By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 7 seconds ago
While the studio achieved success with the Venom trilogy of movies, Sony has generally run the Spider-Man brand into the ground with awful movies based on his supporting characters, including Morbius, Kraven the Hunter, and Madame Web. However, the studio managed to knock it out of the park with a 2018 film that most fans agree is the best Spider-Man movie ever made. That film is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), and you can now stream this colorful cartoon classic for yourself on Netflix.
The premise of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is that gifted student Miles Morales gets bitten by a spider that gives him similar abilities to those of his favorite hero, Spider-Man. After he witnesses his idol’s death, he decides to help with Spidey’s final mission: stopping Kingpin from using a collider that threatens all of space and time. Once different spider heroes begin showing up from different realities, though, they must all work together to take down the kingpin of crime before he manages to destroy the entire multiverse.
Your Celebrity Sense Is Tingling
There’s a surprising amount of big names providing the voices for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, including Lily Tomlin (best known for Nashville) as Aunt May. Jake Johnson (best known for New Girl) plays a schlubby Spider-Man from another universe while Zoë Kravitz (best known for The Batman) plays Mary Jane. Her heroic Peter Parker, incidentally, is played by Chris Pine (best known for Star Trek).
Additionally, Hailee Steinfeld (best known for Sinners) plays Spider-Gwen, and Nicolas Cage (best known for Face/Off) plays the gravelly-voiced Spider-Man Noir. Comedian John Mulaney voices Spider-Ham, while Liev Schreiber (best known for Spotlight) plays the conniving Kingpin. Holding the entire cast together is Shameik Moore (best known outside these films for Samaritan), who transforms Miles Morales into a hilariously relatable everyman who is suddenly responsible for saving all of reality from a grieving madman.
A Thwippy Hit With Audiences And Critics
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out and delivered a Kingpin-sized hit right when Sony needed one the most. The film earned $394 million against a budget of only $90 million, making this animated adventure an unqualified success at the box office. It was followed by a highly-acclaimed sequel (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), and fans are eagerly awaiting the third film (Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse) that will bring this ambitious trilogy to a satisfying conclusion.
When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out, movie reviewers decided that Miles Morales certainly knew how to thwip it good. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 97 percent, with critics praising the movie for its powerful blend of emotional storytelling and cutting-edge animation. They also commended the film for balancing heart, humor, and pulse-pounding action, making Into the Spider-Verse the rare story that delivers literally everything you could want from a superhero movie.
An Award-Winning Superhero Masterpiece
This critical adoration meant it was no surprise when Into the Spider-Verse became an awards darling, earning every single Annie Award (the Annies focus on American animation) it was nominated for, including Best Animated Feature. Additionally, the film took home a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and even an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. The latter achievement was particularly impressive because this was the first time the award had been won by a non-Disney, non-Pixar film in seven years!
When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was first announced, I had a bad feeling about it: I loved Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy, but after the two Amazing Spider-Man movies, I wasn’t sure if Sony could do these characters justice. Making matters worse was that modern Spider-Man comics writing (including the comics that introduced the Spider-Verse in the first place) was largely hit-or-miss, so I feared we might get a bad adaptation of an already mediocre story. Finally, I thought the animation in the first trailer looked weird and that watching the movie might give me a very literal headache.
Sony Finally Takes A Leap
However, I saw the film in theaters on opening night, and I’ve never been quite so happy to be wrong. The animation is almost hypnotically beautiful, and the film’s top-notch art design helped bring the unique comic book aesthetic to life on the big screen. Plus, the story is both entertaining and powerful, giving us a multiversal tale that is more epic in scope and more moving in execution than anything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ever done.
By every possible metric, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the best Spider-Man movie ever made, one that honors decades of comic history while helping a newer incarnation of the title character take center stage. A good Spidey story always focuses on relationships as much as action, and Miles Morales’ interactions with his family are often powerful enough to make you cry. The same can be said of his interactions with Peter B. Parker, who goes from being a slovenly mentor to someone who realizes how much he has to learn from his pupil.
It’s got killer animation, breathtaking fights, a perfect cast, and a completely unforgettable story. Whether you’re an old-school comics fan or you just enjoy a good blockbuster, you owe it to yourself to stream Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse on Netflix today. Afterward, you can join the rest of us in crossing fingers, toes, and webshooters that Beyond the Spider-Verse brings the house down when it brings this trilogy to a close in 2027.
