Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023

[8.8/10] The cliche for any sequel is “more”. Take what the audience liked from the first installment and just keep piling it on. On the surface, you could mistake Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as suffering from the same pathology.

Its predecessor, Into the Spider-Verse had seven spider-people. Across the Spider-Verse has a hundred. Into the Spider-Verse gave us a glimpse of a handful of alternate realities. Across the Spider-Verse spends meaningful time in scads of them. Into the Spider-Verse clocked in at less than two hours. Across the Spider-Verse spills twenty minutes over that benchmark and demands another outing to finish its story. To the casual observer, this surfeit of cinematic real estate and the spider-beings who occupy it could be mistaken for second-installment bloat.

Except that Across the Spider-Verse is not mere excess. It is, insead, redolent with added ambition. Its predecessor stunned with a distinctive, cel-shaded art style, occasionally pierced by denizens with more anime or Looney Tunes-inspired aesthetics. Across the Spider-Verse elevates the visual brilliance to jaw-dropping, superlative levels.

Miles Morales’ cel-shaded digs return. But so too does Spider-Gwen’s watercolor world. The futuristic metropolis and impossible geometry of Spider-Man 2099’s headquarters. The parchment-styled weathering of a da Vinci-inspired Vulture. The bustling, South Asian-inspired environs of Spider-Man India. The Zine Queen cut out look of Spider-Punk. The transfixing and occasionally disturbing visage of The Spot as his form grows more and more frazzled and medium-defying the more interdimensional energy he absorbs. 2-D. 3-D. Stop Motion. Live action. Digital designs. Ink and paint creations. Comic panels. Old polygons. New pixels. The new Spider-Verse entry is a triumph of medium-blending glory where the milieu is part of the text and subtext and themes at the heart of the piece.

The same goes for the action. Into the Spider-Verse featured all manner of memorable sequences. Avatar: The Last Airbender veteran Joaquim Dos Santos is among the film’s co-directors, and it’s hard not to feel his influence as this follow-up feature ups the ante. Miles has a comical but brilliant “Now that’s thinking with portals” skirmish with The Spot. The omnibus all-comers spidey-fight is the pinnacle of arachnid spectacle it should be. The kinetic and frenetic energy, rife with medium-mixing action, remains a staple of the movie’s cinematic grammar.

But it’s just as winsome in quieter moments. The way the light brightens amid a hug between Gwen and her father. The way she and Miles share a peculiar perspective as they gaze upon the skyline of the city together. The look of pain in her and Peter B. Parker’s eyes when Miles learns the truth. There is an expressiveness, a commitment to using every last inch of every last frame to make you marvel and gasp and feel the meaning behind each moment through imagery alone that would be worth the price of admission even if Across had nothing else to offer.

Thankfully, it also has a plot that is remarkably ambitious and untroubled by traditional forms. Despite its multiversal bent, Into the Spider-Verse is a remarkably tight and focused film. That’s to its credit, taking a wild-eyed story, anchoring it in both the universal and the specific, and making it feel deceptively simple.

As a follow-up, Across the Spider-Verse is epic, multi-faceted, even messy. There are scores of moving parts. Two reintroductions and brief “While you were gone” recaps to orient the audience. All of space-time is at stake once again, but the solution is not as straightforward as stopping the big bad machine. It’s to resew the fabric of the universe as tears emerge in the wake of the last solution. The villain is an overlooked consequence of the first movie’s adventures swollen to eldritch horror proportions; and the villain is one of your own, sacrificing the noble principles that your kind are founded upon in the name of preserving the status quo; and the villain is...well...you, denied the good fortune and cosmic protection you inadvertently stole. Oh yeah, and it’s only part one.

Despite the scope, the movie never feels like too much or anything less than self-assured. There’s a lot going on here, narratively, personally, and thematically. But it all feels built to fit together, designed to build toward a greater whole, while embracing a complexity and ambition that few films are willing to entrust general audiences with.

