Odds are good you grew up with Spider-Man.  He was made when you were a kid, you watched his cartoon, slept on his sheets, and left the house wearing him on your butt.  This is about Miles Morales, who is not your Spider-Man, he’s the new Spider-Man.  To introduce us, they bring in our Peter Parker Spider-Man, but who has also aged with us, so now he’s a middle aged, divorced web-slinger with a bit of a gut.  To flesh out the story, we get Spider-Gwen, the young punk version of  the original Spider-Man’s girlfriend with Spidey powers, and just to flesh it all out we also have the 1930 black and white Spider-Man Noir, Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham, and Peni Parker, the anime Spider-Mech pilot.  With all of this, obviously there is something for everyone, or did you need some more?

Title: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”

Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman
Writers: Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman

Cast:

Shameik Moore as Miles Morales (voice)
Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker (voice)
Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy (voice)
Mahershala Ali as Uncle Aaron (voice)
Brian Tyree Henry as Jefferson Davis (voice)
Lily Tomlin as Aunt May (voice)
Luna Lauren Velez as Rio Morales (voice)
Zoë Kravitz as Mary Jane (voice)
John Mulaney as Spider-Ham (voice)
Kimiko Glenn as Peni Parker (voice)
Nicolas Cage as Spider-Man Noir (voice)
Kathryn Hahn as Doc Ock (voice)
Liev Schreiber as Wilson Fisk (voice)
Chris Pine as Peter Parker (voice)
Natalie Morales as Miss Calleros (voice)
Edwin H. Bravo as Brooklyn Visions Security Guard (voice)
Oscar Isaac as Interesting Person #1 (voice)
Greta Lee as Interesting Person #2 (voice)
Stan Lee as Stan (voice)

Premise:

Miles Morales becomes the Spider-Man of his reality and crosses paths with his counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat to all reality. (From IMDB.)

High Point:

This was an animated movie.  It felt more like a comic book come to life than a cartoon story.  The art style is not a typical cartoon, and makes use of so many different influence to blend things together.

Low Point:

My only low point is that because it is animated, I couldn’t get my wife interested.    Being animated means it is dismissed as a cartoon, even though I am pretty sure every Marvel movie we’ve seen are more computer generated animation than live action.

The Scores:

Originality: 6/6 They draw inspiration from the comics and movies, but nowhere in this movie does the standard 616 Peter Parker appear.  Each character is their own version, and since it is a story about those different universe characters meeting, we already understand they aren’t going to be what we expect from other sources.  Consequently, even though we know it’s the story of a boy bitten by a spider who get spider-based powers, we don’t really know the story.

Animation: 6/6 Mentioned above, so you know how impressive it was.  The movie gives you text boxes on the screen, and when we see the Spider-Ham universe, it’s a distinct animation style, and Peni’s anime universe is still different.

Acting: 5/6 The voice acting was well executed, but it had the feel of a pilot episode, in that a year or two into a story would have cohered a bit better.

Production: 6/6 It has been said that this is the best big screen Spider-Man movie yet.  This is an arguable point, but it isn’t a surprising assertion to make.

Story: 3/6 The story is entirely unlike the epic war where it draws its title, and is fairly basic after that.

Emotional Response: 5/6 The story may be basic, but the characters are engaging and that is its strength.  We don’t get much depth after the main characters, but you can tell there is more there to mine later.

Overall: 6/6 Very enjoyable, worth rewatching.

Easter Eggs: There are more eggs in this film than could be easily catalogued.  A video breakdown will be well received.

In total, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” receives 37/42.