An animated movie that combines new and old in both its narrative and aesthetics, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a unique pit-stop between two live-action Spider-Man films. It not only pays homage to older versions of the character, but paves the way for future entries, like the alternate universe-centric Spider-Man: No Way Home. Into the Spider-Verse is, arguably, already the gold standard for a wave that’s still young, of superhero movies steeped in multiverse crossovers, though what works best about it isn’t simply that it ropes in recognizable iconography, but that it understands its weight.
The story features not one, but two versions of Peter Parker — three if you count Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage) — and a grand total of seven interrelated Spider-people from various corners of Marvel media. Its anchor, however, is Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a more recent comic character tasked with taking up the identity of Spider-Man from Peter Parker, a mantle whose meaning the film places in its crosshairs (and in some ways, transforms), resulting in a Pop Art-inspired sequel of sorts to the Sam Raimi trilogy.
In our ongoing look back at Peter Parker on-screen, we examine what makes his story, and the stories of his successors, work so precisely in Into the Spider-Verse, despite its numerous flaws.
The two live-action Spider-Man reboots, which kicked off with The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America: Civil War, attempted to replicate Uncle Ben’s “With great power comes great responsibility” speech (and its resultant themes) from the Sam Raimi movies. The results have been mixed across each series, but while Into Spider-Verse begins similarly — it even re-uses audio of the late Cliff Robertson, who played Uncle Ben in Raimi’s films — the animated saga picks up the baton by breaking the idea down to its fundamentals. Choosing responsibility, as Peter does at the end of his 2002 origin, is just the first of a series of momentous decisions, and what is the rest of Spider-Man’s journey if not to keep making difficult choices?
Into the Spider-Verse, though its gimmick involves bringing together numerous Spider-People, builds this element of choice into its very premise, with Dr. Olivia Octavius (Kathryn Hahn) explaining that each multiverse exists as a result of different choices. This first becomes apparent during the contrasting character introductions of Peter Parker (Chris Pine), a square-jawed hero who seems to have struck the perfect work-life balance, and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), whose personal life has fallen apart. His middle name, while likely in tribute to Uncle Ben, positions him as the lesser alternative — a B-player in a tapestry of seemingly greater Spider-Men who didn’t end up divorced, and who still carry themselves with a bright-eyed disposition.
As much as Peter B. Parker's role in the film is about mentoring Miles, it’s equally about having his choices reflected back to him, so he can finally get back on the right path.
Their introductory montages frame them both as versions of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, with one moving forward in time, towards the kind of cookie-cutter heroism that seems desirable — apart from being crushed to death by an enormous, Triplets of Belleville-inspired Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) — while the other reverts to being a loser. He’s Peter Parker back to square one, and as much as his role in the film is about mentoring Miles, it’s equally about having his choices reflected back to him, so he can finally get back on the right path. As a hero, he’s immediately ready to sacrifice himself so the other Spider-Folks can return to their respective universes, but in a sly inversion of most standard superhero stories, following the Spider-Path to its fatal endpoint, as his Pine-voiced counterpart does, is actually the easier alternative for Peter B.
Directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman craft an intricate journey (from a screenplay co-written by Rothman and Phil Lord), along which Miles’ ascendancy to Spider-Man becomes intrinsically linked with Peter finding the courage to go back home and pick up the pieces of his shattered marriage to Mary Jane. Not simply because Miles pulls the right levers, but because he uses Peter’s own advice, about taking a leap of faith despite not feeling ready and being stifled by fear, to yank Peter out of the pessimistic, self-loathing funk that’s been preventing him from making difficult choices — the very thing that has defined him as Spider-Man for several decades.
Although Peter and Miles exist in different universes, theirs is a story of lineage, and of Peter spiritually passing down the Spider-Man mantle so that he can find a way to be Peter Parker once more. For Miles, this story involves living up to the expectations set before him — by his father, and by the more experienced Spider-People — and while these dots don’t always connect in satisfying ways, the underlying sentiments are wrapped in such shiny packaging that the gaps often cease to matter.
Like Peter, Miles chooses inertia over the difficult road ahead of him, which involves living up to his potential at a fancy new science prep school. He doesn’t believe he has what it takes, and rather than risking failure, he would rather not try at all. This is a vital element of his character, but the way the film maps it onto his journey as Spider-Man ends up slightly muddled and misplaced.
Miles’ powers don’t scare him quite the same way. Rather than fearing them the way he fears failure in academia, he puts the utmost effort into using his Spider-powers, weakening the thematic bonds between his two stories, when they could have so easily been reflections of one another, and parts of the same dramatic journey. What changes between Miles being unable to control his abilities and his eventual handle on them is a vague notion of sentiment, one that ends up disconnected from a real emotional through-line, since the catalytic act of his father Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) supporting him and expressing belief in him isn’t all that different from their dynamic earlier in the film.
However, despite the appearance of change where none meaningfully exists (a problem that plagues Spider-Man: Homecoming), Miles’ subsequent leap downward into the New York skyline — since the shot is inverted, he rises upward as well — proves to be a riveting confluence of pop imagery, and one of the most rousing sequences in recent Hollywood. It works not despite valuing style over substance, but because it places such specific value on style and visual aesthetics, and it rises to match that high bar. Tracing the logic from Jefferson’s speech to Miles breaking free from his bonds can be an exercise in frustration, but the resulting emotional crescendo, which begins with Miles fashioning his own costume, retroactively imbues this father-son exchange with meaning, for one very simple reason: Miles is an artist, and a visual one at that, and designing his own unique Spider-Man outfit is his emotional catharsis.
The costume’s inspirations already exist in Miles’ life. The ensuing prep montage is scored not only by Blackway & Black Caviar’s “What’s Up Danger,” but by the echoing words of support from his father, Jefferson, his mother, Rio (Luna Lauren Velez), and his recently slain uncle, Aaron (Mahershala Ali). The design itself, rather than resembling the comics version — whose webbed pattern remixes Peter’s costume — is born from a combination of Miles’ street-wear and his graffiti (among other things, it acts as a personal embodiment of his vibrant Brooklyn neighborhood).
The costume, rather than resembling the comics version... is born from a combination of Miles’ street-wear and his graffiti.
While the broader idea of Miles’ family’s support is no different than earlier in the film, what has changed is the specific way he uses their belief in him and turns it into art. In addition to his relationship with Peter, this aesthetic focus is what makes Miles’ version of Spider-Man feel like a descendant of the Raimi films, the first of which — a story where Peter’s love for Mary Jane is a central driving-force — creates a similar connection between Peter and his suit, whose color scheme he lands on while recalling MJ’s red hair and blue eyes. In both films, the idea of Spider-Man is a deeply personal artistic expression, woven intrinsically with each protagonist’s journey: Peter choosing between heroism and Mary Jane, and Miles finding a way to live up to his family’s expectations.
However, the most intimate idea the film attaches to Spider-Man — using not only Peter and Miles, but the entire supporting cast — is loss.
Into the Spider-Verse takes a top-down view of the Spider-Man legacy, across not only the live-action films, but the numerous comics from which the various Spider-People originate. More than their arachnid theme, what binds Peter, Miles, Spider-Man Noir, Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), the anime-inspired Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and Looney Tune knock-off Peter Porker (John Mulaney) is their proximity to death; they have each lost someone vital to them. The film, though it doesn’t elaborate on this, hints at the nature of Spider-Man as a symbol of grief — of carrying and dealing with pain, in contrast to the villainous Kingpin, who lives in denial — rather than a symbol to which grief is merely incidental.
The characters’ respective origin stories all echo similar tragedies, the most recent of which — Miles’ uncle being shot and killed in front of him — has only just occurred. Their discussion of this trope, while brief, brings to the fore an element which all three live-action Spider-Man series have featured in some form, though only one of them (the Tobey Maguire version) has thus far allowed its lead to ruminate on loss and let it affect him inside and out. Into the Spider-Verse comes much closer than the Garfield and Holland iterations, and while it features no extensive narrative sections dedicated to this theme (or to the ensuing survivor’s guilt), its aesthetic approach wildly outshines most other Spider-Man films.