Part of what keeps that kaleidoscopic plotting accessible and comprehensible is that it’s always grounded in the emotions and psychology of the characters. This is, on the surface, a story about myriad reflections of the Web-Head crashing down on one another. But it is, at heart, about two adolescents struggling with their relationships with their parents as they try to “find their tribe” and their place in the world as budding adults.

The great claim-to-fame of the original Spider-Man comics was that Peter Parker was a hero who fought colorful bad guys on rooftops, but who also had real problems like family and rent, just like you. Across the Spider-Verse carries on that spirit. Amid the reality-shifting dramatics, the film is spurred by Gwen suffering when her loving father learns her true identity and recoils. And it’s spurred by Miles wanting to grow up and grow away from his loving but enveloping parents, so he can venture off and find a community that he thinks will understand him and help him to follow his dreams.

The circumstances are extreme. But the conversations between parents and children are real. There’s an almost shocking verisimilitude -- borne by writing, performance, and animation in concert -- to the back and forths between Gwen and Captain Stacy, and between Miles, Jeff, and Rio. The tone of being reluctant to accept the love of someone you worry won’t fully accept you. The frustration of failing to live up to your parents’ standards while still trying to define your own. That definitively Spider-Man quality of feeling as though you’re trying so hard and still letting everybody down. Peer down into the bottom of this film, and you will find truth, gushing out of each frame as much as the aesthetic glory.

You can feel it in the way Gwen and Miles relate to one another, two kids on unique journeys who feel like the world doesn’t understand them. You can feel it in the words of parents like Jeff, Rio, Captain Stacy, and a gloriously returning Peter B. Parker, who think the world of these kids but worry about their future and how to keep them on the right path. And you can feel it in that universal, youthful sense of longing for a new adventure worthy of the new you, and in the equal and opposite chastening that can come when you realize it’s not always less complicated or as warm as the comforts of home.

This is an epic film, full of big ideas. But it never floats away or gets lost amid its own dizzying scale. Because it keeps those real feelings at the center of everything it sets out to achieve.

Those ideas give the movie ballast though. The premise of the film is that Gwen has joined an interdimensional “Spider Society” whose mission is to repair the anomalies caused by Kingpin’s collider in the first film. The twist is that Miles cannot join her there, because he is, in many ways, the original anomaly. His spider bite came from an arachnid meant for another universe. He wasn’t meant to be Spider-Man.

The reveal works on so many levels. There is great power in making the practical and emotional obstacle of the piece a statement to a mixed race child that they don’t belong. He receives nothing but rejection from a community he thought would accept him, because of what he is rather than who he is. In a film with people of color prominently in front of and behind the “camera”, that comes with a particular resonance.

To the same end, there is a meta commentary on the nature of Miles as a character and his place in the broader Spider-Man media franchise. Considering the real life racist backlash to the fancasting of Donald Glover as Spidey (which gets a nod in the form of his cameo as MCU Prowler), it’s easy to read those sentiments about him as being an aberration or a mistake in the light of fans who rejected Miles because he wasn’t Peter, because he was Black and Latino, because he didn’t fit all of the standard tropes that had been cranked out for Spidey across hundreds of projects.

I trust the rebuke of these things will come in time, but textualizing the backlash Miles’ champions have had to fight in real life, with the same sentiment Miles must combat in a fictional one, dovetails with the sharp meta commentary that has come with these films to date.

And last, but not least, it’s worth noting that at the core of the dispute between Miles, who wants to chart his own path apart from both mom and dad and the Spider Society, and Miguel O’Hara, its ostensible leader who wants to repair the foundations of the multiverse, is characterized as a dispute over “preserving canon.”

There’s a striking notion baked into that framing. The film posits that certain events that have recurred across time and mediums for Spider-Man -- things like a mentor perishing, the death of a noble captain, and other iconic Web-Head moments -- are fixed points in any Spider-Man story. They must occur, lest the bounds of reality be shattered and everything be lost in their wake.

In a less complex film, that could be taken as the bare oppression of conformity (one sure to be dismissed reflexively by Hubie Brown, the film’s infectiously entertaining anti-authority punk Web-Head). More to the point, it dovetails with themes of established gatekeepers telling a mixed race child that the status quo must be maintained, and comics purists rejecting alternate takes on the traditional (mostly white) vision of Spider-Man.

