Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is settling into life as Spider-Man for Earth 1610. But he’s also lonely, struggling to live up to his family’s seemingly impossible expectations and appears to have gained a nemesis…

There’s a strong case for this being the best superhero movie made to date. It’s certainly the most important for the form since Captain Marvel. This is a story about the tyranny of stories and how canonical expectation is a voluntary prison. It’s a Spider-Man story for the A03 generation and beyond and that’s in no way a criticism. Instead, this is a fascinating bookend to Amazing Spider-Man 2’s maddening final 20 minutes. The concept of a ‘canon event’, of things that must happen, is what defines that act. Spider-Man has to fight Green Goblin. Gwen Stacy has to die.

Miles Morales got that memo, he just refused to believe it.

The trauma that defines some Spider-Man doesn’t define him, or his friends. Shameik Moore and Hailee Steinfeld are superb here, as the two Spider-people who find themselves looking at the tyranny they’ve been told to aspire to and refusing to accept it. Heroes aren’t made by trauma, or canon. To quote Kamala Khan’s Imam from Ms Marvel, ‘Good is not a thing you are, it’s a thing you do.’

That idea, that you don’t have to hurt, is incredibly powerful and resonates with every slavish devotion to canon. Steinfeld’s furious, feisty, guilt-ridden Gwen and Moore’s gentle, increasingly harried Miles are just as much Spider people as Oscar Isaac’s trauma riddled Miguel O’Hara. They see why he is like he is, and he’s enormously sympathetic. But he’s wrong, and that makes him an incredibly interesting antagonist. Spider-Man, arguably, is the most hopeful modern super-hero besides Superman. Miles embodies hope and Miguel can’t bring himself to believe it. The Spot is the same, played with gleeful comedic absent-mindedness by Jason Schwartzmann and slowly morphing into something alien and terrifying. If Miles’ journey is a refutation of canon, Spot’s is an embracing of it. Building a life for himself from the structure he barely has, and breaking other people’s stories to fit his better.

This is all explored in a stultifyingly beautiful movie that throws Miles into other worlds and expands the cast enormously. Isaac is great as is Karan Soni as Pavtir Prabhakar and Amanda Stenberg as Spider-Byte is a surprising and welcome new addition too. A hacker running a Spider avatar she has a pivotal moment with Miles which tells you exactly how much impact he’s having on his contemporaries. Daniel Kaluuya too is remarkable as Hobie Brown aka Spider-Punk. Animated in a janky, pseudo-newsprint cut up style, Hobie’s flamboyant and anarchistic and knows exactly what’s up. Of all the characters we see gathered, he’s the one I’m most excited to see again next year.

And all of this, every beautiful frame and massive idea, is ultimately the story of one boy doing his best. Miles is pushed like never before and the final fifteen minutes here are one of those rare treats where you know the story’s ending but will it not to.

And of course, it doesn’t. Beyond the Spider-Verse is currently scheduled for release next year. Additional time was given to it after animators on this movie went public about terrible working conditions that led over 100 artists to leave the project. It breaks my heart that anyone artist would be treated like that and I’m hopeful that the final movie will be made under much more civilised conditions. The values on screen are vital, and the team behind it deserve to be treated with the same respect as the characters they worked on, struggling and ultimately succeeding in making their world a better place.

Verdict: This is arguably the best Spider-Man movie made to date and a strong contender for the Best superhero movie too. Relentless inventive, determinedly kind and at war with expectation, it promises a future where, at last, everyone really can wear the mask. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart