Movie Review: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-VerseDevesh Sharma, January 2, 2019

Times Of India's Rating : 4.5/5

Avg. Users' Rating : 3.8/5

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CAST:	Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry
DIRECTION:	Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
GENRE:	Animation, Superhero
DURATION:	1 hours 57 minutes

• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Movie Review

Critic's Rating: 4.0/5

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), the son of a hospital worker (Luna Lauren Velez) and a police officer (Brian Tyree Henry), is a middle schooler living in Brooklyn. Thanks to his high IQ, his parents place him in an elite school, which he hates. One night, while exploring the subway with his uncle as Aaron (Mahershala Ali), he gets bitten by a radioactive spider and transforms into Spider-Man. Then we witness the usual initiation rites of a superhero. He has to learn how to use the powers, get to know his limits and also go through the trials of being a gawky teenager at the same time. The twist in the tale is that he's not alone. Thanks to a nefarious experiment by the film's chief villain Kingpin, he's joined by Spideys from other universes. There are Peter B Parker (Jake Johnson). anime heroine (Kimiko Glenn) with a robot spider, a cartoon pig Peter Porker (John Mulaney), a black-and-white film noir Spider-Man (Nicolas Cage) and a Spider-Woman, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) too in the mix. Now this motley crew has to work together to return to their respective worlds and close down the anomaly in the space-time continuum before it inverts reality...

By giving us our first Black Spider-Man, the makers have made inroads into a new territory. But in the larger context of the film, his race or colour cease to matter. Mike Morales, like Peter Parker, is trying to fight the good fight because he feels his powers are meant for that. He isn't perfect but he knows he has to take a stand because his world needs a Spider-Man. The theory of multiverse -- that there are versions of us in parallel universes struggling with more or less the same problems is exploited well. We witness different versions of Spider-Man in sync with each other, finishing each other's sentences, fighting seamlessly alongside each other and also sharing the same hopes and fears. Peter B Parker, for instance, is a washed-out bum, divorced from his wife, disillusioned with being a superhero, and grabs the second chance he gets with both hands. They also get to know that they aren't alone, that there are others like them struggling to stay afloat and that's a powerful message indeed coming from a fantasy film. Like most superhero films, this one too reiterates the importance of family, telling us that a loving family is a super's real power. 

This film is closest to a comic book coming live on screen that you will ever see. Apparently a new technology was invented so the film's scenes could be divided into panels resembling a comic book. To put a grainy texture of 2D comic inside a 3D film is no mean feat. Thought bubbles, dialogue boxes, zig zag lines representing Spider sense, fights and explosions with comic book effects, it's all there and more. True fans will love the treatment and it's bound to win over legions more for sure. We have become used to live action adaptations of comic books but this film makes a case for giving animation a chance once more. Let's hope other filmmakers can keep the ball rolling...

TRAILER : SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE