20:18 is gonna go down as a bittersweet year for spider-man fans. Not only did we lose Tom Holland to the snap
We lost Stan the manly to the inexorable march of time and nothing can really make up for that
But I think Stan would have at least been happy to know that the year
He went out saw not one
But two brilliant creative teams breathe new life into his most iconic character
Maybe more actually I've heard really good things about the comics lately though
I haven't had a chance to actually read them
I did have a chance to see Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman's
Spider-man into the spider-verse this weekend, though
and for the second time in four months
I found myself thinking damn that might just be the best spider-man thing ever
I'm gonna have to get a little bit spoilery to talk about why so if you haven't seen it yet the long and short of
This is that into the spider verse is the best written best directed spider-man film to date. It's also one of the most imaginative
Animated films ever produced an absolute treat for the senses with a killer soundtrack to match. It's gorgeous visuals
This is a movie you need to see in theaters and 3d if you can so get out there
Do that then come back and watch this video. It is an easy platinum metal recommendation for me now
I said a few months back that I think insomniac spider-man represents the definitive
Incarnation of Peter Parker and his rogues gallery and I still stand by that
I've never seen anything execute better on the concept of spider-man as Stanley envisioned him a relatable
painfully human character struggling to balance his life with his duties and live up to the
Responsibilities thrust on him by the world into the spider-verse does a great job of exploring Peter Parker and miles
Characters in that light probably the best in film, but it just doesn't have the runtime
It needs to really dig into their human sides the way that the game does but in 2018
Spider-man is a lot more than that one concept. He's an icon a legacy
Hell I feel
Suspect saying he in this sentence because the spider mantle has been taken up by so many
different kinds of people and one pig across countless different dimension adapt ations
Spider-man has been the subject of six feature films nearly a dozen TV shows 35 video games
Thousands of comic book issues and countless internet memes. He's had multiple
breakfast cereals for pete's sake spider-man represents an ideal of heroism that kids around the world still aspire to
spider-man represents a media franchise
So sprawling and prolific that it could be called an empire on its own apart from the Marvel Universe
Spider-man represents that feeling when everyone is riding some trend and you're just sitting there
Masturbating and spider-man into the spider-verse somehow manages to represent all of that in a two-hour
Runtime and perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by that
Considering that Phil Lord as part of a screenwriting duo with this film's producer Chris Miller previously managed to encapsulate
Everything that Lego means to everyone collectible
merchandise kids imaginative toy into one movie
But this is an order of magnitude
more impressive than that to me because while spider-verse pays fitting tribute to just about the entirety of
Spider-man's legacy it also manages to tell a complete
uncompromising and compellingly personal origin story for Peter Parker's successor Miles Morales one with a bold
Musical and visual identity distinct from any prior exploration of the spider-man mythos to date
This is very much its own thing
but it is also
everything that spider-man has ever been all at once the quips the drama the product Schilling the
Memes the emo dance from spider-man 3 that's literally part of Peter Parker's backstory
it's an incredible cinematic achievement that I still can't fully wrap my head around and it is so
Damn fun
That's not all it is not by a long shot
but it feels like as good a place as any to start talking about it because the first thing that jumps out to you about
Spider-verse will almost certainly be its art style
Lord and Miller wanted to create a film that felt like you walked inside a comic book and spent over a year developing
the art style before they could create just 10 seconds of footage that they were happy with as a wise man once said
Give me three hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first two sharpening my axe
That's a line straight out of the film and a philosophy that has paid off handsomely for it
Combining hand-drawn 2d line art with 3d models in a manner similar to Pixar's Paperman short
The film has a fluid style to it that accommodates the existence of an anime heroine and her mecha
standing alongside a
classic cartoon style talking pig a black and white noir crime fighter and a spider Gwen taken straight out of her comics without any
of it looking jarring
this
Comic style is sold in big ways like with speech bubbles sound effects and action lines as well as with a lot of tiny details
Like screen tones and the shadows and a color bleeding depth of field effect achieved by offsetting the red and blue values of various
objects in the foreground and background
You could pause this film on just about any frame and it would look like a stunning comic spread
But if you did you'd be missing out on how it moves the animation doesn't flow at a consistent frame rate
instead
characters sort of pop between
Dynamic poses with the action lines serving to smooth the motion the way that a CGI film would use motion blur or a traditional
Animated work would use smearing this stuttery style of animation can be a little bit
Disorienting when you first start watching the film in 3d, but once you get used to it, it's definitely worth the initial headache
especially once you see the world start to break and shift into different art styles as dimensions start folding in on themselves it is
Gorgeous and trippy as hell now, obviously
Comic book come to life isn't quite a style in itself
The medium encompasses as many distinct art styles as you can imagine
So the look of spider versus main world isn't entirely defined by that one nebulous concept
It has to stand out just as much as the anime mecha and cartoon characters who come to visit it and the universe that miles
Inhabits has a certain graffiti edge to it that fits perfectly with his character as an aspiring
