There is a meme floating around the internet, of two people dressed in identical Spider-Man costumes and pointing incredulously at one another. The image is circa 1967, pulled from an episode of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original cartoon TV series. A witty touch, then, that a Spider-Man film for children who have grown up with the Internet would repurpose this joke as its central conceit.
Maybe, though, this meme-savvy humour is to be expected, given that this sublime, animated reimagining of the “Spider-Verse” is produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller – of The Lego Movie (Lord also has a co-write credit). Anticipating its audience’s potential for Spider-Man fatigue after a slew of reboots, sequels, spin-offs and guest appearances since Sam Raimi re-energised the franchise in 2002, this film playfully doubles down, introducing no less than five new Spideys, each hailing from their own parallel universe. There is Peter B Parker (Jake Johnson), divorced and depressed; Gwen Stacy’s Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld); a trench-coated Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage, deployed ingeniously), drawn in black and white; Looney Tunes-esque Spider-Ham/Peter Porker (John Mulaney); the futuristic, anime-styled Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn); and teenage graffiti artist Miles Morales (a very likable Shameik Moore).
The evil Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) ruptures the space-time continuum, catapulting the quintet into a kind of purgatory that allows the web-slingers to connect across timelines. There’s lots to love here, not least the animation itself, which uses split screens, Ben-Day dots and onomatopoeic text that mimic the tactile experience of reading physical comics – panels, hatching and primary colours intact and ready to leap off the page.
