Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man swings to the rescue
(Image credit: Sony Pictures Animation)

A dazzling animation featuring different versions of our favorite web-slinging superhero in parallel universes.
4/5 stars

Spider-Man is Marvel's most popular superhero for a good reason. The geeky teen-turned-friendly neighborhood crimefighter really is relatable. He worries about girls and homework as much as he does about saving the city. He isn't a cocky billionaire inventor who built himself an iron suit; or a neurotic billionaire vigilante who dresses up as a bat, for that matter. He happened to get bitten by a radioactive spider. He could be anyone.

Steered to the screen by Phil Lord, one half of the team behind The Lego Movie, this Oscar-winning animated movie takes that notion and runs with it.

The first surprise is a fresh everyman hero in the shape of Afro-Hispanic Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), who has his own encounter with a radioactive spider while spraying graffiti in an out-of-bounds corner of the New York subway. Sure enough, the spider's bite gives him Spider-Man-like superpowers.

He also has an encounter with the 'real' Spider-Man (Chris Pine), here older and wearier than the version we're accustomed to and hard at work trying to foil plans by super-villain Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) to access parallel universes by means of a giant particle accelerator.

Alas, he fails to prevent the super-collider from unleashing a bunch of other web-slingers from alternative dimensions — notably a jaded, run-to-seed, 38-year-old Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), Spider-Woman, aka Miles' schoolmate Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Japanese-American schoolgirl Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a hard-bitten Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage) and even a porcine hero, Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) — each of them with their own distinctive style of animation.

Sound confusing? It isn't. The film positively zips along. It is playfully amusing, visually ingenious and is as readily engaging as the hero at its heart.

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Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.