Graffiti artist and that graffiti style really expresses itself in how he makes his version of the iconic costume
Which is one hell of a satisfying payoff moment for the movie
You could even make the argument that this style is interpretive as though it's specifically
representative of how miles views the world around him
colored by the culture that he was immersed in as a black kid growing up in Brooklyn and if that was what they were going
For it certainly carries through in the films use of its incredible soundtrack spider-verse isn't scored like your typical
Hollywood blockbuster or your typical animated kid's film for that matter
It has an original soundtrack composed by some of hip-hop's biggest stars
Most of whom I'm too lame to actually know off the top of my head
But I'm not quite so lame that I can't recognize and appreciate great jams when I hear them
And it's not just that the music is good
It also plays an integral role in the action and story of the film
the visuals are very much driven by the rhythm of the music and the dialogue and background noise of the film often gets sampled and
remixed into the tracks blurring the lines of Spider versus soundscape and narrative
it's almost like the whole film is one trippy music video not unlike Tron Legacy or baby driver and
Given the poster for the parallel world sequel to Shaun of the Dead that pops up in Spider versus x squared gosh
That was real
I think it's safe to assume that Lorde and Rothman were drawing at least a little
Inspiration from Edgar Wright when they took the film in this direction and I think that it's editing style and sense of visual comedy
Also owe a lot to Wright's work. The character designs are delightfully abstract and animate in a very expressive
Exaggerated way that makes both the slower character interactions and the bombastic action scenes equally fun to watch it
Also can't have been easy to write the characters in that way
the heart of the film is most certainly the
Interactions between its various spider people especially miles Gwen and Peter who each undergo their own arcs and deal with their own
Personal hardships and hangups Gwen coping with the loss of her Earth's Peter Parker
Refuses to open up to other people or make friends while peter has fallen into a kind of pathetic
Depressive rut after losing Mary Jane because he was scared of having kids
both of them end up mentoring Miles
Mary Coombs helping him to cope with his own losses and pushing him to be the hero that he needs to be definitely though
I'll talk more about his arc. Later
He in turn pushes Gwen to open up and make friends again with the potential for them to become something a little more
it's the movie please for the love of all that is good gets a sequel and he helps Peter to realize that he might be
Ready for kids after all John Mulaney has Peter porker aka
Spider-ham and Nicolas Cage as spider-man noir provide most of the comic relief
Which is not to say that the other spider folk aren't funny. The schlubby Peter is especially endearing
I
Was way flattered before I wore and Penny Parker pilot of the Spyder. Mac has some really funny moments as well
It's just that those two
Absolutely kill it
Do animals talk in this dimension? Cuz I don't want to freak him out
Mulaney voice and delivery is pitch perfect for a hammy slapstick cartoon hero and cage takes the hard-boiled
Persona that he honed playing kick asses Big Daddy up to 11. Whoever I go to
Wind it smells the green. Can you close off your feelings?
So you don't get crippled by the moral ambiguity of your violent actions the funniest part of the movie for me aside from the end
Credits scene which had the whole theater dying was definitely watching more very seriously trying to comprehend a Rubik's Cube
Despite having come from a world where color doesn't exist in general
The film has a lot of fun with its parallel universe gimmick, especially when it comes to its pop culture references
They work in a coca-cola product placement in Times Square only to replace it with the parallel world
Rebranding also the Yugo a very real very mediocre
Yugoslavian economy car from the 80s than importers tried and failed to sell in the US was a big smash in this universe
Apparently as was Lord and Miller's first show Clone High
Which apparently has a movie opening in June here? So Miles Morales gets to be spider-man and see clone college. I
Have never been more jealous of a cartoon character in my entire life
but that's neither here nor there whenever I see Phil Lord's name on a script I expect the humor to be sharp and
Spider-verse blew my expectations away that said it's not all fun and games and much as I love the heroes
It's the villain designs that are the highlight of this movie's a stetic for me. You can all love this
the film needs a lot of villains on hand to oppose the six spider people trying to save the world and
Thankfully avoids the standard sinister six lineup in favor of putting a unique spin on some
classic spider baddies every villain cuts an
intimidating figure especially the hulking kingpin who looks a little goofy in theory, but in practice
absolutely dominates every frame he's in the green goblin has a positively
demonic form inspired by The Ultimate Comics line that miles originally came from
Scorpion has a really cool
latin-american cyborg like design
That's one of my favorite interpretations of the character to date and the film smartly avoids
competing with Andrew Molina and William salyers with its own unique take on Doc Ock that I absolutely
Love and that I found to be a really pleasant surprise since they kept it out of all the marketing material
so even if you're watching this expecting spoilers
I won't spoil that part the only villain who's not
Particularly striking is tombstone who doesn't really do much and kind of just looks like a gray thug in a suit
but every other bad guy is
Bursting with very memorable personality and for a film of this length, five out of six villains really isn't bad
especially considering that every other
spider-man film has fallen flat when it tries to go over to I think it helps that
Spider-verse works from the assumption that just like you already know Peter Parker's backstory
You're at least passingly familiar
With most of these villains by now and it doesn't need to spend too much time trying to establish who they are or flesh them
