I decided that I wanted to watch this early on based on the strength of its trailer, something that pretty much never happens. Its take on the character of Miles Morales was pitch perfect and the quality of its animation is something rarely seen outside of Japanese productions. The fact that it also features a plethora of Spider-related characters never before seen on screen is just an extra bonus.

In a world in which Peter Parker has been active as Spider-Man for over a decade, teenager Miles Morales gain similar superpowers after being bitten by a spider while hanging out with his uncle Aaron. Already stressed by his parents moving him to an elite school, he struggles with his new abilities. He returns to where he was bitten only to find Spider-Man fighting against minions of Wilson Fisk who has build a giant device to cross the dimensions under the city. He warns that the device will destroy the city unless stopped but is killed before he is able to do so. While he mourns the dead hero with the rest of the city, Miles comes across another Peter Parker, an older, portlier one. They soon realize that the device has pulled him in from another dimension but he can only survive here for a limited period of time. They break into the building conducting the inter-dimensional research and find that it is defended by a large number of hired supervillains. However they also find that the older Peter Parker is not the only Spider-Man who have crossed dimensions.

As I said, the art here is absolutely amazing. Rather than the usual plasticky style of most computer animation, this ones goes for a matte cell-shaded look. It also adopts comic book art conventions, throwing up speech bubbles, boxes and sound effects in text form with abandon. The art style also switches according to the character in focus, which means an anime style for Peni Parker and her robotic spider-suit, and a cartoon style for Peter Porker the Spider-Ham. The fights look a little too chaotic for my tastes but the web-slinging scenes are incredible, a perfect combination of dynamic movement, perspective and energy. The opportunity to see all these alternate Spider characters rendered in such high quality art is reason enough to catch this in the cinemas.

The plot of gathering together a group of heroes to fight a threat is nothing special but the simplicity belies some deft writing. The characterization of Miles Morales as a modern teenager is pitch perfect. In fact, his story of being a young man of mixed black and Latino heritage being somewhat ashamed of being book smart is something we need more of and I was a little disappointed that we never go back to it after the superheroics take over. Also great is the older and more jaded Peter Parker as the fact that the film gets all of the relationships right. My wife did note that the seemingly fourth wall breaking comic books are a bit odd as they can’t possibly exis in-universe and personally I was disappointed in the villains. They keep throwing out lots of familiar Spider-Man villains seemingly just in order to be able to show them in action using this art style.. But barring the Kingpin and the Prowler, there’s no effort to give them any characterization or differentiation at all.

In the end, this is still just a superhero film but it is an excellent one and there’s no shame in that. I think this film is a huge surprise hit and I would be glad to see more one-off projects like this. While there are plenty of other animated superhero films they are usually made for video projects with much lower production standards. Finally I am especially happy that this is a Spider-verse film without going into the edgy Venom / Carnage nonsense.