Rather than the bold stylization of Miles’ costume crescendo, the film opts, instead, to withhold — a tonal choice that seems obvious, but one that results in an even starker contrast than the other films, given its otherwise frantic pacing and eye-popping visual fabric. Via its more still and quiet scenes, in which the voice actors trade in comedic affects for hushed and measured tones, the film turns grief into an invisible fog, and the other characters’ recognition of it into moments where words don’t seem to be enough. Their nuanced expressions wrestle between concern for Miles, familiarity with his circumstances, and a sense of helplessness that has slowly hardened, and will perhaps never fully reach the mythical stage of “acceptance.”
This scene’s late placement, however, has the unfortunate side effect of speeding Miles through the kind of character arc the others have no doubt experienced off-screen. His witnessing of Aaron’s death, and his subsequent re-purposing of Aaron’s memory to create his costume, arrive in extremely close proximity (the film spends a little more time lingering on the death of Chris Pine’s Peter). However, despite the narrative rushing Miles through his grief, it does, at least, place him at thematic odds with the film’s antagonist, the Kingpin, who also happened to murder Aaron.
Kingpin’s multiversal collider scheme, which places everyone at risk, is born from his refusal to confront the death of his wife and son — who he attempts to bring over from another reality — and from a twisted, selfish love that’s more controlling than it is affectionate, since their final moments involved choosing to leave him. In contrast, Miles and Aaron share a familial camaraderie that is so caring, and so loving, that even when it becomes complicated by Aaron’s supervillain identity, he has no choice but to let his nephew live, even if it means being killed himself. While the film may not afford Miles the time to grieve, it imbues his origin with a sense of loving radiance, which stands in opposition to the story of Kingpin, whose physical stature consumes the frame with darkness, the way his denial and his attempts to overpower death itself threaten to consume all of existence.
That radiance, too, is a key fixture of the film’s central theme of choice. The Kingpin wields the power of his grief irresponsibly. The various Spider-People, meanwhile, choose to make their grief a driving force behind their heroic identities — Miles in particular, whose costume evokes the memory of the last night he spent with Aaron, who took him to an abandoned subway station so he could experiment with his art and begin to find himself. When he finally does, he leaps off the surface of a New York skyscraper with shattering impact, adorned with a graffitied reminder of his uncle near his heart.
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The story features not one, but two versions of Peter Parker — three if you count Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage) — and a grand total of seven interrelated Spider-people from various corners of Marvel media. Its anchor, however, is Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a more recent comic character tasked with taking up the identity of Spider-Man from Peter Parker, a mantle whose meaning the film places in its crosshairs (and in some ways, transforms), resulting in a Pop Art-inspired sequel of sorts to the Sam Raimi trilogy.
In our ongoing look back at Peter Parker on-screen, we examine what makes his story, and the stories of his successors, work so precisely in Into the Spider-Verse, despite its numerous flaws.
Peter Parker: Back to Basics
The two live-action Spider-Man reboots, which kicked off with The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America: Civil War, attempted to replicate Uncle Ben’s “With great power comes great responsibility” speech (and its resultant themes) from the Sam Raimi movies. The results have been mixed across each series, but while Into Spider-Verse begins similarly — it even re-uses audio of the late Cliff Robertson, who played Uncle Ben in Raimi’s films — the animated saga picks up the baton by breaking the idea down to its fundamentals. Choosing responsibility, as Peter does at the end of his 2002 origin, is just the first of a series of momentous decisions, and what is the rest of Spider-Man’s journey if not to keep making difficult choices?
More From The Spidey Saga
- Day 1: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Choosing Responsibility
- Day 2: Spider-Man 2 and Choosing a Suit
- Day 3: Spider-Man 3 Is Both Better and Messier Than You Remember
- Day 4: The Amazing Spider-Man Goes Through the Origin Story Motions
- Day 5: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the Spider-Man Who Ran Out of Time
- Day 6: Spider-Man: Homecoming Lives in the Moment, For Better and For Worse
- Day 7: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Explores the Meaning Behind the Mask
Into the Spider-Verse, though its gimmick involves bringing together numerous Spider-People, builds this element of choice into its very premise, with Dr. Olivia Octavius (Kathryn Hahn) explaining that each multiverse exists as a result of different choices. This first becomes apparent during the contrasting character introductions of Peter Parker (Chris Pine), a square-jawed hero who seems to have struck the perfect work-life balance, and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), whose personal life has fallen apart. His middle name, while likely in tribute to Uncle Ben, positions him as the lesser alternative — a B-player in a tapestry of seemingly greater Spider-Men who didn’t end up divorced, and who still carry themselves with a bright-eyed disposition.
