Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018 film) = Finished

Spider-Verse reminded me of why I love movies.

I like being in another place, safely detached by a screen, and feeling things. I like taking those emotions and observations back into the world, and feeling the richer for it. I like laughing, or seeing striking imagery, or acknowledging both a story well told and holding an affecting message--but those things I listed above? Those are the basics. That is the primal force that keeps me pinned to a seat, and writing these posts at *checks time* 1:18 AM.

Spider-Verse nailed it.

And it didn't just nail taking me somewhere else, and giving me something to walk away with - it nailed everything. Everything I want in a movie. Everything I care about. Every shot in this movie was like a needle injected into my brain, with a fire hose filled with the things I love attached. I remember sitting in the theater, dark walls lit by a washing machine kaleidoscope of colors, and suddenly wanting a VR headset--those kinds with the screens real close to your corneas. I wanted to etch this movie into my eyes.

To be completely honest, I rooted against Spider-Verse for a while before its release. The visuals were 'weird'. I didn't particularly care for Miles Morales based off of the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man, a comic run that didn't seem capable of bringing this version of the hero out of Peter Parker's shadow, or making a black Spider-Man anything more than a side version of essential canon. In the end, I was wrong. Every part of this movie is web-encrusted gold. Spider-Verse hopped over every concern I had with humor, the most gorgeous animation I have had the fortune of seeing in ANYTHING EVER, and a story I'll carry with me for a long time. Miles Morales unequivocally is Spider-Man.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is posing in front of a mirror, and imaging myself as any number of my favorite superheroes. Batman. Superman. Spider-Man, especially. Then, a thought struck me. One that took away the poses and the fun and left me looking at a pathetic, lanky kid with a furrowed brow.

I didn't get to be one of those heroes. The important ones. The canon.
I'd been on the internet.
Heroes like that don't get to look like me.

The important heroes? The ones brought back time and time again, like Bruce Wayne, and Clark Kent, and Peter Parker? They aren't black, and they never would be. Public outcry wouldn't allow that to happen. Not in any way that mattered. What black heroes would be given as an alternative would be just that--an alternative. An inherently inferior deviation from the comic status quo.

Without going into spoilers, Spider-Verse ends by saying that anyone can, and could, wear the mask.
For the first time, I believe it.

The canon does look like me - and it's a brilliant canon indeed.