Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse review: The missing link between comics and live action superhero films
My love affair with comics started not with the works of Stan Lee or Alan Moore or even Tim Burton, but with Saturday morning cartoons; X-Men: The Animated Series; Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends; Silver Surfer.
And while the often brilliant spandex movies that have been churned out on an industrial scale over the last decade have brought these characters to a massive, global audience, there’s something pure and untouchable about those sketchy old animations. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse brought back memories of racing out of bed in my pyjamas to watch the amazing adventures of Spider-Man et al.
Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – of The Lego Movie fame – have crafted what might be the missing link between the printed page and modern, live action movies. Their CGI world is embellished with crosshatching and Lichtenstein-esque ben-day dots, which recall the 1960s comics this movie so lovingly references.
It borrows elements from the very best superhero movies – the irreverence of the early Spider-Man films, the fourth-wall breaking humour of Deadpool, the high emotional stakes of The Avengers – but creates something that feels totally fresh and vibrant.
It follows Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino teenager who gets bitten by yet another radioactive spider. Only in Miles’ world, there’s already a Spider-Man, and he’s just been killed in the line of duty. Over the next 20 minutes, more and more Spider people start to appear, drawn from various dimensions by a dastardly King Pin scheme. This mixed race, mixed gender bunch each get their own parody of an origin story before a series of spectacular set pieces begin, combining traditional fight sequences with hip-hop soundtracks and jittery, graffiti-inspired visuals.
It’s a joy – more than any superhero movie, it feels like a comic book brought to life, capturing both the lovable silliness and the genuinely weepy emotional highs.
In an era obsessed with recreating animated classics in live action, Into the Spider-Verse is a wonderful, welcome reminder that animation can be exactly the right medium.