“What if it’s Miles Morales?” We’ve seen Spider-Man on screen before. In fact, we’ve seen him in three different live-action iterations over the last 22 years. And yet somehow, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse feels startlingly fresh, a major shock to the system.  We had never experienced anything like it in the world of superhero films, live-action or otherwise. Not only is the animation innovative, vibrant, and unique, but for the first time ever, we followed Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino Spider-Man that injected new life into a genre that was starting to feel rote. To understand how this miracle of a film came to be, we interviewed Academy Award winner Phil Lord, who co-wrote the Spider-Verse movies and introduced us to cinema’s newest, and best, Spider-Man.