As much as Peter B. Parker's role in the film is about mentoring Miles, it’s equally about having his choices reflected back to him, so he can finally get back on the right path.
Their introductory montages frame them both as versions of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, with one moving forward in time, towards the kind of cookie-cutter heroism that seems desirable — apart from being crushed to death by an enormous, Triplets of Belleville-inspired Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) — while the other reverts to being a loser. He’s Peter Parker back to square one, and as much as his role in the film is about mentoring Miles, it’s equally about having his choices reflected back to him, so he can finally get back on the right path. As a hero, he’s immediately ready to sacrifice himself so the other Spider-Folks can return to their respective universes, but in a sly inversion of most standard superhero stories, following the Spider-Path to its fatal endpoint, as his Pine-voiced counterpart does, is actually the easier alternative for Peter B.
Directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman craft an intricate journey (from a screenplay co-written by Rothman and Phil Lord), along which Miles’ ascendancy to Spider-Man becomes intrinsically linked with Peter finding the courage to go back home and pick up the pieces of his shattered marriage to Mary Jane. Not simply because Miles pulls the right levers, but because he uses Peter’s own advice, about taking a leap of faith despite not feeling ready and being stifled by fear, to yank Peter out of the pessimistic, self-loathing funk that’s been preventing him from making difficult choices — the very thing that has defined him as Spider-Man for several decades.
Although Peter and Miles exist in different universes, theirs is a story of lineage, and of Peter spiritually passing down the Spider-Man mantle so that he can find a way to be Peter Parker once more. For Miles, this story involves living up to the expectations set before him — by his father, and by the more experienced Spider-People — and while these dots don’t always connect in satisfying ways, the underlying sentiments are wrapped in such shiny packaging that the gaps often cease to matter.
The Uneven Tale of Miles Morales
Like Peter, Miles chooses inertia over the difficult road ahead of him, which involves living up to his potential at a fancy new science prep school. He doesn’t believe he has what it takes, and rather than risking failure, he would rather not try at all. This is a vital element of his character, but the way the film maps it onto his journey as Spider-Man ends up slightly muddled and misplaced.
Miles’ powers don’t scare him quite the same way. Rather than fearing them the way he fears failure in academia, he puts the utmost effort into using his Spider-powers, weakening the thematic bonds between his two stories, when they could have so easily been reflections of one another, and parts of the same dramatic journey. What changes between Miles being unable to control his abilities and his eventual handle on them is a vague notion of sentiment, one that ends up disconnected from a real emotional through-line, since the catalytic act of his father Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) supporting him and expressing belief in him isn’t all that different from their dynamic earlier in the film.
However, despite the appearance of change where none meaningfully exists (a problem that plagues Spider-Man: Homecoming), Miles’ subsequent leap downward into the New York skyline — since the shot is inverted, he rises upward as well — proves to be a riveting confluence of pop imagery, and one of the most rousing sequences in recent Hollywood. It works not despite valuing style over substance, but because it places such specific value on style and visual aesthetics, and it rises to match that high bar. Tracing the logic from Jefferson’s speech to Miles breaking free from his bonds can be an exercise in frustration, but the resulting emotional crescendo, which begins with Miles fashioning his own costume, retroactively imbues this father-son exchange with meaning, for one very simple reason: Miles is an artist, and a visual one at that, and designing his own unique Spider-Man outfit is his emotional catharsis.
The costume’s inspirations already exist in Miles’ life. The ensuing prep montage is scored not only by Blackway & Black Caviar’s “What’s Up Danger,” but by the echoing words of support from his father, Jefferson, his mother, Rio (Luna Lauren Velez), and his recently slain uncle, Aaron (Mahershala Ali). The design itself, rather than resembling the comics version — whose webbed pattern remixes Peter’s costume — is born from a combination of Miles’ street-wear and his graffiti (among other things, it acts as a personal embodiment of his vibrant Brooklyn neighborhood).
The costume, rather than resembling the comics version... is born from a combination of Miles’ street-wear and his graffiti.
