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Trailer: Miles Morales Will Make Animated 'Spider-Man' An Event

This article is more than 6 years old.

Sony Pictures Animation

Despite or because of how frequently we get superhero offerings on television, the notion of a theatrical animated comic book and/or superhero movie is exceptionally rare. In somewhat recent times, we had Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (a whopping $5.3 million in 1993), The Powerpuff Girls Movie ($16m worldwide in 2002), The Incredibles ($620m in 2004), Megamind ($346m in 2010) and The LEGO Batman Movie ($310m in 2017). So it is interesting that we're essentially getting three of these things in 2018, with Walt Disney's The Incredibles 2, Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s Teen Titans Go to the Movies! and Sony's animated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Okay, I have to hope that won't be the final title.

If this Bob Persichetti/Peter Ramsey-directed and Phil Lord/Chris Miller-produced animated adventure works, then Sony could be in a position to essentially offer a new Spider-Man movie every year, with a live-action MCU offering and then an animated adventure in alternating years. And that's not even counting the various spin-offs like Venom and Black and Silver. And the biggest trump card concerns the man behind the mask, not Peter Parker but Miles Morales.

As you may know, and as I noted when the Morales announcement was made back in January, Miles Morales was created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Sara Pichelli as a would-be replacement for Peter Parker in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series. The “Ultimate” line was created in 2000 as a way for Marvel to reinvent their flagship characters for modern times and modern readers without ditching the ongoing continuity of the “regular” books. That version of Peter Parker was killed off in 2011 and Miles, a young man who had recently suffered a similar “bitten by an enhanced spider” accident, eventually became Spider-Man to honor the fallen hero.

After the “Ultimate” comic continuity ended in 2015, the character joined the official 616 Marvel universe with Miles being New York’s official Spider-Man and Peter Parker fighting crime around the world. And the character has made several appearances in the ongoing Ultimate Spider-Man Disney XD animated series. His first such appearance was voiced by Donald Glover, fitting since the character was partially inspired by Glover’s unsuccessful attempts to audition for The Amazing Spider-Man back in 2010, which was something of a flashpoint moment in raising awareness of onscreen diversity problems for blockbuster casting (he played Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Homecoming).

Yes, for the record, one of the things that made Miles Morales stand out back in 2011 was the fact that he was half-black/half-Hispanic. And thus one of the things that will make this animated Spider-Man movie stand out is that it will star a young hero who is half-black and half-Hispanic. You don’t need me to explain the whole “representation matters” thing. Using Miles Morales for the animated offshoot is a terrific and easy way to make it matter alongside the live-action counterpart. It is also a great/easy way to differentiate this new movie from the previous live-action movies and from the many previous Spider-Man animated television shows.

Sony Animation

The teaser offered this morning is a surreal and highly stylized offering that looks like a cross between an Alex Ross image and a psychedelic cover image. Most importantly, this means that 2018 will offer another comic book superhero movie featuring a hero of color, during the same year as Marvel’s Black Panther and Jason Moma's Aquaman. A Miles Morales animated Spider-Man movie means that there is a darn good reason, artistically and culturally, for Sony to be making an animated Spider-Man movie in the first place.

Yes, it'll be neat seeing a stylized Spider-Man cartoon over the Christmas season in 2018. And it'll be even cooler to see folks who look like Morales thrill to a superhero who looks like them under the mask. For said demographics, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, starring Shameik Moore (as Miles Morales), Mahershala Ali and Liev Schreiber will be an event movie when it opens Dec. 14, 2018.

 

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