peter B.) Parker, Miles Morales, Peni Parker, Spider-Man Noir Peter Parker, or even Peter Porker, each iteration of everyone’s favourite Friendly Neighbourhood is a figure moulded by their experiences, emboldened by their trauma, and empowered by their discovery of self and embrace of who they are - Spidey inspires not for what they can do, cool as it may be, but for why they do it and for who they are. Spider-Man and all variations thereafter are one of us, and this is why we root for them time and time again and align ourselves so wholeheartedly with the character.

Spider-Man is him. Spider-Man is her. Spider-Man is they. Spider-Man is me. Spider-Man is you. Spider-Man is all of us. And, if the suit doesn’t fit right away, or if sometimes it feels like that mask is out of reach to pull on and pluck up the courage to face the world, then we can take heart in the knowledge that it always fits in the end. As a great musician once said, we can be heroes, and Into the Spider-Verse, without a hint of irony or oversentimentality, makes me believe in the hero inside of me. It’s also the most audacious, vibrant, experimental work of animation this century easily - I’d argue it’s the biggest leap forward for the medium since Toy Story some 24 years prior. Nothing has been the same since, and I for one am so thankful for that.

That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero. - Stan Lee

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