How 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' gives us a Peter Parker we've never seen before
When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrives this December, we’re going to see a whole mess of different Spideys. There will be Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore; Spider-Gwen, a female crimefighter played by Hailee Steinfeld; a Spider-Man Noir brought to life by the esteemed Nicolas Cage; and even your friendly neighborhood Spider-Ham, with the sweet vocal stylings of John Mulaney.
And joining all the new Spider-folk is the OG hero himself, Peter Parker. But this incarnation will be quite different from what audiences have seen from the Tobey Maguire/Andrew Garfield/Tom Holland trifecta. The actor who will be voicing the animated version, New Girl alumnus Jake Johnson, joined Yahoo Entertainment at San Diego Comic-Con to discuss his middle-aged Peter.
“I like Peter’s view,” Johnson told us, sitting alongside his co-star Moore. “Peter in the movie is 40 years old. He’s not positive he wants to be Spider-Man. He’s asking the questions of what does it mean to be Spider-Man, which I think is an interesting thing to do, especially with a superhero character.”
Johnson is excited to be taking on the role.
“I’m a big Peter Parker fan; I like the Spider-Man world,” Johnson continued. “And then I really like that Peter Parker is in this movie, but it was also introducing Miles Morales into the Spider-Man universe. And I thought that was a really cool way to look at Spider-Man.”
The concept of Spider-Verse is that several different Spider-beings will converge and interact with each other. At the core of it will be the relationship between Morales, who is half black and half Latino, and Parker.
“I think it’s like a mentor-mentee [relationship], but the mentor doesn’t want to be a mentor and the mentee doesn’t really want to be mentored,” Johnson shared.
“Word,” agreed Moore. “But the mentee needs to be mentored in order to help the mentor get to where he’s going.”
“And the mentor needs the mentee to remember why he does the thing he does that made him a mentor,” Johnson added.
And, of course, that makes sense.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrives in theaters on Dec. 14.
Watch: Riz Ahmed on the Ms. Marvel movie he hopes gets made:
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