But the purveyors of these ideas are not facile straw men. They are, for one thing, Miles’ friends. The thing that spurs Miles to resist is the sense that this adherence to canon means his soon-to-be-promoted-to-captain father must die. Peter B. Parker makes the case, one made in countless Spider-Man works before, that loss is difficult, but that it helps spur Spider-people to be who they need to be, to accept the responsibility that comes with the great power and be a force for good in the world.

As much as he is the film’s antagonist, Miguel O’Hara is a poster child for someone who tried to disrupt that idea, and lost everything in the process. He lost his family, and pulled a Rick and Morty (whose influence is keenly felt here) by hopping into another universe where his alt-reality equivalent died to take his place. The rush of images we see suggest the universe rejected him like a human body rejecting a new organ, and the whole world, including the daughter he wanted so desperately to reunite with, was lost. He has walked the path of putting your own happiness and desires above “the way things must be”, and he’s seen the consequence.

More than that, the shocking tease at the end of the film is a clever depositing of Miles into the universe whose spider he inadvertently stole. He sees the consequences of a world without a Spider-Man. He sees the hardship and misery, for his family and for his community, that his own self-actualization is accidentally built on. These are not easy things to reject or ignore, but rather strong counterbalances to our natural sympathies for Miles.

And still, despite that, there remains great sympathy for the defiers of canon. Much remains to be explored and vindicated in the forthcoming third film in the series. But signs point to validating our heroes even if they stray from the usual or accepted arachnid touchpoints. If Into the Spider-Verse seemed designed to prove that anyone could be legitimate as Spider-Man so long as they take in his ideals and refuse to give up; the two follow-ups seem poised to suggest that you can, in fact, chart your own path away from what has always been, and be no less valid, no less real, no less worthy.

The other main poles of the story exemplify that. The delightful-turned-horrifying Spot is a “villain of the week” determined to flip the script and become a true nemesis and fearsome destroyer of worlds. Spider-Gwen is a version of a character who is, in the vaunted canon, meant to be one of those tragic losses that wounds the Web-Head but ultimately sharpens his resolve; and she is, instead, the hero who lost him and decides to keep going. And Miles is an accident, someone who became Spider-Man by happenstance and deviation rather than by inertia or fate, who nonetheless validates his place in the silky firmament of arachnid tales with each choice he takes to vindicate the good they fight for, and the good in himself, whether or not it fits with what came before.

To encompass all of this in one-hundred and forty minutes is remarkable. To try to accomplish it in double that time still seems like a lot. But as kinsmen like Everything Everywhere All at Once (which receives a small shout-out here) demonstrates, there is great transcendence to be had in weaving together text and metatext and character and commentary and stunning visual acumen into a greater whole.

Across the Spider-Verse is certainly that too. It is a worthy successor to the 2018 film, maintaining the same comic air, remixing energy, and emotional depth. But it also raises the bar, letting its palette, its ideas, its characters expand and grow more complex with the added mandate and leeway that comes with such a success. The creative team behind the film have arrived with something that does not simply go for more. It goes achingly deeper, jaw-droppingly wider, and poignantly further than anything we’ve seen before.

So I'm now supposed to accept that the universes' Spidermen now not only have their own dimension (which apparently happened to be empty and available to build things in creative mode in), but also that they are all simultaneously there (sooo, no crime anywhere then?) and are all now supposedly multiversian versions of timecops, while general Spiderman isn't even very knowledgeable about multiverses? And absolutely no other superhero (especially the multiverse travelling ones) is there?

This goes directly against all Spiderman (and Marvel) canon and makes absolutely no sense at all other than driving the story of this horrible set of movies...

Also, SpiderGwen knows it ends bad between them in all multiverses (the whole infinite of them?) while technically by logic it would make it inevitably a 50/50 chance, since there are always infinitely more universes. And are all those other Gwens also shifting multiverse for their Spidey's? Then where are they?