Out and make them sympathetic
like I said
the heart of the film really lies in the heroes and the villains play second fiddle to that with kingpin only having a
Marginally understandable motivation for doing what he does
Well, there is one notable exception the Prowler secret identity of Aaron Davis Miles Morales
Uncle who unsurprisingly plays a pivotal role in his development as a hero
By dying as uncle's of spider-man so often tend to do in a pretty goddamn
Heart-wrenching scene and as his spider-man tradition that death teaches Myles a valuable lesson, though
Not quite the same one that Peter Parker had to learn
Unlike Peter with his Uncle Ben Miles has more than one father figure to look up to where Miles dad
Jefferson is a straight-laced upstanding officer of the law. And therefore pretty lame in his teenage sons eyes. Aaron is a
Free-spirited cool uncle Jefferson wants his son to live up to his full potential
But he has a very rigid and fixed idea of how he should do that
Aaron encourages him to express himself and be his own person, but he's also prone to shirking his
Responsibilities and he's a hit man for a deranged mob boss
So, you know maybe he could do with a slightly more rigid moral compass Myles loves and respects both of them
but neither
represents everything that he wants to be or the best path to
Being who he could be and the one person who kind of does well seems way out of reach what with the whole wall climbing
and swinging from tall
Buildings thing that he has going on for basically the entire span of his memory miles has grown up in a, New York
Protected by spider-man he looks up to him
He dreams of being him and Peter Parker's heroics have shaped who he wants to be
Just as much as either of the father figures in his life Myles is basically a surrogate for the spider fans in the audience
Dreaming impossible dreams of being a hero while trying to deal with the more grounded
Expectations of his family and trying to find some other way to be who he wants to be
but even when Myles gains spider powers of his own and that dream is thrust into his grasp the idea of
Really being a hero like spider-man scares him. He's not sure that he has it in him
so he runs away he refuses to really confront any of the problems facing him or accept the
responsibility that's been foisted on him and the
expectations that people have of him even though he knows he should and he keeps running from his school from his
Universes Peter leaving him to die
he expects pudgy Peter Gwen and the other spider people to hold his hand and protect him when things get hairy and he refuses to
Confront his uncle when he finds out the truth about him instead
he runs off into the night a decision that leads the villains right to Aunt May's house and
Ultimately gets uncle Aaron killed when Myles is forced to confront him in front of the kingpin
The lesson that Myles has to learn from his uncle's death isn't quite that he needs to take responsibility
But rather that he needs to believe in himself, stop worrying about what he can do and just do what he should do
Take a leap of faith
It's not the lack of spider powers
Holding him back from being a hero but a lack of willingness to throw himself into the deep end and try a lack of willingness
To believe that he can as the film spells out with a beautiful quote from Stanley in the end credits
You don't need to be able to climb walls or turn invisible or swing around in the air to be a superhero
You just need to help other people when they need help do the right thing when the right thing needs to be done
Anyone can wear that mask metaphorically speaking and be a hero like spider-man if they really want
And with the world in the messy state that it's in right now
I think that's a really
Important message for this film to send to its audience to those hundreds of thousands of people who grew up and are growing up wanting
To be spider-man you can be and you should
Like I said, this movie is about everything that spider-man is it's about what makes us laugh in spider-man
It's about what makes us cry in spider-man
it's about the kind of people that
Spider-man makes us want to be it's about the cultural impact that spider-man has had on the world at large in
every sense of that word
It's about the products and merch that spider-man
shamelessly tries to sell us to help for most of the movie Myles is running around in a store bought a
Licensed Halloween costume because as he did with the lego movie
Phil Lord doesn't really try to deny or shy away from the commercial aspects of this franchise
even when he's talking about how it can inspire people to be better pretty much every single person who likes spider-man for any
Reason the comics the cartoons the movies the merch the games or even the reaction images needs to see this movie
Because I can all but guarantee that you will find at least one thing in it that really speaks to you speaking for me
I don't know whether this or the spider-man game is better. I don't even know if I can make a meaningful comparison
There's such different things and they both do what they're trying to do more or less perfectly one's a spectacular
Peter Parker story the other is the ultimate Miles Morales origin
What's important is that they both make me as a spider-man fanboy
happier than any other piece of media with the Webb heads face on it ever has and
Considering that I consumed most of that media as an easily impressed starry-eyed child. I think that speaks volumes
I mean, I'm just an easily impressed starry-eyed manchild now, but still you get my point
I don't quite know how to end this video
I don't really want it to end and I really hope that both of these
spider-man series are just getting into the swing of things because I want them both to give me more to say so I guess I'll
Leave it to you guys. What do you think of this movie?
what was your favorite part your favorite song your favorite villain and hero this movie gave me so much to gush about and now I
Really want to see all of you do the same while you're down there. I'd appreciate it
If you'd flip your webs at the subscribe and like buttons if you feel like it
Of course and maybe check out my review of spider-man or my Stan Lee
Retrospective if you want to hear me talk more about comics. I'm Jeff thew professional shitbags signing out from my mother's basement