While the broader idea of Miles’ family’s support is no different than earlier in the film, what has changed is the specific way he uses their belief in him and turns it into art. In addition to his relationship with Peter, this aesthetic focus is what makes Miles’ version of Spider-Man feel like a descendant of the Raimi films, the first of which — a story where Peter’s love for Mary Jane is a central driving-force — creates a similar connection between Peter and his suit, whose color scheme he lands on while recalling MJ’s red hair and blue eyes. In both films, the idea of Spider-Man is a deeply personal artistic expression, woven intrinsically with each protagonist’s journey: Peter choosing between heroism and Mary Jane, and Miles finding a way to live up to his family’s expectations.
However, the most intimate idea the film attaches to Spider-Man — using not only Peter and Miles, but the entire supporting cast — is loss.
Spider-Man and Grief
Into the Spider-Verse takes a top-down view of the Spider-Man legacy, across not only the live-action films, but the numerous comics from which the various Spider-People originate. More than their arachnid theme, what binds Peter, Miles, Spider-Man Noir, Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), the anime-inspired Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and Looney Tune knock-off Peter Porker (John Mulaney) is their proximity to death; they have each lost someone vital to them. The film, though it doesn’t elaborate on this, hints at the nature of Spider-Man as a symbol of grief — of carrying and dealing with pain, in contrast to the villainous Kingpin, who lives in denial — rather than a symbol to which grief is merely incidental.
The characters’ respective origin stories all echo similar tragedies, the most recent of which — Miles’ uncle being shot and killed in front of him — has only just occurred. Their discussion of this trope, while brief, brings to the fore an element which all three live-action Spider-Man series have featured in some form, though only one of them (the Tobey Maguire version) has thus far allowed its lead to ruminate on loss and let it affect him inside and out. Into the Spider-Verse comes much closer than the Garfield and Holland iterations, and while it features no extensive narrative sections dedicated to this theme (or to the ensuing survivor’s guilt), its aesthetic approach wildly outshines most other Spider-Man films.
Rather than the bold stylization of Miles’ costume crescendo, the film opts, instead, to withhold — a tonal choice that seems obvious, but one that results in an even starker contrast than the other films, given its otherwise frantic pacing and eye-popping visual fabric. Via its more still and quiet scenes, in which the voice actors trade in comedic affects for hushed and measured tones, the film turns grief into an invisible fog, and the other characters’ recognition of it into moments where words don’t seem to be enough. Their nuanced expressions wrestle between concern for Miles, familiarity with his circumstances, and a sense of helplessness that has slowly hardened, and will perhaps never fully reach the mythical stage of “acceptance.”
This scene’s late placement, however, has the unfortunate side effect of speeding Miles through the kind of character arc the others have no doubt experienced off-screen. His witnessing of Aaron’s death, and his subsequent re-purposing of Aaron’s memory to create his costume, arrive in extremely close proximity (the film spends a little more time lingering on the death of Chris Pine’s Peter). However, despite the narrative rushing Miles through his grief, it does, at least, place him at thematic odds with the film’s antagonist, the Kingpin, who also happened to murder Aaron.
Kingpin’s multiversal collider scheme, which places everyone at risk, is born from his refusal to confront the death of his wife and son — who he attempts to bring over from another reality — and from a twisted, selfish love that’s more controlling than it is affectionate, since their final moments involved choosing to leave him. In contrast, Miles and Aaron share a familial camaraderie that is so caring, and so loving, that even when it becomes complicated by Aaron’s supervillain identity, he has no choice but to let his nephew live, even if it means being killed himself. While the film may not afford Miles the time to grieve, it imbues his origin with a sense of loving radiance, which stands in opposition to the story of Kingpin, whose physical stature consumes the frame with darkness, the way his denial and his attempts to overpower death itself threaten to consume all of existence.
That radiance, too, is a key fixture of the film’s central theme of choice. The Kingpin wields the power of his grief irresponsibly. The various Spider-People, meanwhile, choose to make their grief a driving force behind their heroic identities — Miles in particular, whose costume evokes the memory of the last night he spent with Aaron, who took him to an abandoned subway station so he could experiment with his art and begin to find himself. When he finally does, he leaps off the surface of a New York skyscraper with shattering impact, adorned with a graffitied reminder of his uncle near his heart.
Continue reading...