People watching this are so overhyped by the drawing style (which has been done countless times before, tbh) and the fact it addresses the woke subject of a dark-skinned Spiderman (which also technically in a multiverse there shouldn't be just 1 of, but also countless many) and infinitely speaking there should be close-almost identical Myles'es that do this exact same thing from other universes too, so they would meet and create chaotic loops on themselves while hindering eachother at a level of madness...

If the multiverse exists of infinite slightly-different-from-the-previous realities, then when one does cross between them, there would be a rather large set of the same guy stepping to their next one if no destination is specified, or they'd all bump into eachother in the destination-multiverse (probably entering at the same spot at the same time) if the destination is meaningfully set as a problem-verse at that time (which also is kinda impossible since it would happen on soooo many other universes too if you follow multiverse rules).

Using the multiverse is really cool if you hold to the actual rules of it, and although I get it's complicated and needs a clear logic mind, if it's too complicated for the storywriter or they lack said logic, maybe don't make a shameful completely illogical trilogy about it?
If you don't follow (or know) the basic multiversial ruleset, it takes away any and all intrigue into it and you should've just used (and adapted to using) planets or something alike instead of the multiverse. :man_shrugging:

Like, wtf...

Worst and most illogical Spiderman shit ever!

This movie is an amazing movie with lots of detail and heart put into every part. I'm going to get the first, undeniable thing out of the way. The animation, art, details, voice acting, and similar things are all 10/10. They are fucking brilliant. Many unique art styles; when Gwen hugged her dad and her world became much brighter, it made me smile. I liked a few new characters like Miguel and Hobie, though I felt they were not explored much. We have a brief insight into Miguel, so I personally don't think he is an amazing character or anything. The two stars of the show here are Gwen and Miles. I really liked the intro with Gwen, and I liked her as a character in this film. However, there were points where I was pissed at her and her decisions, but at the end of the movie, I come to see her ways. Miles was incredible in this film, and the best character. I really liked the entire idea of him challenging fate and fighting for his own life; "I'm gonna be myself". This writing of having the fucking multiverse against him and an entire group of spidermen against him was awesome. It was him versus everybody, and he managed to escape. He could have disappeared during that entire chase scene, but whatever. I really loved the part on the rocket against Miguel where he was the original anomaly. He was never supposed to be bitten. It was very interesting, but it shows how he got to the point where he is. I love how his entire thing of being himself, which I am guessing is a part of Miles and his character since I played the PS5 game, is connected to the multiverse and anomaly stuff. This Miles was never even supposed to be a Spiderman. He was supposed to be a regular guy, or maybe even turned into the Prowler. Anyway, I am basically saying Miles and his role as a person who challenges fate was my favorite part of the movie honestly. Eventually, he gets sent to the wrong dimension, which is a cool concept. At the end of the movie, it is implied (I think) that Gwen realized the canon can be broken. Her dad quit being a captain, so I am pretty sure Miguel's entire thing is wrong. How was the universe Miles set in also not sestroyed. I know they say that is why the other Spiderman died or whatever, but I still think Miguel's assumption is wrong. Anyway, the biggest flaw for the movie in my opinion was the ending. I didn't feel satisfied or hyped, I felt disappointed. At least the movie won't come out in 5 years. Before I say one last thing, I also want to mention how this actually felt like a sequel since a lot of things like Spot and Kingpin's interactions affected the future. It actually felt like there were consequences. Speaking of Spot, it was cool how he became more powerful overtime. Finally, I wanted to point out why my enjoyability score was low (for this movie at least). That is because, well, I didn't enjoy watching the movie as much as I did when compared to other movies. I really wanted to like the movie more in parts, but I don't know why I did not. This could be because there were annoying kids and a fucking baby at my screening. The kids were yelling and making noises at some parts. Maybe a rewatch would change that, but for now, I'm leaving it.

At the Time of Review:
Low 9/10

Story and Characters: 9/10
Presentation: 10/10
Enjoyability: 8/10

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

My god, what a masterpiece. Really sad it ended on a cliffhanger (although we should’ve expected it to be honest) but even if this is only the first part it was a phenomenal experience.

