Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

We like to say that “the geeks have won.” It’s a victory that’s been called more often than Barbara Stanwyck’s bedside telephone in Sorry, Wrong Number, but each time it feels like geekdom has achieved the unthinkable – be it the smash debut of The Avengers or introducing comics-accurate oddballs like King Shark and Professor Pyg on primetime. In 2018, the geeks won by having a banner year, with three animated superhero films alongside major showings by their live-action counterparts. However you slice it, we can have a productive argument about whether the cartoon with a Spider-Pig was actually the best one – a true win for the geeks.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (finally) introduces Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) to the big screen as Brooklyn’s new friendly neighborhood Spider-Man after a spider bite puts him in a league with his universe’s Peter Parker (Chris Pine). I say “his” universe, for Brooklyn becomes host to a coterie of spider-people after The Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) tears a hole in the fabric of space-time with a particle accelerator experiment. Joining Miles are a shlubbier Spidey (Jake Johnson), Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), the black-and-white Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), and Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) – all in search of a way home.

I’ve said in the past that Batman is the greatest fictional character because of his chameleonic ability to accommodate whatever his audience needs – he can be the paragon of camp, the apex gargoyle, a space-age dark knight, or a kid-friendly crusader. When I say that, however, I’m usually not thinking of Spider-Man, for whose comparable metamorphoses Spider-Verse makes a compelling argument. Spider-Verse posits a veritable spider-prism (kids next door, rocker chicks, tough-guy gangsters, wise-cracking pigs, and more), each of whom accesses the central truth of Spider-Man – that with great power, there must also come great responsibility. You can’t run away, you can’t turn your back; your family and your friendly neighborhood are counting on you. For all his myriad forms, it’s hard to imagine Batman in a film like this one, teamwork having never been his strong suit. (Singular dislocation suits Batman better than prismatic conjunction; cf. Batman Ninja, Batman Beyond, etc.)

It’s equally hard to imagine that Spider-Verse works as well as it does. Its irreverent approach to storytelling, layering origin stories in a gag that never loses its comedic punch, helps the viewer navigate fifty years of convoluted chronology with deft precision. (Its comics counterpart, 2014’s Spider-Verse crossover, is comparably impenetrable.) Make no mistake, though; for all its spider-people, Spider-Verse is well and truly Miles’s film, a full origin story for the newest Spider-Man (who debuted in 2011). Here Miles is quite a character, engaging and relatable because of his eminent humanity; he’s shy but gifted, funny and earnest. What’s more, there comes a moment in the film where you’d almost rather he not become Spider-Man because of how well we like Miles and the unique story being told with him; it almost seems a shame to put him in a costume and give him a fairly recognizable super-action narrative. But the exceedingly clever script finds a way to weave that hero’s journey into the story already in progress (including a few, ahem, touching callbacks).

Of course, so much of the film’s success owes to its lanky animation style, delicately exaggerated in the best Tex Avery tradition. The slightly jerky movements and modest design tweaks help divorce Spider-Verse from strict representation and move it into a realm where it feels like anything can happen, where any abstract incursion fits right in (cf. Spider-Ham). Animation naturally unfetters a filmmaker’s aspirations in the way that a comic book page renders all things possible beyond constraints of budget. That’s not to say that Spider-Verse is cheap (its budget has been reported at $90 million), but it’s hard to imagine a live-action film capturing all the peculiar quirks of this world, to say nothing of its technicolor climax or the characters that almost need to belong to an animated world (again, Spider-Ham, but also the monochromatic Spider-Man Noir). I knew I was in for a visual treat even from the trailers, but nothing can really prepare a moviegoer for the first appearance of the massive Kingpin – whose sheer mass cannot be understated. Even this, though, is essential character work; Kingpin’s colossal bulk distorts gravity around him, in the way that his particle accelerator tampers with the laws of physics in order to pull in the objects of his plot (no spoilers, but the script is smart to make Kingpin three-dimensional, giving him a full and possibly legitimate reason for risking the fate of the universe).

As dark as the film can be, wading into heavy subplots about betrayal, disappointment, and loss, Spider-Verse is exuberantly, boundlessly fun. I can’t, for example, point at someone or touch their shoulder without thinking of particular jokes in the film and guffawing my webs off. But the film also tickles my specific devotion to superheroes for its relentless optimism. Yes, the situation is dire, with cataclysmic consequences, but here’s a kid from Brooklyn who stands at the center of this massive web with the power to save everyone, and all he needs to do is figure himself out. What’s more, he has a loving family and a network of friends to help him through difficult times; no matter how isolated he feels, Miles Morales is never alone. Reducing him to “the black Spider-Man” doesn’t do justice to the depth of this character or the ways he advances and perpetuates the legend of Spider-Man without the guilt or baggage of Peter Parker.

