BEFORE: Back in January I dedicated this year to the memory of two men, Stan Lee and Will Vinton - so it's only fitting that I use one of them as the link between three movies based on his work, as Stan Lee makes some form of cameo in them. He played himself in "Captain Marvel", a guy on a subway reading the script for Kevin Smith's movie "Mallrats", in which he also made a cameo. And the hero definitely sort of recognized him, and knew for a fact that he was an OK dude, and not a dirty Skrull. So he's also somewhere in today's film, though I'm not sure where just yet.
This one's still playing in theaters, theoretically I could have snuck in to see it after watching "Captain Marvel" a week ago, but it was 10 pm when that movie ended, and I had to make it to the comic shop before it closed at midnight, and at some point I had to go home to sleep. And as I stated before, I saw the Academy screener for this one kicking around the office, but it sort of vanished (which usually means that a movie is really good), so instead I had to wait for today, when the film became available to rent on iTunes.
Seeing as how I'm friends with one of the directors, it would probably be bad karma for me to watch this one for free, anyway. I want to support his film, so I'm paying the rental fee for iTunes the day it becomes available to rent, it's the least I can do for a bud, to help increase his film's iTunes income. After all, it's not every day when I get to watch one of my former interns accepting an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature on TV.
THE PLOT: Teen Miles Morales becomes Spider-Man of his reality, crossing his path with five counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat for all realities.
AFTER: I'm kind of torn here, because while I do want to champion the very forward-thinking work that was done here, I'm also kind of a purist when it comes to storytelling. There have been entirely too many reboots and re-workings of things over the last decade, to the point where they have to re-tell the origin of Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four nearly every time they want to make a movie with those characters. Why can't they just tell a character's origin ONCE and then leave it alone for 30 or 40 years, whatever happened to long, slow character development. You don't see them re-telling James Bond's origin every time - umm, wait, that's a bad example. You don't see them re-telling Dracula or the Mummy's origin every time. No, wait, those are also bad examples, because they do all that too. Godzilla? No, he also gets re-booted every few years. King Kong? Nope, same. God DAMN IT, I guess my point is that nothing is permanent any more, not even our most celebrated fiction.
I suppose on the positive side, old stories ARE being kept alive, just in different forms as times go by. "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens is a great example of a story that carried an important message for people in Victorian times, and then as society changed and people's situations changed, the message needed to be put in more modern dressing for people to pay proper attention to it. And that's why there were later versions with Albert Finney, Bill Murray and Matthew McConnaughey, delivering the same message (more or less) but with a modern spin that today's audiences might pay a little more attention to. And then when apply this to comic books, the old Superman, Batman and Spider-Man stories are still being told today, but just in different ways - in one way there's nothing new under the sun, but on the other hand, everything still has to feel fresh and inspired. Stan Lee himself called this the "illusion of change" - the writers could change Captain America's costume, the villain that he's fighting, his girlfriend, the shape of his shield, but they're not fundamentally changing his story, it's all one continuous, non-changing narrative, and at the end of every multi-part storyline, the pieces go back into the box so the next writer can open the box and play with them.
And then when I was a teen and started reading Marvel Comics, there was this series called "What If?", which is an odd name for a comic book title, to be sure. But this was where the writers could let their imaginations run wild, and show some things that they felt couldn't be done in the regular comics - like "What if Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?" In regular comic-book continuity, Spider-Man met the super-team known as the Fantastic Four and was invited to join, only he turned down the offer. In the "What If?" book, someone could explore that story that didn't happen, to show how things could be different, either better or worse. This alternate choice could have a dramatically different effect, like it could lead to total world peace, or to the sudden death of the Human Torch, but my point is that this was my first encounter with alternate universes or parallel realities. Other famous "What If?" stories included "What If Phoenix Had Lived" and "What If Jane Foster Found the Hammer of Thor", and later on, versions of these ideas popped up in the main Marvel timeline, because at the end of the day, there are only so many stories to be told with these characters, and if you wait long enough, they're all bound to happen sooner or later.
But to me, these alternate reality stories were "less real" than the ones in the main (Earth-616) timeline of the Marvel Comic Universe. But since then, Marvel has re-booted or re-structured their timelines because of the Infinity Wars, the (second) Secret Wars, the Ultra-Super Secret Infinite Invasion that Still Everyone Seems to Know About, and so on. What was "real" when I was a teenager has been futzed with so many times and updated and retconned to the point where I'm not even sure what's real any more - like in 1964 Tony Stark became Iron Man during a war in SouthEast Asia (obviously Vietnam-like) but in the current origin, it happened during a war that looked more like Iraq or Afghanistan - so which is real or true now, or does it even matter in the end? The Punisher is famously a Vietnam veteran, but he also still looks 40 years old, so how is that even possible now? He should be in his mid-60's, even if he fought in the tail end of the Vietnam war.
