Spoilers Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - Review and Discussion Thread

This was my review of Incredibles 2 after watching it in June. It was probably one of my bigger personal disappointments of the year.

https://letterboxd.com/sjsharksfan39/film/incredibles-2/

 

Incredible 2 was really good on it’s own, but it has the problem to compete and be measured against it’s own previous first part which was just better in nearly every aspect (except personal theme songs!).

 

I enjoyed The Incredibles 2, but I loved Spider-Verse. Both are very good movies, but I did like Spider-Verse a little bit more.

 

It sounds like the Spider-Verse might also expand into TV.
According to Io9 a new article in the New York Times about Sony has quick comment about how they're thinking about doing TV shows for characters from Into The Spider-Verse.
Usually I get annoyed when they start talking about all these kinds of spin-offs, but I think Into The Spider-Verse is one of the few movies where it's actually built for spin-offs. There is just a ton of potential in the characters in the movie, and tons of possibilities for future characters.

 

For a movie I didn't really care if I saw, about a character I know nothing about, in a genre I am sick to death of, Into the Spider-verse was absolutely freakin' terrific.

The animation took me a few moments to get used to, but in the end the style worked so well. Emotionally, I really felt for Morales. Right away when Chris Pine's Spidey dies, it got me! I did not see that coming, and from that scene on I was more invested in the story in a 'this is not Disney feature animation' sort of way.

All throughout the movie I was consistently amazed at how much I cared about the characters, from Spider-Woman, Sweatpants Spidey, and of course Morales and the issues in his world (I should have seen his uncle coming, but I didn't, and it was like...wow.)

Back to the animation - I am in love with it, from the style that was spot-on comic book ( think? I don't actually read comic books anymore,) the small details such as squiggly lines around Morales' pencil as he's singing in the opening sequence, to the seizure-inducing use of explosive colour. The unique character animation was fresh and deliciously over the top. Hello, 1400 lb Kingpin.

I went with my nieces and nephew (9 and 7), and for the first time I think *I* enjoyed the movie far, faaar more than they did. (Sorry, kiddos, I just couldn't get into Christopher Robin. Before we see The Secret Life of Pets 2 I'll load up on amphetamines. Sleeping won't happen again. Hashtag: BabysitterOfTheYear

 

I think I enjoyed the movie a little more the first time for not knowing some of the details and storylines surrounding Morales over the years in the comics - I'd have missed the "did not see that coming" reaction that you mention.

 

I think this was probably a combination of

1) The creators not wanting to further complicate the emotional through-lines of the three characters -- aka, Alt!Peter's main emotional hangups need to be his marriage and his self-esteem, not revisiting his feelings about his ex; Gwen being re-contextualized as a Millennial feminist superhero with relationships and problems of her own, rather than as the empty-personality-with-a-pretty-face the original version of Gwen was in the comics; and the subtext of Miles dealing with his own self-esteem issues vis a vis his desire for female approval from Gwen and realizing he needs to be emotionally independent and respectful of Gwen's agency; and

2) The desperate, desperate need to avoid the "ew gross" factor that would inevitably be the subtext to any scene involving a middle-aged divorced man seeing a teenage girl as the mirror of his dead ex-girlfriend. Especially since this movie is marketed to kids.

Anyway, it works better if we just assume that either 1) Alt!Peter didn't have a Gwen Stacy in his universe, or 2) Alt!Peter has chosen to recognize that the Gwen he meets in Miles's universe is a different person from his Gwen, one whose circumstances are so radically different from those of the Gwen from his world that it would be inappropriate for him to even allude to having known or had any sort of relationship with her counterpart in his dimension.

I would have, too, but in a way it really doesn't matter. Because whether or not Alt!Peter and Alt!M.J. get back together, Alt!Peter's character arc is complete -- he has re-learned, through his mentorship of Miles, to take that leap of faith and believe in himself and take charge of the direction of his own life again. That may or may not entail reconciling with M.J. -- but either way, he's learned that his happiness is not dependent on his relationship with her, but on his taking back responsibility for the course of his life.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Miles first meets Gwen before he gets spider-powers, doesn't he?

Either way, you could just write it off as Miles did get a spidey-sense reaction to meeting Gwen, but he was so infatuated with her that he just thought it was butterflies in his stomach.

I mean, I have two Afro-Latinx friends. I'm pretty sure they're not Afro-Latinx because they're trying to "cover the bases." They're Afro-Latinx because they have African/African-American and Latinx heritages. Because Afro-Latinx people are real.

So, maybe -- just maybe -- when Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli created Miles Morales, they made him Afro-Latinx because they recognized that Afro-Latinx Americans are real people and worthy of having stories told about them (especially if the story being told is supposed to reflect what New York is like today), not out of some cynical desire for tokenism.

Just maybe.

 

As time passes, I like this movie less and less. It's full of plotholes and logic gaps, it goes silly for the sake of going silly, and the emotional parts fall completely flat. I know, we are all using the old "it's a cartoon, it doesn't have to make sense" to justify everything, but it's kind of weak. They can make an animated movie that makes sense.

Over the course of 2 days I went from a B+ to a C- on this movie.

 

I can't remember, did they refer to Gwen as Spider-Woman here? If so I wonder if they'll change her name to Ghost-Spider, her new name in the comics, for her spin-off since they'll be introducing at least one other Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, who has been using that name in the comics since she introduced in the '70s?
Which reminds me of something that's been bothering me, where does the Ghost-Spider name in the comics come from? At first I thought maybe it was a reference to the 616 Gwen being dead, but that doesn't really make this Gwen a ghost.

 

Brilliant movie.

I want all the sequels. And I want the spinoff tv shows too.
Gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more.

 

I'm pretty sure she referred to herself as "the one and only Spider-Woman" during her origin recap. And I think Marvel decided to rename her Ghost Spider specifically because Jessica Drew has long been established as Spider-Woman, and Gwen's costume looks kind of ghost-like. So maybe in the Spider-Women spinoff she'll be using the Ghost Spider nickname.

 

No more so than most superhero films.

Which is a good thing. There is absolutely no reason on Earth why you can't be a bit silly at times in the superhero genre. It's literally a story about a kid who gets spider-themed powers are being bitten by one; silliness is built into the concept.

You and I had a very different experience, because I felt that the emotional parts of this film landed 100%.

I'm honestly not sure what didn't make sense. Could you elaborate?

 

Gwen being drawn to the school while other were drawn to the lair, for instance. Morales becoming a total badass, after not being useful at all, at the snap of a finger (so to speak) is another.

 

They'd be doing better than most Marvel live-action movies, then.

 

Mind you what I know of Spider-Man comics comes from 30 years ago so I'm just spitballin' but is it possible that the others had a connection to Aunt May that that Gwen wouldn't have?

 

Well we can make up any explanations we want, but I just find it weak storytelling.

 

I guess the Gwen thing might be a plot hole, but it's one I honestly just don't care about. Miles stepping up his game isn't a plot hole, though; it's the entire plot of the film.

 

So it's a stupid plot. Miles is a Mary Sue.

 

Please elaborate.

 

I think that is an argument that is difficult to support. A Mary Sue is a person who is inexplicably good at everything long before the plot starts.

Miles, by contrast, is not already inexplicably good at everything before the plot starts. He becomes better, bit by bit, as the events of the plot unfold. That is to say, he gains new skills with each major action scene, in broadly the way human beings generally improve their skills when a hereunto unfamiliar task presents itself on multiple occasions.