I’m not ready to wade into the battlefields of “who did it better?” just yet. (As I get older, I’m losing patience with these pithy ‘hot takes’ that end more conversations than they start.) The geeks have well and truly won when we can have Black Panther and Spider-Verse, when we get a long-overdue Incredibles 2 alongside them and Avengers: Infinity War, to say nothing of Aquaman, Venom, Deadpool 2, and Ant-Man and the Wasp. (Phew!) It’s an embarrassment of riches, not unlike the spider-cornucopia presented in Spider-Verse, with something for everyone and everything adding up to a romping good time. Best of all, Spider-Verse got me to dust off my Marvel Unlimited subscription and queue up a slate of spider-comics to read. That’s how the geeks win.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is rated PG for “frenetic sequences of animated action violence, thematic elements, and mild language.” Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. Written by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Brian Michael Bendis, Sara Pichelli, and Dan Slott. Starring Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber, and Chris Pine.

Monday at the Movies - May 1, 2017

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” We’re not at the movies, though; if you’ve wondered what your Cinema King thought about the last few rounds of the Marvel/Netflix experiment, look no further.

Daredevil: Season Two (2016) – After falling head over heels for the first season of Daredevil, knocking it out in about four days thanks to the binge model of Netflix, I definitely felt the law of diminishing returns in effect for Daredevil’s sophomore outing, which took me a few weeks to wrap up. After last season’s singular focus on how Wilson Fisk’s rise paralleled Daredevil’s, this season has two main components: an arc introducing the gun-toting vigilante The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), followed by the return of the deadly Elektra (Élodie Yung) into the life of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox). The first of these is exceptional, and had the rest of the season been as good it would have pushed Season Two to the top of what Marvel Television has been able to accomplish; Bernthal is frankly definitive as the violent, tortured Punisher, with iconic moments ripped from the comics and given their due. The Punisher’s arc over the season takes him to fascinating places, interacting with fantastic characters, and setting him up for a dynamite solo series (which, of course, is happening). It’s the second half, though, which failed to impress this reviewer, as it goes full ninja into what I think is the least interesting aspect of Daredevil – his battles against The Hand. The stakes of this conflict are nebulous – the city is in danger, but isn’t it always? – and would appear to pull their punches in advance of The Defenders. Though Yung is a fine choice for Elektra, the plotting never fully convinces us that she’s anything but trouble for Matt Murdock, who’s exceptionally angsty this season. Hat-tip, though, to Elden Henson, whose portrayal of Foggy Nelson ends up being a major show-stealer and a bright light in a season that can be dismally dark.

Luke Cage (2016) – Fresh off a stint on Jessica Jones, Mike Colter is back as the man with unbreakable skin, and his performance as Luke Cage deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the top performances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His Luke is a resolute figure of unflappable grace, of tough decisions, and uncompromising morality, and for all that we say that superheroes are figures of admiration, Colter really embodies it. Put another way, I want to be this guy. Like Daredevil: Season Two, Luke Cage is narratively bifurcated, though it’d be a spoiler to say precisely why; suffice it to say that the villains, Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes (the recently-Oscared Mahershala Ali) and Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard, who’s deft enough to make you forget she’s an entirely different character in Civil War), are as variable and fascinating as Luke is stalwart and unfaltering. It’s unquestionably among the timeliest, most political material Marvel has turned out of late, and that thematic resonance gives Luke Cage a weight that I don’t think the other Netflix programs have quite attained (though Jessica Jones felt psychologically and personally heavy). Consequently, we feel quite tangibly all the struggles and expectations placed on Luke, justly or otherwise, as he finds himself in a position to navigate issues so much larger than a man without superpowers might be able to bear on his own. Notably, Luke Cage has a real pulse in the form of its soundtrack, which significantly differentiates it from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; the show’s use of music, both diegetic and otherwise, becomes the lifeblood of the show and a fitting barometer for the mood of the community.

Iron Fist (2017) – For the past month, everyone’s been talking about Iron Fist, though not for the reasons Marvel would have liked. A good number of people are upset about the character’s race, while an even larger contingent is dubbing this show the worst thing Marvel’s ever done for other reasons altogether. For my money, and this may be a reaction to having my expectations titanically lowered by early reviews, Iron Fist is not terrible, but it’s not especially good, either. If you can power through the first episode (as seems to be the advice for most shows), you’re in the clear; Iron Fist has one of the least successful openers of any show I’ve watched, with characters who behave irrationally and without any sense of a motivation or indeed of characterization in any sense. As the show progresses, though, the characters crystallize a little more clearly, particularly the increasingly compelling brother-sister duo of Ward and Joy Meachum (Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup). Aside from the fact that I still don’t care what The Hand is doing, a recurring problem for the show is that its titular protagonist Danny Rand (Finn Jones, late of Game of Thrones) is a bit of a stunted man-child who behaves like an idiot and makes one ill-advised decision after another between bouts of temper tantrums and social awkwardness. If the character is deliberately crafted that way, Jones is bang-on, but it’s off-putting to have a show where everyone knows better than the main character. The show’s women, though, end up its greatest strength; Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) is the capable badass Marvel’s Netflix universe deserves, Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho, back from Daredevil) is a captivating character and a continuity hound’s delight, and it’s always a treat to see Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) try to talk some sense into the self-destructive vigilantes who headline these shows. Iron Fist seeds a few tantalizing developments for a likely second season, but the show needs to do some major work on its eponymous hero if audiences are going to connect with this aloof kung fu dope.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!