It's been a good couple of years for Spider-Man fans, which is something of a pleasant surprise when you consider the radically different position the character found himself in just four short years ago. Cast your minds back to the winter of 2014 for a moment – Spider-Man couldn't help but feel like yesterday's news, what with the newly crowned Marvel Cinematic Universe dominating the screen, the Raimi trilogy already being something of a distant memory and Webb's attempt to restart the franchise failing to ignite much passion in anyone but its most vocal detractors. Things weren't looking great for ol' web head – and yet since then, we've seen the character make his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to much applause, star in his first good solo movie since 2004, make a hugely enjoyable appearance in probably the most successful and talked about film of 2018 and even star in his own critically acclaimed and highly successful video game. It's been quite the impressive turnaround – so really, I guess it's only fair that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ends continues that winning streak.
We follow Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino New Yorker teenager who (wouldn't you just know it) winds up getting bitten by some kind of radioactive spider and gaining superpowers. But this isn't your average origin story – after a plan to stop a dangerous experiment held by Wilson Fisk goes wrong, several other Spider-Folk are dragged into Miles' universe, all of whom will soon die from the side-effects of being in the wrong universe if they cannot get back to where they came from.
It's an exciting conceptual hook that helps Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse stand out amongst the crowd, but vitally, it's not a hook that ever threatens to overwhelm the film entirely. In fact, it could be argued that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is actually fairly restrained in this respect – it would have been easy (and I imagine incredibly tempting) to really cram in as many Spider-Folk as possible, but by keeping that number reasonable and ensuring that the real meat of the story centres on just three of them (namely Miles, Peter and Gwen), the film manages to perform a careful balancing act that ensures the multiverse concept neither overpowers the movie nor ends up feeling under-utilised.
The result is a film that manages to both have its cake and eat it too, indulging in all the fun weirdness that the multiverse concept brings while also telling a tight and well-focused story about a young man figuring out his place in the world. I had assumed from the marketing that Nicolas Cage's Spider-Noir or the adorably anime Peni Parker would end up being my favourite characters, but wonderful as they are it was actually Miles himself who ended up taking the top spot. But he's far from the only stand out character – virtually every other character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse leaves an impression of some kind, whether they be Jake Johnson's Peter Parker, Hailee Steinfeld's instantly iconic Spider-Gwen and others that would be mild spoilers to even talk about.
And it's funny too, which probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise given the talent involved – Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's fingerprints are all over this. They might not have directed it (that particular credit goes to Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey) but one has to assume that Lord and Miller were very hands-on producers – it fits their style and sense of humour to a tee, filled with neat visual gags and open slapstick right alongside some character driven humour that never seems to miss, all of which only adds to the sense that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an immaculately crafted movie on every level.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse bursts at the seams with innovation and heart, it's a movie that demands your attention from frame one and never wavers in its commitment to earning, so consistently, fundamentally great. Even as a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a fantastic movie that single-handedly justifies Sony's decision to hang on to the rights to the character. I can't see a film this different and daring coming into existence under the Disney banner, and if the price of that is the risk that Spider-Man could simply disappear from the MCU one day? Well, so be it. It's worth it, and I don't say that lightly.
From a film-making perspective it's bad - drab and unexciting in all the ways that instantly mark it as a David Yates movie - but from a Harry Potter perspective it's downright insulting, inserting clearly made up on the spot backstory where none is needed and (seemingly) altering established facts about this world and its characters on a whim. It's fan fiction-y and pandering in all the worst ways, and it ends with a reveal so deeply unearned by the film itself and totally at odds with the larger Harry Potter canon around it that I have to assume that the characters involved are either mistaken or simply lying, less my brain be turned to mush trying to figure out just what the hell J.K. Rowling was thinking. Making a film "just for fans" is easy - making a film that's "just for fans" that even the fans are going to hate is bloody hard, yet it's the one thing that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald unequivocally succeeds at.
If I sound exasperated, well, that's because I am. Even ignoring the way that much of the film is effectively just unneeded backstory about characters you don't really care about, from a purely storytelling level, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is fundamentally dysfunctional, consistently failing to give the audience the information they need to be engaged in the movie that they're watching. Like almost all of J.K. Rowling's other writings, it's ultimately a mystery story at heart - but here, the mysteries that are central to the story are so poorly seeded by the film itself that there are multiple instances of the audience not knowing what the question even is until the answer is on-screen in front of them. Worse, even if these mysteries had've been set up better, the answers themselves only either raise more questions, or ultimately have very little impact on anything of importance.
Which means that for the vast majority of it's running time, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is downright directionless, never really feeling like it's started in earnest because it's either unable or unwilling to give you any indication of what this film is ultimately about or where it might be headed until far too late. With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that at least part of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is Rowling's attempt to reckon with the return of fascism as a political force in the West and the rise of the alt-right, how the disenfranchised can so easily be seduced by a charismatic leader who offers supposedly simple, ideologically driven solutions to complex problems, and that's a noble goal - but frankly, Rowling isn't anywhere near as good a screenwriter as she is an author, and the resulting product can't help but feel flimsy and spineless (and maybe even naive) in comparison to what I imagine it could've been had it been fleshed out in novel form.
But the biggest problem with all this is that it's so easy to imagine what this franchise could've been in the right hands, so easy to see the potential that a prequel series about a young Albus Dumbledore and Newt Scamander travelling around the world doing wizard stuff (that eventually - not yet, but eventually - sees them moving against Grindelwald). I like Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander and Dan Fogler's Jacob Kowalski; I like Katherine Waterston's Tina Goldstein (even if she has almost nothing to do here); I like Jude Law as a young Albus Dumbledore; and much as it pains me to say, I even think that Johnny Depp isn't bad as Grindelwald. There is value here, entertainment to be found if you look hard enough. With a better sense of direction and someone who isn't David Yates at the helm, I do think that these films could've been an interesting entry into the Harry Potter canon.
