What I’m Watching: another animated Spiderman film

Date: 12/18/2018

What I’m watching: a new animated Spiderman film in theaters

Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse

First thing, yes, I’ve documented my fanboy credentials many times in this newspaper but I would be grossly inaccurate to portray myself as a Spiderman expert. My reading days were in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Other comics dominate my time today.

It’s safe to say though that if you’re even a little bit of a Spiderman fan that you will find this new animated feature a visual treat and a well written film with carefully balanced moments of action, teen angst – it wouldn’t be a Spiderman movie without teen angst – and humor.

Miles Morales is a teenager living in Brooklyn with his mother and father. A smart kid who is enrolled in a special high school he’s a fan of Spiderman. He is completely unaware that his life and fate will be intertwined with that of the superhero.

When the villainous Kingpin commissions a device that would bring his wife and child – who are dead in this reality – from another alternative universe, he sets forth conditions to bring the people who are Spiderman, Spider Woman and yes, Spider Ham from other points in time and space to this dimension as well.

There is a Japanese girl, Peni Parker, who fights crime with her pet spider and a mechanized suit, Gwen Stacy who is Spider-Gwen, Spider-Noir from a black and white 1930s style universe, Peter Porker alias Spider- Ham, and Peter B. Parker, the Spiderman from his dimension who is ten years older than the Peter parker/Spiderman from our reality.

Miles joins this crew when he is bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes a very scared and reluctant hero.

Aiding Kingpin is Olivia Octavius, a female version of Dr. Octopus.

The device developed by Octavius is doing more than bring individuals from other realities to this one – it is also quite capable of creating a black hole that could swallow up New York City and perhaps Earth. The Spider crew must stop the device and figure out a way to get back home.

The film is based on a series of books starring many of these characters and screenwriters Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman do a fine job making this narrative work for the relatively uninitiated.

What is fairly striking is the animation and the design of the film. The film looks like a comic book page at times, utilizing captions and other story-telling devices that are common to the medium.

The quality of animation is more than serviceable with the short cuts of limited animation used effectively here. Let’s face it, the days of seeing the kind of full animation used by the Fleischer Studio on the ground-breaking Superman shorts – go on YouTube and look them up – will never be seen again.

The other device that works well is using different design styles for each of the Spider crew. Spider-Ham is a classic “funny animal,” while Spider-Noir looks like a character from a 1930s pulp magazine. The effort works well in making us realize these characters come from different realities. My only complaint is the final battle sequence, which in the tradition of many American action films goes on a bit too long. This is a minor quibble.

For those Marvel fans who want all of their films to fit inside a designed giant narrative, they have to realize that this film is from Sony/Columbia and is not part of the official Marvel cinematic canon along with the X-Men and Deadpool movies.

That doesn’t bother me a bit as “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse” is a fun superhero romp.