Which brings me to Spider-Man. The Spider-Man we know in the main reality, Peter Parker, has been around so long that he should also be in his 50's, at least, only who wants to see a geriatric super-hero? So even though the character's been around since 1964, Spider-Man makes references to being a super-hero for only 10 years, which would make him how old? 36? Time passes differently in comic books, which is both good and bad. Good because we'll never see him get old and be web-slinging in a wheelchair, but bad because the stories become more unbelievable, less real, if we don't see him age and he's stuck in a state of arrested development. But again, the Marvel Universe has collapsed, gone under reality re-structuring several times, and the character might not be aware of it. He was married to Mary Jane, once upon a time, I swear, but in a very embarrassing storyline he made a deal with the devil (I swear, it's true) to retcon the marriage out of existence, which somehow saved the world or Aunt May's life or something. What a shitty idea - heroes don't make deals with the actual devil, no good can come of that - and why? All because some lazy writer didn't know how to write Peter Parker as a husband, or had no experience himself at being married. They had a whole promotional campaign back in the late 80's, actors playing Spider-Man and MJ got married on home plate at Shea Stadium, it was A THING, and now everyone at Marvel just pretends it didn't happen. For shame.
Meanwhile, what's the deal with Miles Morales? This character was created for Marvel's "Ultimate" line of comics, which first came out around 2000, putting fresh spins on Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Many of these were written by Brian Michael Bendis, who is not my favorite writer, so I didn't read these books. One of countless attempts to get new readers to pick up comic books, my guess is that they were moderately successful, because if they had outsold the stories from the main Marvel Universe, then probably the old line would have been phased out in favor of the new characters and timelines. So it's now regarded as a parallel timeline or alternate dimension, in which things are all slightly different - it's only funny because "ultimate" usually connotes "last" or "final", and there have been many other realities and timelines shown since. Now it's an aberration of sorts, though they did bring over Miles Morales, the evil Reed Richards ("The Maker"), and Ultimate Wolverine's son (Jimmy Hudson) to the main universe at the conclusion of the last Secret Wars mega-crossover event. Why? Because they thought that would sell a few more books.
So here I am, a Marvel purist who's been forced to accept that the writers are going to keep messing with reality every time there's a dip in sales figures, because if they think that a female Ghost Rider or a Latino Spider-Man or a Punisher from the future is going to sell a few more books, then they're going to do exactly that. I've pretty much given up on treating some stories as "less real" than the others, because at the end of the day, NONE of them are real. If a writer can dream up a universe where ducks and pigs can be superheroes, or Gwen Stacy somehow has Deadpool powers, and they can get that shit published, what right do I have to say that shouldn't be done? I don't have to BUY any comic book that I'm probably not going to like, so I vote with my wallet for the stories that I think I want to see more of. Other people feel differently, and they vote differently with their wallets, it's all part of the grand experiment that is capitalism.
OK, so take all that as my roundabout way of saying that I'm not really a fan of Mike Morales, I like my Spider-Man to be Peter Parker, and I like the main Marvel timeline the best. But still the Marvel company insists on doing these big cross-overs like "Spider-Verse" and its sequel book, "Spider-Geddon", which feature all the cross-time and cross-dimension Spider-Men and Spider-Women uniting to face a common threat, which is Morlun and the other Inheritors. These are a bunch of very evil ancient beings who travel the different dimensions, and they EAT Spider-People. Nasty, I know. But it's a serious enough threat to justify getting all the Spider-People together from all their universes so they can meet up and work together to defeat the evil power.
Problem is, for whatever reason when it came time to make a "Spider-Verse" movie, they adapted the "Spider-Verse" storyline from the comics, only they left out the nasty villains! This is possibly the thing that MADE that story great, so where are they? Instead we get the Kingpin, Tombstone, the Scorpion and Dr. Octopus from the "Ultimate" timeline, which seem lame by comparison. Was this enough of a threat to justify getting 7 Spider-People (OK, 6 people and one Spider-Pig) together? I'm not sure. Maybe there will be a sequel to "Into the Spider-Verse", and these characters, plus a few more iterations, and they have to come together to defeat these proper dimension-hopping villains instead of the same old lame NYC-bound ones.