I love how Miles is even more developed as a character and distinguished from the rest of the characters, how this movie explored what it means to be Spider-Man, and whether it’s morally right to sacrifice one person for many others. What also resonated with me is how the movie explored finding acceptance and how parents struggle when their kids reach adulthood. Gwen’s father and Miles’ parents were amazing in this movie. But the main highlight was definitely Miles and Miguel’s beliefs clashing and Miles taking the courage to become his own person. Together with the amazing visuals and the score I was just sitting in the theater thinking “Yeah, this is cinema”.

On a technical level, it was of course pretty amazing, although I have to say it’s also kinda taxing to watch because they spam all kinds of colors so much and especially in action the camera is going absolutely nuts. The good thing is that it didn’t detract from my enjoyment too much and it captures the quirkiness of Spider-Man in a way that live-action movies never manage but once the movie was done my head was about to explode lol.

I actually wished it didn't end. it was beautiful.

Obviously, the animation was the best part. It was a character by itself. It was dynamic, influential, and adaptive. It told so much for each character. The music adds to that too, the small motifs that call to each spiderman. And not to mention the amount of spiderpeople too, some comic references that I absolutely was happy to see on the screen, including 2099. The characters we do see each have a very strong and dedicated story arc, even ones who come in very quickly get their personal intro that gives us enough to tell them apart from the basic Peter Parker. What I really enjoyed was that this film does not start as a Miles Morales film, it starts with Gwen and then goes to Miles and then it becomes Miguel's story until finally at the climax, Miles grabs the story back into his hands and says it too. There is no "leap of faith" moment here, and it does try to copy it but with less effect, instead there's the moment where Miles says no to all the Spider-man stereotypes and says he'll do it his own way. That's hype.

The only thing I can say bad about this is how long it is, it feels like the movie is half way over before things start rolling, but that's because this is a two-parter. And it's a two-parter for a good reason, I don't think this is just a cash grab to have another movie. It deserves another part, not enough screen time to tell this story. Actually I also think the dialogue audio in the beginning of the movie was hard to hear. As the movie progressed, I don't think this remained an issue.

This movie is fan service but even for new Spiderman fans, this movie is hype. It's not all hype tho, there were a lot of parts of the film that I could relate to as a normal person (isn't that the whole point of spiderman?). This is what made the animation so good, it wasn't just the different styles for different characters, it was the different colors for different emotions and moments. It was the blanking out or inversion of colors to show different opinions. It was the changing of colors in the same scene to represent discomfort or tension. Hyper-styled, this movie was hyper-styled animation.

Sony Animation has hit a home run again, this is better than the first one and it's completely on purpose. The theater was a riot too. Love to see some representation of my home country as well representation of many minority lifestyles and races too.

Even after a day I can't help but think back to the conflicts of each main spiderman. The canon events, the breaking of them, and the forcing of the story onto someone who didn't ask for any of this more than the normal spiderman doesn't. Miles Morales is Spider-man.

edit: I don't like to be political on social media but I saw a lot of people say Gwen is trans. If so, that's great! But I think both her and Miles were allegories for queer acceptance for audience members to relate to (I felt that Miles was enacting the gay coming out process). The characters themselves may not be queer themselves but we can relate to their coming out process and conversation irl as fellow queer members of society. I think it was very well done, respectful, and purposeful. So I won't disagree with anyone who says Gwen is trans, why should I? I simply think her portrayal was a vessel for us to relate to. Gwen is coming out as a Spiderperson, but the audience can see her coming out as a Spiderperson and/or as trans, and that's great for representation, we stan a trans queen :crown:. Multiple watches of the scene also have made me realize that her specific speech sequence is bathed in trans colors, and when isolated from the context of the scene, it can be understood as a coming out speech too. Well done. So tbh it doesn't matter what I think, it matters what trans people think and what they took away from that speech. If she was trans for them, then yes Gwen is trans. For everyone else, regardless of what you think, that scene and Gwen are a trans allegory and it cannot be denied just because you think she's cis, even if she is cis.