Too Much Spider-Man? Not In The Spider-Verse

You might be forgiven for feeling superhero overload this holiday season. Had enough of, say, of Spider-Man for a while? Well, this may sound nuts, but consider watching not just one web-slinger but five of them in the animated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Instead of overload, you’ll be begging for more.

The film gleefully scrambles the notion there can be only one friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and offers the exciting idea that he can be anyone. He can be a girl, he can be a middle-aged dude with a paunch and he can even be a cartoon pig.

It’s hard to underestimate what this means. ”Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ” does what comics and graphic novels have long experimented with, but this time makes the leap to the big screen. It literally opens up a universe of possibilities. “Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask,” we are told.

The result is a film that’s fantastically fresh, both visually and narratively, trippy and post-modern at the same time and packed with intriguing storytelling tools, humor, empathy and action, while also true to its roots — still telling the story of a young man learning to accept the responsibility of fighting for what’s right.

Our main hero here is one plucked from a spinoff from the main Spider-Man comic book universe: Miles Morales, a half-African-American, half-Puerto Rican teen from Brooklyn who has a Chance the Rapper poster on his wall. He looks and acts nothing like previous Peter Parker types — Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland — and that’s great. Hey, if Cate Blanchett can play Bob Dylan in a movie, why not offer us a new look on Spidey?