They did a good job here, given what they had to work with - probably demands like "no Spider-Men will be eaten by villains" and "get rid of the weird inter dimensional villains and put in some fan favorites like Kingpin and Scorpion". OK, I don't pretend to know what went on behind the scenes, why they had to twist the "Spider-Verse" story seen in the comics around until it barely resembled the material that inspired it. But innovation is good for progress, I suppose. Hey, they took THREE Batman storylines and mashed them up together to make "The Dark Knight Rises", and that movie was KILLER, so you just never know. And this film beat out "Incredibles 2" to win the Oscar, so I'm clearly in the minority here.
I can't help but point out a few NITPICK POINTS - sorry, Chris and Phil. First off, the whole concept of "parallel dimensions" seems out of place here, maybe it's the language. When you think of two parallel lines, they are, in theory, identical to each other, only they will never ever meet, because of their location. They could be very very close to each other, but they'll never touch, because that's the definition of parallel. Here we have characters from dimensions that manage to touch each other so they can cross over, and that's against the very concept of being parallel. Plus, a parallel dimension, if one exists, should be very very similar to the one next to it, but it could have a key difference, like more people there would be left-handed, or Jimmy Fallon is funny there. Two dimensions running concurrently shouldn't be SO different that everyone there is stuck in 1933, or everyone there is really a barnyard animal. That's not "parallel", because it's so far removed from reality. I would accept "alternate dimension", but not "parallel".
Speaking of which, Spider-Ham is a terrible idea. This character was created for a JOKE comic way back in the 1980's, called "Marvel Tails", riffing off the popular reprint comic "Marvel Tales". I know, I own a copy of the book, which also featured Hulk Bunny (also stupid) and Duck-tor Doom (umm, ridiculous). Somehow Spider-Ham got his own book after that, but it was for small KIDS, it was never a character that was meant to be taken seriously in any way, or to interact with human superheroes. It makes no sense, and I think including Spider-Ham in the "Spider-Verse" comic really cheapened that cross-over, and he has the same effect on this movie. Really, really, truly dumb, in every possible way, right down to his use of "cartoon physics" in an otherwise non-cartoon world. Plus, he's a SPIDER that was bitten by a pig, not the other way around - how does that even WORK?
Now, some other odd NP's. Why does Miles Morales live in a dorm, when he's a high-school student in NYC? There's no high-school in this city that offers residency for students - that's what college is for. The NYC public school system is simply not in the business of housing people - yes, there are specialty high-schools for people who excel in math and science, but since those students live in the city limits, they all commute there every day by bus or subway. Nothing would be gained at the high-school level by having students live in dorms, and even if this did exist, which it doesn't, then the dorm space would go to the kids who live furthest away first - like I remember at NYU I had a roommate who lived in Queens, and he had to wait for all the students from out of town to be assigned dorms before they would give one to him. All NYC high-school students live with their parents or relatives, to the best of my knowledge, so this plot point seems very out of place. OK, sure, this is set in another universe, but is that going to be an all-purpose excuse to allow mistakes into the film?
Next, we've got the MacGuffin used to bring the characters across dimensions, which is a "collider" occupying a space under Fisk Tower in Brooklyn. Comic book science quite easily becomes "junk science", which is the case here. (It's weird, they call it a "collider" in the film, but Wikipedia refers to it as an "accelerator". Did some screenwriter fail to do 5 minutes of research on the internet?) Because we HAVE accelerators and super-colliders in our own reality, and none of them manage to break the barriers between dimensions and allow other people to cross over. HOW a collider manages to do this, and why it fails and why it's dangerous, all of this is glossed over here, as if none of it matters. Umm, yes, it does, because you have to show your work. You can't just have a character cross two wires on a TV set or spill coffee on a microwave and somehow travel through time. Is this what we want our teens to think, that anything we might learn about physics by using a super-collider could accidentally cause a web-slinging pig to enter our world?
For that matter, we shouldn't show "heroic" characters painting graffiti with spray cans, either. It's a bad message to send out to the kids, that this is somehow OK, when it's not - it doesn't matter how "artistic" that person is, it's still illegal. Sorry to be such a fuddy-duddy.
Also starring Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson (last seen in "The Mummy"), Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Mahershala Ali (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Luna Lauren Velez, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Snowden"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Chuck"), Kimiko Glenn (last seen in "Nerve"), Chris Pine (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "At Eternity's Gate"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Zoe Kravitz (last seen in "Rough Night"), Lake Bell (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets"), Jaoquin Cosio, Jorma Taccone (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Marvin "Krondon" Jones III, Greta Lee, Natalie Morales (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Post Malone.
RATING: 6 out of 10 songs on Spidey's Christmas album
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