Going “Inside the Spiderverse” at NYCC

By Josh Lasser on October 6, 2018 • ( 0 )

It is never surprising when a panel at New York Comic-Con offers up video. If it’s a panel on a movie or a television show, they have to offer video. Even so, those in the audience regularly are thrilled by the notion that they’re going to see something on screen, especially something that hasn’t been shown before. The real question, however, is just how much is going to be offered.

For Sony’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse” panel, after a quick introduction of producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller by moderator Josh Horowitz, we were told the footage was coming. Just how much? Beating out yesterday’s “Mortal Engines” panel and the 25 minutes from the start of the movie we got there, “Into the Spiderverse” gave the first 35 minutes. To be fair, however, it must be noted that “Mortal Engines” offered a polished 25 minutes whereas “Into the Spiderverse” had a definitely incomplete 35.

Naturally, the whole auditorium was sworn to secrecy about what happened in the film, secrecy only broken later (in part) by Miles Morales himself, Shameik Moore. I will not delve into any specifics whatsoever here about what takes place during the movie.

I will leave it at the fact that all the trailers and clips we’ve gotten so far seem like they hit the movie right on the money. It is a beautiful pop-art, comic book take on Spider-Man. At times it feels like they animated a comic book and it is, like Spider-Man himself, spectacular.

During the discussion, when a question was asked of directors Bob Perischetti and Peter Ramsey, it came out that they’ve been working on the movie for three years in order to get it to this point. Of course everyone present on the dais, absolutely everyone, said they were thrilled to be doing something different with Spider-Man. This includes Moore; Jake Johnson who plays Peter Parker; Luna Lauren Velez who plays Rio, Miles’s mother; and Brian Tyree Henry who plays Jefferson, Miles’s father.

If you stop for a minute and think about it, in this age of reboots, it is Spider-Man who seems to keep cropping up with the largest number of iterations. With “Spiderverse” though, we really are getting a different tale – Peter Parker is in this, but the story is about Miles Morales and the way he becomes Spider-Man.

Representation, naturally, came up on the panel, and both Henry and Velez sounded pleased that Miles comes from a stable home, from a good environment, that we don’t see enough of that on screen. The producers, too, made it clear that it being the Miles Morales story was important to them as well.

One of the most touching moments during the panel was Moore stating that it was while working on “Dope,” or right after, that he wrote down in a journal or a notebook, “I am Spider-Man” and “I am Miles Morales.” Now, of course, he is. Talk about a dream come true.

I won’t say that the crowd was as enthused for “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse” as they were for the “Good Omens” panel which preceded it, but there was no doubt that the vast majority of people present here were very happy with what they saw on screen.

As for me, I’m already on the record up above, and I’ll add to it something that was echoed on the panel – this really did feel like a very different sort of movie. A different tale and a completely different look. I can’t wait to see the final product.

photo credit: Sony Pictures Animation