Bob Persichetti

In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), computer-generated figures share the frame with hand-drawn work and the marks of comic-book printing. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman give us plenty to look at, but keep Miles Morales's efforts to become a hero easy to understand. Shameik Moore's voice makes him worth spending time with before we have got used to the pictures. We were moved by Miles learning to be Spider-Man, because the directors take his difficulties seriously even while letting the film be funny.

Persichetti's earlier work was in the practical business of making drawings move and stories hold together. He worked as an inbetweener on Tarzan (1999), then as head of story on Puss in Boots (2011). On The Little Prince (2015), he was both co-writer and head of story. That background makes sense of the attention paid to Miles: a new way of animating a superhero still needs someone whose next decision interests us. The move into directing brought those story skills into a much more conspicuous visual experiment.

By limiting motion blur and depth-of-field effects, the film makes its computer-generated figures look more like drawings. That choice works because the comic-book printing effects remain visible instead of being smoothed away. Persichetti's collaborative method also matters: storyboards and reels develop alongside the script, allowing the images to help tell the story from the start. Ramsey and Rothman deserve their share of the credit; this is not a film from which we can confidently extract one director's contribution.

The busiest action is where that judgement slips. Into the Spider-Verse sometimes crowds out the people we want to follow, and we would gladly lose some movement to stay closer to Miles. The film remains funny and affectionate, but those passages make us wish the directors had been a little less reluctant to leave an idea out. If superhero origin stories have become a chore, this is a good place to try again.