For 57 years Spider-Man has taken many forms ever since his original release on August 1962. Written and Edited by Stan Lee, the Spider-Man franchise has been a wide success all across the globe. On December 14, 2018, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took the title of the first animated Spider-Man feature film. The film follows a teen named Miles Morales who struggles to fit in after being put into an elite boarding school. He copes by pursuing his passion of graffiti art with the help of his uncle, Aaron Davis. One day while he is painting in an old abandoned subway station he is bitten by a radioactive spider and as a result, his whole world begins to change.

The film has a unique animation style like no other, and movie producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller claim that they wanted the film to feel like the viewer walked into a comic book. By August 2018 the animation crew grew to 142 animators, which is Sony Animation’s largest crew working on one movie ever. All of their hard work can easily be recognized in the movie from the comic book style speech and thought bubbles that appear every now and then, to the dotted Ben Day process which accents the backgrounds. The Ben Day process is a dotted shading technique that was used in comic books back in the 1950s.

After the movie was confirmed back in November of 2014 the team spent almost four years animating the movie. The animation process was completed on October 2018. After all their work they are finally reaping the fruits of their labor: as of January 14 of 2019 they have made a profit of 212 million dollars.

According to the biggest film rating website, Rotten Tomatoes, both the audience and the film critics loved this movie. The critics gave it a 97 percent and the audience gave it a 94 percent. Out of 14 different movie award nominations, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won 11 of them. More film award ceremonies will take place over the next few months and Spider-Verse still has a chance to win 15 more awards. At the 76th Golden Globe Awards, which is an award ceremony that praises the accomplishments and achievements of movies and tv series, Spider-Verse won Best Animated Feature Film for the year of 2018. The reigning champion of that award has almost always been Disney ever since the award was created. Out of the 13 years that the award has been given out, Disney was awarded it 10 times. Before Spider-Verse, Disney had claimed that award for three years in a row with films: Inside Out, Zootopia, and Coco. This was the first time Sony Animations has claimed the award.

This is not the last time we will see the new Spider-Verse that Sony has spent years developing. It was confirmed that a sequel is already in the works which will continue the story of Miles Morales. Along with a sequel, the studio is also looking into spin-off ideas. One idea that has surfaced is a Spider-Woman spin-off which would include three different generations of women with Spider powers. After the critical success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the possibilities of where they could take the world are endless. Remember: anybody can wear the mask.