Please Note: Sweet Story, Bro is a geek critique blog. As such, there will be full spoilers throughout. If you’re okay with that, read on. If not, read on at your peril.
A lot has been said about Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse since it came out late last year, surprising fans with its fresh take on a familiar story. The majority of coverage for the movie focuses on its captivating animation style—but Sweet Story, Bro isn’t a blog about animation technique. No, no.
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (which, for the sake of my sanity and your patience, I will henceforth simply refer to as Spider-Verse) grabbed people’s attention ever since the first trailer dropped, and rightfully so.
It’s no mistake that the majority of people writing about the movie are approaching it from the animation angle, but I wanted to explore something different. I wanted to look at how the movie leverages its audiences in-grained pop culture knowledge of Spider-Man, and how the writers (Phil Lord, of LEGO movie fame, and Rodney Rothman) then used that to deliver a refreshing take on an old story.
One Last Time
Okay, kids. Let’s take it one last time from the beginning.
Our world’s version of Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider in his teens. He would then go through a series of adventures (and misadventures) for years to come after learning the harsh lesson that with great power comes with great responsibility—a life lesson that came at the tragic expense of his beloved Uncle Ben.
With over sixty years of comic book history, six live-action movies, one live-action TV series, a plethora of animated shows, and even an unrelentingly infamous musical (which I've...experienced), the origin story and history of our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has been well told and explored to its nth degree.
But then came Brian Michael Bendis’ take in Ultimate Spider-Man. A reboot of sorts, the comic book launched in October 2000 and eventually introduced Miles Morales. In the wake of witnessing Peter’s death, Miles would assume the role of Spider-Man within that run of comics, presenting an alternate universe that ran parallel to Marvel’s Earth-616 (Marvel’s prime reality).
With these elements, Lord and Rothman began to scribble away at what would eventually become Spider-Verse, mixing the known and unknown to create a heady mixture of originality that we haven’t seen in a Spider-Man movie for years. And that’s not to knock the earlier films. I still have a major soft spot for Spider-Man 2 and loath finger gun wielding, street dancing, emo-Parker just as much as the next guy.
Same Story, Fresh Take
The creative team behind Spider-Verse only wanted to come to the project if they felt there was something new and fresh to say. One of the directors, Bob Persichetti (who shares directing duties with both Lord and Peter Ramsey), put it like this to The Verge:
“We’ve seen [Peter Parker’s story] over and over, and that presented a really fantastic creative challenge. Everyone thinks they know the way Spider-Man was created. We have the same ingredients, but it’s through Miles’ point of view. He has a family—a mother and father, which is as rare as you can get in this world. He’s from Brooklyn. It felt natural to roll the idea of Miles Morales into Brooklyn, given the creation of the comics in New York. We feed all those things into this movie and it just felt like an expanding, natural, rhyming universe.”
In an effort to contemporise the narrative, they wanted to explore what it would mean for a modern mixed-race kid (Miles is half African American, half Latino) to be granted these powers—especially when contrasted with the straightforward, middle-class American ideals Peter Parker represented during his creation in the ’60s.
Co-director, Peter Ramsey, put it like this: “[…] what’s [Miles’] version of “With great power comes great responsibility”? What does that mean to this 13-year-old kid growing up in Brooklyn, and his circumstance in the year 2018, that’s different from what it was for Peter Parker back in 1960-whatever?”
Using this as an entry point, the team began to craft their story.
Exploiting The Essentials
Miles would go from the safety of his family unit to going against his dad’s will, wanting to hang out with his rebellious Uncle Aaron. Soon after, he develops his abilities and finds himself lost and without a mentor—just like Peter Parker did after the loss of his Uncle Ben. Miles’ personal journey would be majorly impacted after losing his own uncle later on in the movie, aping Parker’s experience.
This plot point solidifies the idea that, although the Universes are so drastically different in tone (Peni Parker’s anime reality, Spider-Man Noir’s bleak, black-and-white world, and Spider-Ham’s cartoon throwback for example) they are intrinsically connected and undeniably similar in backstory and thematic resolve. They have all lost people that mean a great deal to them—more often than not their Uncle or a father figure—before learning an integral personal lesson that allows them to embrace the role of Spider-Whatever forevermore.
