Starring Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Jake Johnson, Liev Schreiber, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez. Lily Tomlin

Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Sony Pictures, out December 12

When young Miles Morales gets bitten by a radioactive spider, he gains the same powers as feted superhero Spider-Man. Juggling life as a schoolkid with his newfound powers is hard enough, but when he finds himself in the fight of his life with various other Spider-Heroes from across the multiverse, can he step up to control his powers and become the hero he was meant to be, before his reality and every other is destroyed?

It’s genuinely difficult to know where to begin in reviewing this movie for two reasons. First, it really is a story that the viewer should discover for themselves, and it feels like there are so many potential spoilers in anything that can be said. The second is that it’s difficult to avoid hyperbole when talking about something this profoundly good on every level.

Things kick off with what one might expect from a standard Spidey movie, with Peter Parker monologuing over some stock footage of him in the suit, swinging around rescuing folks and stopping bad things happen. That illusion of this being a stock Spidey movie lasts for about the first twenty seconds or so, and then things get… different.

Taking cues from a certain other red-suited comic book character, this time out Spidey is a little more self-aware, a little more self-referential and a lot more willing to have a laugh at his own expense. And that’s just the Peter Parker opening.

Because of course the real central protagonist of this movie is young Miles Morales, and his journey to becoming his own Spider-Man. Miles is a gifted young kid who doesn’t want to be in the ‘Vision’ Institute for kids that his smarts have earned him. He just wants to go to his old school again, hang around with his cool uncle and spread his tags all around the city in paint and sticker form. He has a slightly strained relationship with his loving but Spidey-hating policeman father, and like any movie you’ve seen about a gifted teenager from humble origins, he’s a fish out of water in every respect.

His own acquisition of powers and how he struggles to control them is in itself a refreshing change – unlike Maguire or Garfield he doesn’t simply have a few mishaps and then grow into his powers naturally. He gets stuck to surfaces and has no idea how to get down, he struggles to use a web launcher when he gets one and his own unique powers are completely beyond him to control. The crux of the movie therefore hangs around not just showing off a bunch of different Spidey-characters swinging around the screen, but in Miles learning – slowly – how to use his powers and become the hero he’s destined to be.

And that learning is assisted mainly by Peter Parker, only a slightly older, more jaded and down on his luck Parker than we are used to seeing. Sporting a gut and a shabby looking stubble, this is a Peter who has become somewhat inured to the amazing nature of his abilities, and we see the trademark snark of the character crossing the line from upbeat confidence to a sort of resigned cynicism that actually works surprisingly well. This Peter has been kicked in the guts by life in a lot of ways, but the movie cleverly avoids the narrative becoming all about him, instead focusing in an organic way on Morales’ own effect on him as he himself learns all this stuff for the first time. It’s a fantastic mentor/pupil relationship, and it always strikes just the right balance between laughs and emotional beats as the movie progresses.

That’s a balance that the whole movie manages surprisingly well. The nearest direct comparison I can think of is Deadpool 2 in terms of juggling laugh-out-loud moments with genuinely affecting emotional beats, but this movie actually handles it even better (and doesn’t have to swear or use blood and gore for punctuation). There are plenty of moments when it seems scarcely credible that Sony studios and Marvel signed off on this project, considering how different in tone and substance the humour can be, but there are equally as many moments with all the heart and warmth of the very best bits of the MCU as well. There is, of course a Stan Lee cameo, and it may well be the most perfect one of these ever committed to the screen, capturing not only the gravitas but also the cheeky, knowing quality that Lee always brought to his promotion of his own ‘character’ over recent decades.

And the major difference here is that our villain isn’t trying to blow up the world for the heck of it or gain enormous personal wealth, for which they have no use. Their motivations are recognisable and believable, even sympathetic. Though the villain is a monster – and the movie leaves us in absolutely no doubt on that score, both in terms of physical appearance and their actions – they’re a human monster, with human emotions and a relatable goal, however horrific their methods of getting to it may be. Honestly, this stands amongst the absolute greatest big screen Marvel supervillain appearances, and certainly it beats every other Spider-Man movie villain by a long way.

There are elements which, on paper, absolutely should not work. Spider-Ham? Slipping in comic-panel style visuals and thought bubbles and the like (remember how badly that went in Ang Lee’s Hulk?), a storyline that crams in half a dozen Spider-Heroes and not a few villains? It’s the sort of thing that common sense and experience tells you absolutely does everything wrong, and yet somehow it doesn’t just pull it off – it soars, creating a movie which is a genuine joy to watch, and which will demand to be watched time and again just to drink in every delicious detail that they’ve got in there. Even the stuff you really think will be weak isn’t – Spider-Ham is delightfully whacky but somehow believable, and Spider-Noir, a 30s PI version of Spidey played with obvious glee by Nicolas Cage, is way more fun than you might expect.

If it has any flaw (and it’s a minor one) the visual style is so kinetic and vibrant that it can take a few minutes (especially on an IMAX screen) for your eyes to dial in to the thing properly so you don’t feel you’re missing anything, but I’m happy to blame that on tired old eyeballs rather than the film itself. But this is the real deal. Trailers for it were (in this reviewer’s opinion) hugely misleading, and you really have to see it to believe it. What appeared from marketing to be simply a side project actually comes out as the best Spider-Man movie I’ve ever seen, by a substantial margin, and is definitely among the very best examples of the genre ever committed to the big screen. And as any true Marvel fan knows – stay until the end of the credits. It’s totally worth it.

Verdict: Simply amazing. Funny, self-aware, engaging, emotional, touching and wildly entertaining from the first moment to the last. This is how you make the perfect Spider-Man movie, and I can’t wait to see more. 10/10]

Greg D. Smith