Ranking: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

I went with my son and daughter earlier this week to see the new animated Marvel movie: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. After seeing it, I realized it was the first comic book movie I'd ever seen. You see, all the movies I've seen up until now have been taking the characters and idea from the comics and making movies out of them, but were not actually comic book movies. Spider-Verse does something more difficult than those other movies--it translates the actual comic book experience onto the big screen. It's one of the best comic movies I've ever seen.

Okay, so about five years ago, Marvel realized they had a number of different Spider-Men floating around in different media. There was the original comic book Peter Parker, of course, but they also had Miles Morales, the teen-aged African-American Spider-Man from their Ultimate universe line of comics. They had the Spider-Ham (bitten by a radioactive pig and given the proportional powers of swine) from the kids-oriented Star Line of comics in the 1980s. And they had various cartoon versions of the characters from over the decades. So Marvel decided to an event where all these Spider-Men came together in one story, along with a bunch of new ones they invented for the occasion-- the female Spider-Gwen, the 1930s Spider-Man Noir, the anime Sp//dr robot, Spider Punk, and so on. This story was called Edge of Spider-Verse and was very popular with readers.

It's that idea of a Spider-Verse that the movie runs with, although the plot is original. When the established Spider-Man Peter Parker dies in inter-dimensional vortex in an early scene, novice Spider-Man Miles Morales has to take his place. Only, he keeps running into strange other Spider-Folks around his hometown of Brooklyn. I won't say too much about what happens, although the main villains are the Kingpin, Tombstone, Prowler (who hasn't been a villain in the comics for a long time, but never mind), and a secret villain I won't reveal as it's a crucial plot point. The main thing is just seeing the interaction of all these Spider-Men.

The animation of the movie is highly urban, as befits Morale's home in Brooklyn, and extremely well-done, with the agility of the various Spider-Folks especially emphasized. The visuals are high quality to the point of awe-inspiring, the Spider-interactions are hilarious, and the plot if fast-paced and intelligent. I rate this movie as Excellent and would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of comics.

I have previously ranked Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers movies, the Batman movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Logan, Man of Steel, the Man-Thing, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, the other DC movies, the Spider-Man movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Superman movies, Thor: Ragnarok, Wonder Woman, and the X-Men movies.


As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid


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Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Crumb
American Splendor
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Man of Steel (2013)
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)