By now it’s pretty obvious that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) is not just the best animated movie of 2018 (sorry Incredibles 2), it’s one of the best overall movies of the year. Then again, being directed by the guy who made Rise of the Guardians (2012) and written by the guys who made The Lego Movie (2014) will do that for a film. It’s fun, funny and wickedly intelligent, and easily the best depiction of everybody’s favorite friendly neighborhood wall-crawler since… well… ever. Seriously, this movie even puts Raimi’s first two Spider-Man outing to shame, and that’s saying something!
Although there are a lot of great gags in the film (my personal favorite involves the black-and-white Spider-Man Noir trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube), one of the best involves Spider-Man successfully merchandising his likeness into a string of family friendly products (you gotta pay for more web fluid somehow, right?). There’s a Spider-Man comic book, a shoddy-looking popsicle and even a Christmas album, a few excerpts from which we get to listen to throughout the movie.
The album, called A Very Spidey Christmas, features a lean five song track list in which the famous web-slinger covers a series of beloved Christmas classics, including Joy to the World, Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, Up on the Housetop and The Night Before Christmas. They’re fun, catchy and completely derivative, but that, of course, is the point and it’s a great, gut-busting moment that the film quickly moves on from (this is, after all, Miles’ story, not Peter Parker’s).
But did you know that the album is real? Seriously, it actually exists, and you can buy it on iTunes right now.
Not content to merely feature straight covers of the listed songs, however, the album exists as a truly bizarre comedic text that is well worth a listen in its own right. Spidey-Bells, the song most prominently featured in the animated film, fluctuates from a silly stunt-song where seemingly random words are swapped in with Spider-Man appropriate stand-ins to an increasingly off-kilter and badly sung version of the same. Halfway through its runtime, however, it breaks completely open into an apparent existential crisis, as Spider-Man, teetering on the brink of a genuine breakdown, questions everything from his personal integrity to whether or not he should pull the album from production.
And that song is simply par for the course. Its version of Joy to the World, for instance, digresses into ruminations about how it’s weird that Spidey doesn’t get paid for all the work he does saving people from supervillains. Deck the Halls plays a surprising lot like Will Shatner’s smoky rendition of Rocketman. And The Night Before Christmas, much like the Tales from the Crypt version The Fright Before Christmas, is a madcap reimagining of the classic children’s poem with a new, Spidey-appropriate storyline.
Seriously, check these songs out, because it’s all so very much weirder than I could ever possibly describe.
