At their center is Miles Morales (voiced with heart and smarts by “Dope” star Shameik Moore), an ordinary Brooklyn teenager who undergoes an extraordinary transformation when he gets bitten by a radioactive spider. The streets and brownstones, cabs and subways of his daily life have a detailed, tactile realism about them, but also the heightened aesthetic of a comic book come to life, complete with panels and dialogue bubbles. It’s simply gorgeous.
As was the case with his Queens counterpart, Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), the newfound powers Miles discovers are simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. These characters, and the various others we meet in the Spider-Verse, introduce themselves in cheeky fashion, going through the familiar steps of their own respective spider bites in playful, knowing ways. The high-energy repetition of this well-worn origin story, in all its wild permutations, is a consistent source of laughs.
Whereas Miles is young, eager and full of promise, the version of Peter Parker he eventually encounters is middle-aged, jaded and paunchy. It’s an inspired new angle into this iconic superhero, and Johnson finds just the right combination of sarcasm and sadness in his reluctant mentor figure.
But wait, there’s more—so much more. Because Miles and Peter aren’t the only Spider-men out there. When megalomaniacal crime lord Wilson Fisk (Liev Schreiber) builds a super collider that tears a hole in the time-space continuum—or something—various Spider-beings from other dimensions come tumbling out. They include the elegant and acrobatic Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), who poses as a student at Miles’ school; Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Noir, a black-and-white, hard-boiled detective; the anime-inspired Penni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), who fights crime with the help of her friendly robot; and the aforementioned Peter Porker, a.k.a. Spider-Ham (a perfectly cast John Mulaney), who steals his every scene.
Previously, we’d already met another more traditional Spider-Man within Miles’ timeline, voiced by Chris Pine. And among the other characters we’re familiar with, we see Peter’s longtime love, Mary Jane (Zoe Kravitz); his reliable Aunt May (Lily Tomlin); and legendary nemeses including Doc Ock (Kathryn Hahn, in a great bit of gender-bending casting). The always-excellent Brian Tyree Henry and Mahershala Ali respectively portray Miles’ father and uncle: two very different figures who have had an enormous influence on the intelligent, resourceful young man Miles has become. Luna Lauren Velez voices his warmly supportive mom, Rio.
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