Spider-Man: Into the Spider-VerseSave

We open on Miles Morales, a 13-year-old Afro-Latino kid from Brooklyn struggling to fit in at his new private school. His father is a police officer; his uncle Aaron lives a less-respectable life. Miles sneaks out to spend time with Aaron, who takes him to an abandoned subway tunnel to practice graffiti. While there, Miles is bitten by a glowing radioactive spider. He doesn't think much of it. The next day at school, his hands won't stop sticking to surfaces. He climbs the ceiling involuntarily.

Miles returns to the abandoned tunnel hoping to find more answers. Instead he stumbles into a high-tech facility deep beneath Brooklyn — and discovers Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin) running a particle-collider experiment to open portals to alternate universes. Spider-Man — the prime-universe Peter Parker, blonde, athletic, comic-book-perfect — is there fighting Fisk, trying to stop the collider before it tears spacetime apart. Peter notices Miles. He gives him a USB drive containing the kill-switch code. 'Use this. Don't trust anyone.' Then Fisk's enforcer, Prowler — a masked figure in purple armor — and Green Goblin appear. Peter is killed by Fisk in front of Miles.

Miles flees to his uncle Aaron's apartment in a panic. Aaron offers comfort, listens to him, advises him to be honest about who he is. As Miles is leaving, his eye lands on a familiar purple mask on Aaron's bedroom dresser: Aaron is the Prowler. The man who just helped kill Spider-Man. Miles runs. He returns home and discovers his powers acting up worse — invisibility now, on top of wall-crawling. He hides under his bed during a parental visit, then sneaks out to attend Peter Parker's funeral. There he meets, in succession, four more Spider-Men dragged into his universe by the collider explosion.

Peter B. Parker — middle-aged, divorced, in sweatpants, has not slept in years — becomes Miles's reluctant mentor. Spider-Gwen (Gwen Stacy from a parallel universe where she got bitten instead of Peter), Spider-Man Noir (1930s black-and-white), Peni Parker (manga-style anime girl with a robotic spider partner), and Spider-Ham (a cartoon pig who is somehow Spider-Man) all confirm the same crisis: they have to get back to their home universes or they will dissolve. The collider is the only way. They have to destroy it after using it.

Miles is not ready. He cannot leap. He doesn't know how to control his powers. His five fellow Spider-Men have to leave him behind for the final assault on Fisk's collider. Peter B. Parker, who Miles has come to love as a kind of fragile-older-brother figure, gives Miles his Spider-Man costume and his blessing: 'When will I know I'm ready?' Miles asks. Peter answers: 'You won't. It's a leap of faith.' Miles, on the highest building in his neighborhood, takes the leap. He falls. He sticks to the wall mid-fall. He's Spider-Man.

The final battle is across Kingpin's collider — an extra-dimensional rave-light spectacle with the six Spider-People fighting Fisk, Doc Octopus (here a female scientist named Olivia Octavius), and a corrupted Green Goblin. Miles ultimately destroys the collider himself, sends the other Spider-People back to their universes, and faces Aaron / Prowler one last time. Aaron, recognizing his nephew under the mask, refuses to kill him. Fisk shoots Aaron dead in front of Miles instead. Miles defeats Fisk in single combat — and the credits roll on a city under a new Spider-Man.

Into the Spider-Verse grossed $384 million globally — modest for a Spider-Man film, but transformative for animated cinema. It launched the Spider-Verse trilogy. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller continued as producers across Across the Spider-Verse (2023) and the upcoming Beyond the Spider-Verse (2027). The film also established Miles Morales as a viable lead character with his own merchandising line. Marvel announced a live-action Miles Morales film for 2027.