At the beginning of Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse, Peter Parker dies. He’s only one of the seven different inter-dimensional spidermen that feature later in the film, but the death of their Spiderman is a tragedy to the people of New York. For once, everyone is on the same page — and true to the times we live in, the vast majority of New Yorkers learn about Spiderman’s death from their smartphones. The city stops as people glide through the streets glued to their screens, which light up the night like candles.
The moment is so clearly and unapologetically unrealistic, but its obvious significance is touching not trite. Here is a movie unlike other Hollywood films: rather than try to appear authentic, Spiderman draws its power from embracing its own artificiality. And while that kind of attitude would betray a typical live-action film, Spiderman’s admission of constructedness allows it to be totally and powerfully saturated with unconcealed cinematic devices and common narrative tropes. In any other movie, this level of artifice would be cliché, but in self-aware Spiderman it opens up all kinds of moving possibilities.
Spiderman first makes pioneering strides in animation to amplify the cinematic cues and narrative devices that are normally rendered with utmost subtlety. Free from the constraints of disguising its constructedness, the animation in Spiderman shifts in style and tone from second to second in order to capture narrative moments and characters’ emotions. When our new Spiderman, Miles Morales, is down, the animation slides towards realism. When he is confident, it rises to comic book heights. And even though the movie calls attention to its style at every moment, its constant shifts are never choppy and never trite. A fitting comparison would be to the literary modernist technique of free indirect discourse, where the narration quietly adopts the tone of the characters on display. In Spiderman, the fantastic world of comic book animation. — which we often take for granted — is refreshed and raised to new levels by the full power of the motion picture and the unrestrained curation of the Hollywood architects behind it.
Spiderman makes no pretense to disguise the contrived nature of its animation, and it fittingly continues that freedom in its storyline. The entire movie is a collage of narrative clichés and high concept characters — again, just like a comic book. The multiple spidermen are a perfect example: each is the Spiderman we all know well, but a little bit different. In addition to Peter Parker, the stereotypical Spiderman who Miles must replace, there is Female Spiderman, Spiderman Noir, Anime Spiderman, Loony-Toons Spiderman, and Peter B. Parker, Miles’ disheveled and overweight mentor. Each spiderman introduces themselves in the same way, each has saved the city countless times, and each has their own origin story. And through these multiple spidermen, Into the Spider-Verse cleverly admits that it, too, will have the same narrative cliches. Peter B. Parker sums it up best when he labels the familiar world-saving override key needed to neutralize whatever threat Spiderman faces this time as simply a “goober.”
By admitting that its stakes and plot lines are just the stuff of comic books, Spiderman is able to portray them with deep feeling and overwhelming artistry — without provoking the groans that inevitably accompany an overwrought Hollywood kiss. Miles is the unsure adolescent who must fill in for his perfect deceased hero. Peter B. Parker is the washed up mentor who must get himself together to help the kid succeed. The other spidermen are at different times the impenetrable legion of heroes, the goofy group of misfits, and the gang of sidekicks. This movie is animated in the truest sense of the word; it reinvigorates stories that have lost their edge over countless tellings.
Above it all arcs the master narrative, beautifully told: a young boy coming of age in his own way and making peace with his initially rigid father. Spiderman Miles creates a unique way of being Spiderman, who his father, a police officer, finally accepts as more than a vigilante. Regular Miles gains the confidence to continue being himself in a cold and elitist world while his father in plainclothes at last comes to truly appreciate his unique spark. Familial love triumphs over disagreements and creativity triumphs over conventionality. The storyline is simple and easily recognizable, but with its self-aware license to dramatize the cliché, Spiderman paints it in spectacular colors.
Just as it should, because Spiderman is a triumph of creative visualization. Miles discovers that he must confidently envision himself swinging from webs in order to actually do so. He grows into a true spiderman when he adapts the character to his own personality, rather than be intimidated by the weight of the mask and the ways that others have worn it. Primed to recognize the irrelevance of the typical Spiderman story, we are awed not by Miles saving the day, just like every other spiderman, but by Miles the music-lover, Miles the graffiti artist, Miles the Afro-Latino kid from Brooklyn doing it in his own unique way — by the young man who defines a bold new iteration of himself on the way to adulthood. Into the Spider-verse portrays this age-old story in new and stunning terms, and for that it is more than just another Spiderman movie.
We are all implicitly familiar with Spiderman’s coming of age narrative not only as a classic textual theme but also from our own lives. There is a point beyond just visuals to the movie’s animation of common storylines: it adds a significance to narratives and events in real life that we often take for granted. Everything is narrative, everything is storyline. And anyone can be the star of a story, the star of their own life. Spiderman encourages us to live life like it matters. “Anyone can wear the mask,” Miles closes. “You can wear the mask. If you didn’t know that before, I hope you do now.” It’s true that we can’t all literally be Spiderman, but we can be confident and self-assured like Miles Morales. We can be ourselves! Spiderman adds the exclamation point to that sentence with humor, compassion, and sincerity. See it first to enjoy and then again to appreciate.
Image Credit: Unsplash/Raj Eiamworakul