Spider-Man has a long history of being an animated cartoon starting from 1967. He reappeared in a 1981 cartoon series called Spider-Man and at the same in another series called Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Spidey would then have a long running series in the 1990s called Spider-Man followed by a short lived series called Spider-Man: The New Animated Series in 2003 which followed the continuity of the 2002 live action film.
In 2008 The Spectacular Spider-Man aired which was replaced with Ultimate Spider-Man in 2012. The current animated series, just called Spider-Man started 2017 and is still on the air. Phew that’s a lot of Spider-Man.
Which leads to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. This is a fantastic movie. It’s amazingly animated, the story is full of heart and humour and it’s the best Spider-Man movie.
This is a movie created by people who love Spider-Man, the comics, the movies, the cartoons. All of it. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is a super smart teenage boy who idolizes Spider-Man (Chris Pine), loves draw graffiti and tries to live up to the high expectations of his parents, mom Rio Morales (Luna Lauren Velez) a nurse and dad Jefferson Davis (Brian Tyree Henry), a police officer who hates Spider-Man. Miles won a scholarship into an exclusive boarding school which he hates.
One night he sneaks out to visit his Uncle Aaron, the black sheep of the family. Aaron takes Miles down into an abandoned subway station so Miles can paint his graffiti. While down there Miles gets bitten by a mysterious spider. The next day Miles starts to notice some changes in his body. He’s suddenly a little taller and he’s starting to stick to things – like the new girl’s hair.
Panicking Miles goes to his uncle who isn’t home. He goes to the subway station where it’s revealed that the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) has built a particle accelerator to open pathways into other dimensions. Spider-Man shows up to save the day and runs into Miles who realizes that Miles is like him. Spidey stops the accelerator but is severely injured and well there are some spoilers that I won’t reveal but if you are familiar at all with Miles origin story in the comics – it’s pretty similar.
The accelerator opened a doorway and brought in five other Spider-Men/Women/pigs from other realities. Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), an older, kind of out of shape Spider-Man befriends Miles and reluctantly agrees to teach Miles how to be Spider-Man while they try to work out a way to stop the Kingpin and get him along with the other Spideys home.
The animation is excellent and tries to incorporate a look that makes it look kind of like the old comic books with the old dot colour kind of look. The various Spidey’s are animated to look like different art styles. Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage) is from a 1940s black and white universe, Spider-Ham is from a very cartoony universe. Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and her spider suit SP//dr are from an anime universe. The Kingpin is animated in artist Bill Sienkiewicz’s style. Other Spider-Man artists style’s were used too throughout the film.
This is a fun, amazing brilliant movie. I loved it.
