The success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has produced the reaction that greets every innovation in Hollywood, which is the immediate hunt for the property that can be run through the same machine. That instinct is not inherently wrong. The film cracked open something real about what animation can do and about how a familiar character can be made new by surrounding him with variations on himself. The question worth asking is which characters actually suit that treatment, and the answer that keeps surfacing, that DC should do it with Batman, gets the lesson of Into the Spider-Verse almost exactly backward.
Start with why the film worked, because the reasons are specific to Spider-Man rather than general to a franchise movie, let alone specifically anyone at DC. The emotional engine of Into the Spider-Verse is Miles Morales coming into his own, learning to accept who he is and step into a mantle that was not originally his. That arc resonated because it was a first: a Miles-centered story that had never been told on screen, carrying a coming-of-age weight that a more familiar hero could not have supplied. A Batman equivalent does not have that on offer. The character has been adapted so many times, in so many registers, that there is no version of "Bruce Wayne comes into his own" left to discover. The freshness that powered the original is unavailable from the start.
Then there is the cast of variations, which is where the argument for Batman collapses most completely. Into the Spider-Verse worked because its ensemble was genuinely diverse in tone and perspective. Miles, Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and Peni Parker are not six versions of the same personality. They are a teenager finding his footing, a burned-out mentor, a peer operating in her own register, a cartoon animal, a hardboiled noir detective, and an anime-inflected pilot, and the distance between them is the point. The film mines its comedy and its heart from how differently these characters see the same job.
Assemble a Batman lineup and you get the opposite. Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson as Batman, Batwoman, Red Hood, a Flashpoint Thomas Wayne: the names change but the temperament does not. They are all cut from the same brooding cloth, operating with the same fundamental method and the same emotional weather. Even the attempt to build the roster exposes the problem. Batgirl is too tied to Batman already, the daughter of Commissioner Gordon who interacts with him constantly, so Kate Kane becomes the necessary substitute to get any real distance. Red Hood is a vigilante rather than a true parallel, closer to an antihero than another Batman. Stretch the concept to street-level Gotham and you can fill the seats, but you cannot generate the tonal variety that made the original sing. The characters are too similar to play off one another, which is the exact quality Into the Spider-Verse depended on.
The deeper problem is thematic, and it is the one that should end the conversation. The moral of Into the Spider-Verse is that anyone can wear the mask. People with powers are more likely to act, but the ability to stand up and make a difference is not restricted to them, and the film's whole architecture is built to deliver that message. Batman's mythology argues the reverse. Every time someone else takes up the cowl, whether it is Dick Grayson stepping in or the premise of Batman Beyond, the story exists to demonstrate that the substitution is temporary, that only Bruce Wayne is truly Batman, that the mantle is being kept warm until the real one returns or his cover is maintained while he is presumed dead. There is always a reason the replacement is provisional. The point of those stories is not that anyone can be Batman. The point is that no one else quite can. That is the direct opposite of the idea a DC Spider-Verse would need at its center.
None of this means the concept is closed to DC. It means DC should look past its most obvious asset. The Green Lantern Corps is practically built for this: Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Jessica Cruz, Guy Gardner, and a galaxy of others, human and otherwise, all wielding the same power in different ways. Superman carries his own deep bench in Superman, Supergirl, Power Girl, and Steel, each with a distinct relationship to the same legacy. The Flash may be the best fit of all, because the Speed Force is a literal illustration of the film's own thesis. Barry Allen, Wally West, Jay Garrick, Impulse, Jesse Quick: the power passes from person to person, which is precisely the "it could be anyone" idea that made Miles's story land. A Flash version of this movie would not have to strain to reach its moral. The premise would already be the moral.
The reflexive answer will always be Batman, because everyone knows Batman, and that recognition feels like a safe bet. But leaning on him indefinitely is not what makes people want to watch DC movies, and there is a point of exhaustion coming where another Batman project simply feels like more of the same. Consider the comparison the Spider-Verse itself invites. Since 2000, there have been roughly six live-action Peter Parker films with two additional appearances in live-action crossovers, with more on the way, which means that by the middle of this decade there will be nearly as many Spider-Man movies as there have been years in the century. Into the Spider-Verse cut through that saturation precisely by being a different kind of movie about a different kind of hero. Handing the same opportunity to Batman would repeat the saturation rather than escape it.
If there is a version of this that works with multiple Batmen, it belongs in a comic event or a direct-to-video animated release, where the audience arrives already fluent in the mythology and willing to sit with its internal logic. As a major theatrical swing meant to do what Into the Spider-Verse did, it is the wrong call. DC has plenty of characters who have not been done to death, plenty of corners of its universe where nothing new has been tried in years, and at least three franchises whose very structure already carries the message the format requires. The whole appeal of a Spider-Verse movie is that it tells a new kind of story. Reaching for Batman to tell it would be choosing the one character least able to.
