Watch ‘Spider-Man Lives: A Miles Morales Story’

Spider-Man Lives: A Miles Morales Story

Bard Tales Productions and Lucky 9 Studios released a nine-minute fan film depicting the origin of Miles Morales.

The film is written and directed by Ivan Kander, and stars Demetrius Stephens as Miles Morales.

“The Miles character really resonates for me. Morales feels like a character who is more a reflection of today’s Brooklyn teenager—a smart, but not super-genius kid who is forced to take up the mantle of a fallen hero. And, not to dig into race too much (I am a white Jew after all), I think we need to see more non-white superheroes on screen. This may seem like a semantic thing, but I do think it’s an important notion on a base level for impressionable kids to see their action figures come in all sizes and colors,” said Kander on his blog.

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The film was picked up by the AV Club and has started its viral climb amassing 91,547 Youtube views since Nov. 11. The creator of Miles, Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis took the time to endorsed the film as well.

In the seven minutes of footage Kander understands the source material and conveys Morales’s situation without over explaining or talking down to the audience. There is some clunky dialogue, but that is a side-effect of using comic book dialogue in a film.

The video is residing on the website SpiderManLives.com.

About Miles Morales:
After Norman Osborn was arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D, and publicly revealed as the Green Goblin, Osborn Industries was left abandoned. Nearly two months before Peter Parker’s death, a thief broke into Osborn Industries. Unbeknownst to the thief, a spider genetically enhanced with the Oz Formula crawled into his bag.

Miles Morales, a young kid from Brooklyn, visited his uncle Aaron Davis against his parents’ wishes, because of his uncle’s criminal past, after being awarded the final spot in a charter school lottery. At his uncle’s apartment, Miles was bitten by the Oz-enhanced spider, which emerged from Aaron’s bag, and Miles discovered he received super-human abilities like camouflage, increased agility, and some sort of stun blast. After revealing his newly found powers to his best friend, Ganke Lee, both concluded he had power similar to Spider-Man’s, including wall-crawling.[4][5] But Miles reacted negatively, as he just wanted to be normal, and decided to leave heroism to the original Spider-Man.

Months later, Spider-Man died saving his family from Osborn. Miles arrived late to the scene. Struck with grief at not helping Peter Parker before his demise, Miles decided to follow Parker’s philosophy — with great power comes great responsibility — and so continue Peter’s legacy. (Source: Marvel Database)

Matthew Sardo
Matthew Sardo
As the founder of Monkeys Fighting Robots, I'm currently training for my next job as an astronaut cowboy. Reformed hockey goon, comic book store owner, video store clerk, an extra in 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon,' 'Welcome Back Freshman,' and for one special day, I was a Ghostbuster.