We’ve all heard the story of Peter Parker, the kid from New York who one way or another got bit by a radioactive spider which granted him superpowers, transforming him into the well-loved superhero we know today. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse isn’t his story, well not quite. The movie starts off following the main character Miles Morales (who just happens to be a fan of Spiderman) who’s trying to adjust to life at a fancy boarding school he’s just gotten into, that he feels extremely out of place at. It doesn’t help that his dad, who also happens to be a cop, is the one who drives him there in the back of his cop car after quite nearly running into him on his way to school. Miles’s dad doesn’t really understand his son’s trepidation with the new school and dismisses his worries saying it’s a good school for him and he’ll be fine. At school he meets Gwen, who is the first person he really hits it off with, not really getting along with any of the other kids before her. Later on, Miles heads over to his uncle Aaron‘s apartment, which he is close with and practically the only one Miles feels like he can actually talk to about things. They end up talking about Miles artistic talents which leads to them going down into a subway tunnel where Aaron shows Miles a clean wall ready for graffiti.

All seems to be going well until an unassuming but menacing spider enters into view. Miles gets bit and thinks nothing of it, just calmly swatting the spider and heading back to his dorm. Very quickly however Miles begins to realize something is wrong. He’s suddenly extremely sweaty and his hands won’t stop getting stuck to everything. This leads to an array of hijinks of Miles embarrassing himself around the school and keeps on trying to justify it to himself as “puberty”. He even ends up getting his hand stuck in Gwen’s hair and they have to cut his hand out at the nurse’s office. After all this, Miles ends up going back to the tunnel to figure out what exactly happened with that spider and why it changed him.

As it turns out there’s a secret lab right next to where they were, lo and behold there’s Spider-Man fighting two bad guys (one being a giant lizard). They appear to be fighting inside a humongous area with big laser things pointed at each other. As it’s revealed this contraption was made to gain access to other dimensions and bring others from those dimensions over to ours. Miles ends up getting inadvertently involved in the fight and Peter Parker ends up saving his life and upon seeing each other their spider senses alert them that they’re like one another with their powers. Peter promises that he’ll teach him everything there is to know about being Spider-Man. Before much else can be said Peter is thrown back into the fighting and when his battle gets tangled up in the particle accelerators beam all dimensions break lose. This leads to five other spider entities appearing in Milse’s dimension. They are Spider Gwen, Spider-Ham, sad middle-aged Spider-Man, Noir Spider-Man, and mecha piloting Peni Parker. The consequences are grave with splintering reality, with five dimensions intersecting it’s up to Miles and spider company to put everything and everyone back where they belong, along with stopping the particle accelerator.

I really enjoyed this movie to say the least, in fact I’d rank it as one of my favorite superhero movies. The plot was engaging and dynamic, I never felt bored by the pacing of this film. I really enjoyed how the main cast of spider hero’s interacted with one another and just generally how they were all characterized. It was interesting to have a Spider-Man film have someone else besides Peter Parker be the main character and focus of the movie. The way that the story of Spider-Man was worked into these different characters and how certain facts lined up just were slightly different to fit the situations was phenomenal. When each main spider characters background is revealed and discussed a new comic book starring them was shown on the screen and when Miles came into his own as Spider-Man his appeared was a really cool touch that I enjoyed. But there’s many moments like that throughout the film that just really enrich the experience of watching it.

Another thing I thoroughly enjoyed was the animation style. The artistic choices were beautiful and so many shots were cinematic and engaging. I’ve never quite seen animation like these and it was very exciting compared to more realistic styles. Throughout the film they try to incorporate recognizable comic aspects into it, like the formatting for different shots/scenes resembling a comic page or the easily recognizable sound effect bubbles. Everything in it was just very athletic and pretty overall. In addition, the plot of the movie was very enjoyable, it was new and pulled me along every turn. Overall my thoughts on the movie are overwhelmingly positive on essentially every aspect of it. There’s many moments, events, and dialogue that I liked that can’t simply fit into this review that were great. So I’d recommend this film to anyone superhero buff or not to go out and watch this movie and have the experience of the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for themselves. Now onto the spoiler section of the review.

FROM HERE ON OUT SPOILER WARNING!

One early on sort of twist or unexpected moment was the death of a character, and not just any character, Peter Parker himself. The ‘original’ Peter from Miles’s universe was killed trying to stop the particle accelerator and Kingpin’s plans with it. That’s how the gang of spider mostly people even came about, Peter gave Miles a flash drive that would shut down the accelerator for good and that’s where things were really set into motion. It was a shocking twist, at least to me. I would’ve never expected that they’d kill off the main character, maybe put him in a hospital with really bad injuries or something but not this. Not that I’m complaining thought, it was well done, especially the other characters’ reactions to it and just the world at large’s reaction to it.

I would also like to talk about what exactly happened with Miles’s Uncle Aaron. Remember that other bad guy the original Peter was fighting at the beginning, not the reptilian lizard one? Well as it turns out he is later revealed to be Miles’s uncle, after he had both rigorously tried to kill an also unrecognized Miles. What ends up happening is that Aaron is about to kill Miles but just as he’s about to do so Miles lifts up his mask and asks his uncle Aaron not to kill him. Aaron also lifts up his mask showing the regret, confusion, and sadness pungently clear on his expression, after hesitating too long and showing no intention to hurt Miles an enraged Kingpin shoots uncle Aaron and kills him. He dies in a heartbroken Miles’s arms. I thought this was a really well-done scene, everything from the dialogue to the emotions and everything in between made this a really raw sequence. It’s a different take on the classic Uncle Ben story for the well-known Spiderman that makes sense and is done tremendously. All in all, those were some of my thoughts on the fantastic movie Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. ​​