Rodney Rothman’s work on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse gives a crowded superhero film warmth and a reason to care. We rate this collaborative directing debut highly, though its busiest action sometimes loses sight of the people.
Fi1m perspective
Miles Morales is allowed to be a beginner in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), despite everything else demanding attention. Shameik Moore makes his uncertainty engaging, and Jake Johnson’s Peter B. Parker gives the lessons a welcome comic weight. We were moved by their scenes together because the film takes time to let a teacher and pupil grow fond of each other. Rodney Rothman and Phil Lord’s screenplay understands that the conversation has to be worth hearing before the next interruption arrives. Their quieter exchanges are among the film’s chief pleasures.
Rothman came to feature directing after comedy writing on Undeclared (2001) and 22 Jump Street (2014). That background makes sense of the ear for dialogue in Into the Spider-Verse. He shares the directing credit with Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey, and we should be careful about treating their work as his alone. The three let the animation styles compete without making Miles’s efforts difficult to understand. It is an assured debut.
The visual choices deserve their share of attention: Ben-Day dots and panel-like framing carry the look of comics into the animation. They serve Rothman’s interest in recreating the experience of reading a comic, and give this familiar business of becoming a superhero fresh interest. His contribution to the screenplay also includes finding jokes in the repeated origin stories. This is funny, but every new introduction uses time that could have been spent with Miles.
Our reservation is that the film sometimes seems impatient with the relationships it has worked to establish. The busiest action grows harder to take in, and the accumulation of alternative Spider-figures starts to crowd out the people we want to follow. That matters especially here, when the writing and performances have made learning from a mentor worth watching without any further spectacle. Start with Into the Spider-Verse, and be prepared to wish it would occasionally stop introducing people.
Biography
Rodney Rothman is an American filmmaker and writer. He co-wrote and co-directed the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) with Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey, marking his feature directorial debut. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and Annie Awards for directing and writing.
Rothman wrote the screenplays for Grudge Match (2013) and 22 Jump Street (2014). He has also produced films including Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010) and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016). His television credits include writing for Undeclared (2001) and serving as a staff writer and head writer on Late Show with David Letterman, for which he received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Rothman is the author of the nonfiction book Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement (2005). His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times and McSweeney's Quarterly.
