Spider-Men: Into the Spider-Verse — A needlessly tangled web

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG for frantic animated action violence
By Derrick Bang

In today’s pop-culture entertainment world, you can’t have too much of a good thing.

When Marvel’s initial Amazing Spider-Man comic book becomes a smash success, the next move is obvious: Start publishing another dozen (or two) Spider-Man titles. If this cuts into the sales of the character’s flagship title, no matter; the combined overall sales are bound to increase.

Having barely gotten a sense of the whole web-slinging concept, young Miles discovers
that swinging between city buildings is a lot harder than it looks.

And if Spider-Man himself is a major part of the allure, then the next move is equally obvious: Concoct a storyline that creates more Spider-heroes. Thanks to one of sci-fi’s most overworked clichés — the notion of multiple parallel universes, where things are familiar but (tellingly) not quite the same — that’s a snap.

On top of which, the beauty of alternate realities is that writers can do something drastic — such as kill off a beloved character — without damaging continuity in our “core” reality.

The ultimate means of eating one’s cake, and having it too.

But care must be taken. If the original franchise — and character(s) — are diluted too much, everybody loses interest in the whole enterprise.

In fairness, directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman have done a mostly commendable job with the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Rothman and co-scripter Phil Lord deftly navigate the physics-challenged complexities of the alternate universe premise, while granting a solid origin story to a younger, equally captivating, but woefully inexperienced Spider-Man.

That would be Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), an Afro-Latino teenager who debuted in a complicated 2011 Marvel Comics storyline, and has remained popular enough to earn his own ongoing series.

But he’s not the character with whom this fast-paced, audaciously twisty saga begins. We’re instead (re)introduced to good ol’ Peter Parker, our one and only Spider-Man, who extols his uniqueness during a narrated prologue that cleverly references previous comic book adventures, along with iconic scenes from the live-action films that began in 2002 (most notably that sexy upside-down smooch with Mary Jane).

Poor Peter has his hands full, because the nefarious Wilson Fisk — better known as the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) — has teamed up with a theoretical physicist, in order to access the “multiverse” for a deeply personal reason. But Peter is enough of a scientist himself, to know that Fisk’s reality-bending device will have drastic consequences, and therefore must be destroyed.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Diminishing returns

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for plenty of silly action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.2.14

Spidey’s losing his snap.

I was no fan of Sony’s numb-nuts decision to re-boot this franchise, which the studio announced shortly after the 2007 release of the previous trilogy’s final installment; it seemed the height of lunacy. Our interest is such characters derives, in part, from the way in which they respond — positively or negatively — to an ever-expanding series of events and adventures; look at the brilliantly interwoven strands that have made all the other Marvel characters (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America) so much more interesting on the big screen.

Young gazillionaire Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), stricken with a hereditary disease
that will disfigure and then kill him, begs Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) for a blood
transfusion. But although the man beneath the mask regards Harry as a longtime
friend, Peter genuinely believes that complying with this request could kill Harry
much faster ... or do something even worse.

It’s no fun to see a character taken only so far — adolescent steps into a developing superhero career — and then slammed back into infancy.

The folks behind James Bond waited 44 years before re-telling his origin story, in 2006’s Casino Royale. Even characters as venerable and popular as Dumas’ D’Artagnan and his fellow musketeers are gathered anew, with fresh young casts, only once per generation ... if that.

But only a decade later, as was the case between Tobey Maguire’s debut outing as Spidey in 2002, and Andrew Garfield’s introduction in 2012? Madness.

On top of which, Maguire set the bar VERY high with his second outing; I still rank 2004’s Spider-Man 2 as the best modern superhero epic yet made (yes, even better than The Avengers).

Granted, there’s an obvious problem when it comes to the way Peter Parker is time-locked somewhere between high school and college ... but if Sony had thought that one through, they wouldn’t have started with 27-year-old Maguire in the first place.

Come to think of it, starting anew with 29-year-old Garfield suggests that Sony hasn’t learned its lesson.

