'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse': The Best Spidey Film, Plus Spider-Gwen

The world is ready for Miles Morales, but he’s not the only webhead making their theatrical debut. In the new trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which arrives in theaters this Christmas, “Spider-Gwen” makes the leap onto the big screen, joining Miles and an older Peter Parker in an epic team-up.

On Wednesday, Sony released the new trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an animated film from directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. Unlike other Spider-Man movies, Into the Spider-Verse follows fan-favorite Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Latino kid from Brooklyn who succeeds Peter Parker as Spider-Man in his alternate universe. And in the film, Miles (voiced by Shameik Moore) meets an older Peter Parker (Jake Johnson from New Girl) from the “main” Marvel universe, as well as Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), who fights crime in her own universe as Spider-Woman.

It’s also really funny and visually fresh, ensuring it stands out from the SIX (!) other Spider-Man movies in existence. While all Spidey movies are funny, the tone is lovingly self-deprecating without being outright parody. (This is also expected, as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of The Lego Movie are producers.) The movie also bears a striking visual aesthetic to the comic book medium. There hasn’t been onscreen comic graphics like this since Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and that movie is approaching its tenth anniversary.

Miles Morales is a relatively new character in the comic books, having made his debut in Ultimate Spider-Man in 2011. But Spider-Gwen is even newer. In 2014, Spider-Gwen debuted as one of hundreds of characters in Dan Slott’s Spider-Verse crossover, where Spider-People across the multiverse banded together against a common enemy. Breaking out from Spider-Verse, readers followed Gwen in her own series Spider-Gwen by Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez.

Gwen Stacy, who was played by Emma Stone in the Andrew Garfield movies, is best known as the first girlfriend of Peter Parker who died at the hands of Green Goblin — or Spidey’s own web, to be literal — in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 in 1971. But in Spider-Verse, Slott, Latour, and Rodriguez introduced another universe where Gwen Stacy was bit by the radioactive spider instead of Peter, imbuing her with superpowers and allowing her to begin a crimefighting career as “Spider-Woman.”

The press release for Into the Spider-Verse also confirms the film will have Liev Schrieber — who played Sabretooth in 2009’s maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine — play Hell’s Kitchen’s resident crime lord, Kingpin, as well as Oscar nominee and Luke Cage alum Mahershala Ali as Miles’ uncle, Aaron. Funny enough, Donald Glover played Uncle Aaron in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Donald himself was the direct inspiration for the creation of Miles Morales. Funny what a tangled web this film weaves.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hits theaters on December 14.