[...] although the Universes are so drastically different in tone, they are intrinsically connected and undeniably similar in backstory and thematic resolve.
Ramsey extrapolated on this idea, sharing that “[…] In the script, Phil was basically like, “Boil it down to the essentials. From there, construct whatever new pieces we needed for the movie.”
By exploiting these “essentials,” the writers were able to not only manipulate audience expectation but also create a quick and effective way of generating connection and empathy between Miles Morales and us—bending, if not flat out breaking, a few preconceptions along the way.
Upon initial viewing, you may have thought that the Spider-Man within Miles’ world would be the one to find and train him.
Nope.
Instead, the story gets subverted by having a blonde-haired Peter Parker have his skull caved in at the monstrous hammer fists of the Kingpin as Miles can do nothing but watch.
You see elements of this purposeful subversion in Miles’ family life. His relationship with his uncle sees Aaron establish himself as a donor figure that understands Miles issues in a way that his dad simply can’t, complicating their core dynamic whilst still feeling inherently familiar, especially as he feels Spider-Man is a menace to their New York.
In an interview with SlashFilm, Ramsey noted that, to him, Miles’ “[…] family experience really is what makes him unique and different from Peter Parker or other iterations of Spider-Man we’ve seen” which explains why they lean so heavily into their family dynamics, in particular the relationship between Miles and his father.
This is an interesting take given the overt similarity the family roles play within Miles’ tragedy. The only defined difference between Peter and Miles’ journeys comes from the fact that Peter’s father figure and uncle happen to be one and the same character.
Thwip, Release, Thwip, Release
Spider-Verse ultimately revolves around a teenager who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and, through personal loss and hard lessons, assumes the responsibilities of Spider-Man.
That’s irrefutable.
It’s also instantly recognisable Spider-Man territory, even with the awesome multiverse angle.
But the way that the movie presents those differences allows its story to break convention. The additions and tweaks to locale and character are enough to introduce new possibilities, dynamics, and avenues of narrative exploration despite sharing core traits with past iterations.
Even the introduction of each Parker adopts this mentality by using repetition of the comic book splash, ‘one more time’ joke as a beautiful bit of referential meta humour. It embraces their audience with a nod and a wink whilst giving them a unique method of introducing each new character, made all the more effective through its stylised use of animation.
"[...] what evolved was they’re having an expository conversation, but they’re doing it while they’re walking up and down buildings, which Peter is very good at, and Miles is not. For us, that communicates story and character."
Highlighting one scene in particular, Rothman explains their ability to fold narrative beats seamlessly within the animation—striking a balance between providing expository story information and developing character relationships, in this case between Peter and Miles:
“[…] there’s a scene where Peter and Miles, right after they first meet, they’re walking up and down buildings while they talk. That’s an example of something that changed because you had a scene that was basically what we would call a “pipe” scene,” he said. “It’s a scene that has to communicate expository plot. And, as it evolved, we started to try to think about, ‘OK, if we have to take our medicine with this scene, and we just have to, how can we do that in a way that is very specific to us? That only we could do?’ In that case, what evolved was they’re having an expository conversation, but they’re doing it while they’re walking up and down buildings, which Peter is very good at, and Miles is not. For us, that communicates story and character. And even after that concept came into being, the scene continued to evolve as far as how we were shooting it.”
The paunchy, jaded Peter Parker takes Miles under his wing. We know his struggles and what he has survived and, because of this, accept him as a mentor to Miles as he begins to learn the ways of the web. It’s the beginning of the torch being handed over because, sometimes, to allow new stories to be told, we have to be willing to let go of what we are familiar with.
It’s a thwip, release kind of thing.
The writers treated fans with respect, tackling their screenplay with this in mind, and it paid off in a major way. They leveraged the familiar, tweaked and changed the expected norms, and created something refreshingly original in the process.
Just ask their shiny gold statue. I think its name is Oscar.
Thank you for reading this geek critique. If you liked it and don't want to miss any future blogs, be sure to subscribe below!
Sources