Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, American animated superhero film released in 2018 that was acclaimed for its bold and inventive animation as well as its character-driven storytelling. The film was a commercial and critical success, grossing nearly $400 million worldwide and winning the Academy Award for best animated feature. Its spectacular visual style quickly became highly influential. A sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, was released in 2023, and a third installment in the series is in the works.

Background

The character of Miles Morales was created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Sara Pichelli for Marvel’s “Ultimate” line of comic books, which were reimaginings of classic Marvel characters. Though the “Ultimate” line already had its own Peter Parker as Spider-Man, the creative team decided they wanted a Spider-Man who helped to represent the more diverse audience for comics at the time. They came up with Miles, an Afro-Latino teenager from Brooklyn with both African American and Puerto Rican heritage. Having been introduced into the “Ultimate” line, Miles eventually made his way to the main Marvel Universe.

In 2014 writer Dan Slott and other Marvel Comics creators introduced the multiverse concept of a “Spider-Verse,” telling a dimension-hopping story in which different versions of Spider-Man from different universes are forced to team up to battle a common threat. This story included Peter Parker, Miles Morales, “Spider-Gwen,” Spider-Ham, and other characters who would eventually appear in the Spider-Verse films.

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Premise and summary

Into the Spider-Verse is set in New York City, where middle-class teenager Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) struggles to adjust to an upscale new high school despite the support of his parents, police officer Jefferson Davis (Brian Tyree Henry) and nurse Rio Morales (Luna Lauren Vélez). At school he meets a girl named Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), whom he seems to connect with. After school he spends the evening with his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), who helps him express his frustrations by spray-painting a graffiti mural on an abandoned subway wall. During this adventure Miles is bitten by a large radioactive spider.

The next day, Miles begins having strange experiences: he seems to stick to objects, develops bigger muscles, and finds himself crawling across walls. He returns to the subway to find the spider, suspecting that it is responsible for these developments, and becomes embroiled in a battle between Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man (Chris Pine), and several supervillains, led by the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber). In the midst of the battle, Spider-Man is briefly pushed into a collider the Kingpin has built for a mysterious purpose. The Kingpin succeeds in finally killing Spider-Man but not before the hero passes on to Miles the task of destroying the Kingpin’s collider by using a special flash drive. Miles escapes, pursued by the Kingpin’s henchman, the Prowler.

Miles attempts to teach himself to use his new powers but succeeds only in breaking the flash drive. He visits a memorial for the fallen Spider-Man and is approached by an older, more bitter version of Spider-Man who calls himself Peter B. Parker. This Peter has been pulled from another universe by the other Spider-Man’s brush with the Kingpin’s collider. Though Peter is more intent on going back to his own universe than on helping Miles, together they determine to break into a research facility called Alchemax to steal the data they need to replace the flash drive. There they face the supervillain Doc Ock (Kathryn Hahn) and are helped by Gwen, who reveals herself to be from a third universe, where she is Gwen Stacy, Spider-Woman.

The three heroes visit Peter Parker’s Aunt May (Lily Tomlin) for help in recreating the flash drive. She reveals that three more spider-themed heroes have appeared in their universe: Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), and Peter Porker, or Spider-Ham (John Mulaney). Miles wants to help the five other spider-heroes return to their own dimensions and to destroy the collider, but, because of his inexperience, none of them trusts him to do it. Miles must find it in himself to become his universe’s new Spider-Man—and to do it before the Kingpin’s collider destroys New York City.

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Reception and influence

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was widely praised for its strong characters and visual spectacle. The film’s dimension-hopping storyline provided the filmmakers and animators with the opportunity to indulge a wide variety of creative fancies. The film’s animation style combined typical 3D computer animation techniques with designs inspired by traditional 2D animation. While other film studios, such as Pixar, had spent decades prioritizing increasing realism in their animation, Into the Spider-Verse was marked by wild stylized imagery. The film took a variety of visual cues from comic books, including the use of benday dots and line work, and was noted for how it played with frame rates to give an unusual jittery look to some character movements. The film also used differing styles for the characters themselves. Gwen Stacey’s universe looks more like paintings than like traditional comic-book art; Spider-Man Noir is rendered in black-and-white; Peni Parker is inspired by anime; and Spider-Ham evokes classic Looney Tunes animation.

Into the Spider-Verse was perhaps the first computer-animated film to bring these kinds of experiments to a wide audience, and its success made it possible for other filmmakers to push back against studio pressure to adhere to more-typical 3D animation styles. Into the Spider-Verse was followed by such films as The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021), Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), Nimona (2023), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023), which all attempted to push the envelope on what computer animation could look like.

Into the Spider-Verse was also celebrated for its thoughtful and nuanced portrayal of Miles Morales, the Marvel brand’s first Afro-Latino superhero. Afro-Latinidad and mixed-race experiences remain underrepresented in the media, and the vibrant and relatable character benefited from the specificity of the source material. For example, rather than portraying Miles’s mother, Rio Morales, as generically Latina, she is identified as a Puerto Rican woman from Brooklyn. Miles himself is bilingual, and the Spanish and Spanglish dialogue is presented without subtitles as a normal and even unremarkable part of his family and community. Unlike Peter Parker’s classic red and blue bodysuit, Miles Morales’s is a red and black Spider-Man costume that showcases his individuality and seems to reiterate his Blackness. He also wears a hoodie—likely a subtle nod to Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter movement—and iconic Air Jordan shoes. In an interview with NPR, one of the film’s directors, Peter Ramsey, spoke of the film’s cultural importance: “It means a lot for young Black and Latino kids to see themselves up on screen in these iconic, heroic, mythic stories. It’s a need being fulfilled.” Ramsey himself made history as the first African American to win, with his codirectors, an Academy Award in the animated feature category.