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ABSTRACT
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, 2018) marks the film debut of biracial Spider-Man Miles Morales, with the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, playing a supporting role. Despite Miles's centrality in the film, a confluence of narrative, industrial, and stylistic factors work together to reinforce his secondary status compared to Parker, who remains the franchise's ideal of the real Spider-Man. In an echo of the reactionary backlash to the #BlackLivesMatter movement embodied in the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, the film's explicit theme-that "anyone can wear the mask"-functions less to legitimize Miles as Spider-Man than to ensure his continued subordination in the broader franchise.
On the press tour for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb, 2014), longtime producer of the Spider-Man film franchise Avi Arad asserted that Peter Parker was the one and only Spider-Man that he would ever put onscreen. When asked if he would consider adapting other comic book characters who have donned the webbed mask over the years-including Ben Reilly (the Scarlet Spider), Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099), and Miles Morales-he emphat- ically responded in the negative, claiming that previous attempts to include "multiple" Spider-Men had almost ended the franchise altogether.1 His words would turn out to be ironically prophetic, as The Amazing Spider-Man 2's lackluster reception and box office returns definitively concluded that iteration of the film franchise, prompting Sony to cancel their planned villain-centric spin-off film The Sin ister Six and ultimately to cut a deal with Marvel Studios that would introduce Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Under that arrangement, a new cinematic Spider-Man-the third live-action take on Peter Parker within a single decade-debuted in Captain America: Civil War (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2016), played by Tom Holland.2
Contrary to Arad's stated preference, this unprecedented "industrial collaboration between Marvel and Sony" also led to Miles Morales's cinematic debut, albeit indirectly.3 With the live-action Peter Parker now firmly associated with the MCU, appearing both in stand-alone franchise films such as Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017) and crossover events such as Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2019), Sony started to consider alternative means of exploiting one of their most lucrative licensed properties. Rather than build toward a single cohesive serialized universe that would be in...