Miles Morales (pictured above) is a Spider-Man like no other. In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles learns how to become a successful Spider-Man with the help of several different Spider-characters from the spider-multiverse (courtesy of 2NES UNOe).
Even though some people have been celebrating Christmas and the like since October, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Oft forgotten and always underrated, the celebration fills a unique role within the holiday landscape that is often overlooked when compared to flashier, more commercialized festivities.
I’ve always griped over the “Christmas creep” that seems to happen earlier and earlier each year because Thanksgiving has always meant a lot to me and I hate to see the holiday not given proper consideration. So, in the spirit of the season, I’m going to take this as an opportunity to give my own sort of thanks and write about a movie that I am incredibly thankful exists in the world. It’s a beacon of creativity, optimism and individuality that doubles as what I believe to be the greatest superhero movie ever made, full stop. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, WTF?
The Oscar-winning movie’s plot is kind of a moot point; in large part it’s typical comic book fare that cleverly pokes fun at genre tropes that more than a decade of superhero movies have conditioned audiences to expect. For example, we expect leading men in these movies to be perfect; they’re handsome with blond hair, blue eyes and are probably named Chris. In Spider-Verse, the idealized handsome, blond Peter Parker—voiced by Chris Pine—gets killed off 20 minutes into the running time; this isn’t the Spider-Man story you expect.
“Symbolic annihilation” is a social science term used to describe the underrepresentation of a specific group in media, usually characterized by the exemplification of violence against a given underrepresented group onscreen. The death of Pine’s character acts as the best kind of symbolic annihilation, as it annihilates a traditionally overrepresented social group onscreen in the service of using an underrepresented group to take its place.
This skews an audience’s typical expectations for the person behind a superhero mask, replacing the traditional white savior with the biracial and bilingual Miles Morales. Morales is unlike any superhero protagonist ever adapted to the big screen. He’s black, Hispanic and wears untied Jordans throughout the entire movie; both of his parents are alive, married to each other and they both love him—it’s a refreshing change of pace from the brooding, daddy-issues incarnate that typically populate the genre.
Not everyone may see themselves represented in Morales, however, so the movie has you covered there, too. Maybe you’re more like the washed, aging Peter B. Parker—voiced to raspy perfection by Jake Johnson. Hailee Steinfeld’s Spider-Gwen provides some much-needed female representation, as does Kimiko Glenn’s Japanese Peni Parker.
Still looking for your Spider-person? Then maybe Nicolas Cage’s brooding, goofy Spider-Man Noir is your cup of tea. If all else fails, the Looney-Tunes-esque Peter Porker—who else, but John Mulaney—is there to take care of any bases left uncovered. Spider-Verse’s message isn’t that only special people can become superheroes, it’s that any person can be special. The on-screen representation serves as fully realized proof of that.
Many believe that animated movies are intrinsically for little babies and, since we’re big, grown adults, aren’t worth our time of day. I would like to respectfully ask these naysayers to step down from their high horses and consider art for art’s sake. Do not relegate an entire medium to obscurity just because it doesn’t have actual people in it; animated movies can be dope.
There’s this Twitter account called “One Perfect Shot” that tweets still images from various movies and TV shows in an effort to appreciate the visual “beauty and splendor of film and television,” according to the account’s bio. Pause Spider-Verse at practically any moment and that frame could justifiably be featured on the account; the movie is consistently visually stunning.
It features an animation style that differs from the classic 3-D animation popularized by studios like Pixar and DreamWorks. Like everything else about the movie, the animation style is a welcome change of pace that feels like watching a moving comic book. The art style and subject matter combine to create a mind-blowing example of creative expression that rewards rewatch upon rewatch—there are always new visual moments to appreciate.
When Spider-Verse isn’t subverting typical genre tropes, it’s executing them at an elite level. My favorite part of any given superhero origin story, for example, is when the hero dons the finalized version of their costume for the first time. It’s a specific, geeky thing but the moment it happens in Spider-Verse is more iconic than anything else in the movie.
After more than an hour of superhero antics, of triumphs and defeats, the “Leap of Faith” scene represents the first time that a young, black, Hispanic boy from Brooklyn realizes that even he can be Spider-Man—even he can be a hero. It’s inspiring, moving and beautiful and if you haven’t seen it yet go look for it on YouTube right now.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is emotional and empowering, heart-warming and genuinely funny; it’s also surprisingly pertinent for this time of year. The movie’s messages are rooted in family and support. Morales’s family and friends are there for him to help get through every failure and to help celebrate every triumph. Spider-Verse is the perfect movie to watch when you’re feeling down, or when you need a reminder that you have what it takes to accomplish something. It’s a perfect movie: I’m so thankful it exists.