Over the last few years, hardly a week has passed without at least one superhero movie in theaters. Despite the competition, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” manages to distinguish itself from other adaptations. The film brings several different iterations of the character together, as they work to stop the reality-bending scheme responsible for the crossover.

“Spider-Verse” manages to juggle a sizable cast of similar characters and an unconventional premise with strong writing and a powerfully emotional core. It also fully explores the potential of its comic book source material while also showing how much an animated movie is capable of.

While the film has no shortage of spider-people, it largely restricts the focus to one.

Most of “Spider-Verse” follows Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a teenager who finds the gift and burden of being Spider-Man thrust upon him. Miles is similar enough to Peter Parker to carry the title, while having enough crucial differences to justify his introduction.

With “his” Spider-Man left unable to guide him, he is forced to rely on the alternate reality versions that soon show up.
The Spider-Man (Jake Johnson) that ends up reluctantly mentoring Miles is not ideal.

The struggle of balancing a superhero lifestyle with a more mundane one has left him exhausted and cynical. Despite his flaws, he is still recognizable as the Spider-Man most people grew up with. Johnson and Moore’s performances create a complex, magnetic friendship between their respective characters. Peter’s interactions with the more optimistic but less experienced Miles give the world shattering events a strong foundation to work with.

Also prominent is Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), who is closer to Miles in age but a little more comfortable with her abilities and identity. She adds to the character dynamics the film relies so much on by forming a middle ground between Peter and Miles.
While not exhausted like the former, she shares enough of his pessimism to set her apart from the latter.

The three other spider-people are far more exaggerated and unfortunately less developed. They get plenty of amusing moments, particularly the literal cartoon Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) and the hard boiled Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage). The anime inspired, giant robot piloting Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) does not work as well. But thankfully, that questionable concept is executed decently enough.

These additional spider-folk lack the nuance of the three main heroes and don’t benefit from the satisfying character arcs they receive. However, they do not take anything away from “Into the Spider-Verse,” but affirm the multiverse concept off of which the film is built.

The storytelling is further bolstered by its stunning visuals.

The film takes full advantage of animation as a medium. It presents a variety of visual styles and techniques, smoothing them into one coherent whole. This is only matched by the animation’s believability, as “Spider-Verse” manages to accurately capture human figures when it wants to while still maintaining its comic book appearance.

The film does try to imitate certain aspects of comic book visuals, namely panel layouts, speech bubbles and sound effects.

At times, this move works, but “Spider-Verse’s” visuals largely stand on their own. Even the simplest of moments is presented elaborately and the action scenes rival anything seen in its live action peers. “Spider-Verse” is easily one of the most visually impressive movies to come out this decade.

By Matthew Dillon