Of spiders and actors
Apr. 23rd, 2019 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIfinally got around to watching Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse, and lo, it turned out to be as great as advertised. All the Spiderpeople were characters in their own right, even the pig, and yet Miles, whose origin story this was, managed not to be overshadowed. The animation was wildly inventive, embracing its comicbook-ness, and used the medium it was instead of pretending to be something else. By which I mean: gags like Spider-Man Noir only showing up in black and white would not have worked, or not worked the same way, in a live action version.
There was a time when I kept confusing Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio, and thus I was amused Schreiber voices Kingpin in this one when I had first wondered whether they'd pinched D'Onofrio from Daredevil. Anyway, he was the requisite main villain with a tragic background, while Doc Ock did supporting villain honors this time around. What amazed me is how on the one hand the movie felt so fresh while on the other it ticked off basically all the standard Spider-men origin elements: radioactive spider, one tragic death laying on hero duty on our main character, one of the villains turns out to familiar to our hero in another identity, joyful swinging between skyscrapers once our hero has finally worked out how to use his powers, and so forth. I think one reason why instead of feeling worn this all worked as good as new was that the movie managed to establish Miles in his own environment - with his parents and his circumstances being quite different from (any version of) Peter Parker's -, while also lampshading and even celebrating all the other variations of the tale by its very premise.
The main charm of the movie lay in the Spider-Spider interactions, with much, but not all of the screen time given to Miles & Peter (two versions of same) as well as Miles & (Spider-)Gwen. I'm all for versions of Gwen Stacy who survive instead of dying early, and get to be a person instead of a love object (one of the big virtues of the first Garfield Spider-man movie, redundant as that otherwise felt, was its vibrant Gwen who got to find out the secret identity right away), so this Gwen was probably my favourite. Given that I do remember all the upset back in the day when Joe Quesada & Co. decreed that the comics-reading (male) public could not cope with an adult, married and working as a teacher version of Peter Parker any longer, retconned the marriage, some of the age and all of the professional expertise to have him live in Aunt May's basement again, the meta-ness of this movie presenting two adult versions of Peter Parker (one from Miles' universe, one from another), one of whom was in fact older than any incarnation of Peter Parker so far has allowed to become in any medium, and despite his early refusal in a teacher position to Miles, was not lost on me. (Though that Peter having become somewhat jaded, and lost MJ not to retcon but divorce presumably filled the Quesada requirement that Peter Parker must not be in a happy long term relationship.) (He then gets re-inspired to heroism and fun by Miles, which makes it a neat circle.)
Basically: deserved all the accolades it got, and was impossible to resist.
On a more serious and sadder note: as today is Shakespeare's death-day and traditional birthday, it's an eerie coincidence to me that I just learned John McEnery has died, who played Mercutio in the 1968 Romeo and Juliet. In honor of both him and Shakespeare, here's Mercutio's Queen Mab scene from said movie:
There was a time when I kept confusing Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio, and thus I was amused Schreiber voices Kingpin in this one when I had first wondered whether they'd pinched D'Onofrio from Daredevil. Anyway, he was the requisite main villain with a tragic background, while Doc Ock did supporting villain honors this time around. What amazed me is how on the one hand the movie felt so fresh while on the other it ticked off basically all the standard Spider-men origin elements: radioactive spider, one tragic death laying on hero duty on our main character, one of the villains turns out to familiar to our hero in another identity, joyful swinging between skyscrapers once our hero has finally worked out how to use his powers, and so forth. I think one reason why instead of feeling worn this all worked as good as new was that the movie managed to establish Miles in his own environment - with his parents and his circumstances being quite different from (any version of) Peter Parker's -, while also lampshading and even celebrating all the other variations of the tale by its very premise.
The main charm of the movie lay in the Spider-Spider interactions, with much, but not all of the screen time given to Miles & Peter (two versions of same) as well as Miles & (Spider-)Gwen. I'm all for versions of Gwen Stacy who survive instead of dying early, and get to be a person instead of a love object (one of the big virtues of the first Garfield Spider-man movie, redundant as that otherwise felt, was its vibrant Gwen who got to find out the secret identity right away), so this Gwen was probably my favourite. Given that I do remember all the upset back in the day when Joe Quesada & Co. decreed that the comics-reading (male) public could not cope with an adult, married and working as a teacher version of Peter Parker any longer, retconned the marriage, some of the age and all of the professional expertise to have him live in Aunt May's basement again, the meta-ness of this movie presenting two adult versions of Peter Parker (one from Miles' universe, one from another), one of whom was in fact older than any incarnation of Peter Parker so far has allowed to become in any medium, and despite his early refusal in a teacher position to Miles, was not lost on me. (Though that Peter having become somewhat jaded, and lost MJ not to retcon but divorce presumably filled the Quesada requirement that Peter Parker must not be in a happy long term relationship.) (He then gets re-inspired to heroism and fun by Miles, which makes it a neat circle.)
Basically: deserved all the accolades it got, and was impossible to resist.
On a more serious and sadder note: as today is Shakespeare's death-day and traditional birthday, it's an eerie coincidence to me that I just learned John McEnery has died, who played Mercutio in the 1968 Romeo and Juliet. In honor of both him and Shakespeare, here's Mercutio's Queen Mab scene from said movie:
no subject
Date: 2019-04-23 07:34 pm (UTC)Thanks for posting it.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-23 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-23 08:29 pm (UTC)I loved the style a lot, and I hope it will inspire many other movies.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-25 11:08 am (UTC)But then the genesis of Spiderman was never the spider bite in any of the incarnations. It was also the realisation of what came next. That with great power comes great responsibility. Especially when thrust suddenly onto teenage shoulders.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-25 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 11:53 pm (UTC)>>while also lampshading and even celebrating all the other variations of the tale by its very premise.<< I thought we were going to get away with a film where Uncle Ben didn't die. So close to achieving that, and yet not.
John McEnery is both my Mercutio and my John of Gaunt, which is an odd combination of roles but he was amazing in both.