But OK; all this aside, individual films should be judged on their own merits, even when part of an ongoing series. And, in fairness, Garfield’s debut outing as the unwitting victim of a radioactive spider bite was quite entertaining. His take on the character is captivating in a slightly different way; he’s more of a klutzy nerd than Maguire’s insecure, angst-ridden nebbish.

Plus, Garfield had the benefit of an excellent supporting cast. Emma Stone’s blond and effervescent Gwen Stacy is a reasonable substitute for Kirsten Dunst’s red-headed Mary Jane Watson (although the latter will be immortalized forever, thanks to her sweet, sexy, rain-drenched, upside-down kiss with Spidey in that series’ first entry).

Sally Field was — and is — terrific as Peter’s Aunt May; Martin Sheen was just right as Uncle Ben, and Denis Leary was properly stern and intelligent as Gwen’s father. And while the Lizard wasn’t my idea of a proper origin-story villain, scripters James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves — the latter two being Hollywood veterans with plenty of intelligent screenplays between them — delivered a thoroughly engrossing tale.

Which, for the most part, director Marc Webb managed not to screw up.

The same cannot be said for his handling of this overblown sequel.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Keeps on swinging

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.6.12

I dunno about the rest of you, but if a geeky, under-nourished kid in my high school class suddenly made an impossible, ceiling-scratching leap to slam-dunk a basketball with enough force to shatter the backboard — in front of dozens of witnesses, no less — and then, a few days later, media outlets began to report a mysterious, unusually strong and limber “vigilante” prowling the streets of my fair city ... I do believe it’d be fairly easy to connect the dots.

As his new powers begin to kick in, Peter Parker (right, swinging on the
pole) finds that he cannot fully control his movements; hyper-strength
turns intended gentle gestures into savage punches and kicks that
destroy furniture and put holes into walls. This proves helpful, however,
when Peter is set upon by a group of thugs in a subway.

I mean, really; Lois Lane might be excused for her repeated failure to see Superman behind Clark Kent’s glasses, but a gymnasium filled with teenagers will get mighty suspicious when rail-thin Peter Parker pulls off a stunt like that.

As it happens, Peter is cavalier about his newly acquired talents in all sorts of ways, but that’s kinda cool; as this re-booted Amazing Spider-Man repeatedly demonstrates, the whole concept of a “secret identity” isn’t something that would come naturally. This film’s writers — James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves — take a looser, messier approach to the Spider-Man mythos, which better reflects the way an angst-ridden teen might adapt to such a situation.

Or so it seems, anyway.

Andrew Garfield — well remembered from Never Let Me Go and The Social Network — is by far this new film’s strongest asset. His Peter Parker is gangly, clumsy, socially inept and wholly overwhelmed by events completely beyond his comprehension. In short, he’s the perfect dweeb, and therefore an ideal underdog: a kid we hope can get the girl and defeat the villain ... not necessarily in that order.

Garfield stammers, stutters, blushes and evades his way through most conversations and interactions, both as we first meet his hapless, hopeless “normal” self, and later, after being bitten by the radioactive spider that unleashes all sorts of havoc within the poor lad’s body. The immediate result may be increased strength and agility — not to mention “sticky” fingers and toes, the better to scuttle up vertical surfaces — but such newly acquired talents certainly don’t come with an instruction manual.

Watching Garfield’s Peter attempt to adapt to these changes — whether trying to dodge irritated thugs on a subway, or reacting with surprise as his adhesive fingertips yank the keys from his laptop keyboard, making typing all but impossible — is a helluva lot more fun than my embarrassed memory of Taylor Kitsch’s idiotic John Carter trying to make sense of Mars’ lesser gravity, by bouncing like a demented rubber ball.

Although what I’m inclined to call Spider-Man 2.0 more or less follows the core elements of the mythos established by Marvel Comics, this film’s scripters take a few liberties. Thus, the early loss of Peter’s parents is tied somehow to a mysterious research institute called OsCorp, where Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), investigating cross-species DNA as a possible means of regenerating his right arm, once worked alongside Peter’s father.