Cinema Dispatch: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K Thompson

The first Spider-Verse movie had a lot of things going for it before everyone realized what a masterpiece it was going to be. Spider-Man movies reliably make money, animated features are one of the more bankable box-office draws, and it had some pretty amazing trailers with a unique art style and some fun ideas to play with from the comics that we haven’t seen on screen before. Still, I’m not sure anyone expected it to be the overwhelming success that it was, both critically and commercially, and the prospect of a sequel was certainly exciting as the studio would be throwing everything they could at it. Still, the idea left me at least a little bit anxious. Capturing lightning in a bottle is a rare feat in its own right and even the best filmmakers have struggled to pull it off a second time, though oddly enough none of the original directors returned to direct this one. The trailers for this certainly didn’t help matters as I made clear in a Twitter thread earlier this year and I wasn’t thrilled to find out that it would be a Part One instead of a singular movie, so going into this one was both a delight and a moment of dread with expectations being higher than for almost any movie I’ve seen. Does this manage to exceed all expectations yet again and deliver another Oscar-caliber animated feature, or do even the best creatives fall victim to the Subpar-Sequel curse? Let’s find out!!

After saving the multi-verse and becoming the new Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has started to learn the hard way what it means to try and live as both a superhero and a teenager with only enough time in the day to perhaps make one of them work. This struggle has not escaped the notice of his parents (Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Vélez) who are getting fed up with his absentmindedness which only puts more pressure on the budding superhero. It comes as a relief when Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) pops up into his universe despite the pathways between them getting closed at the conclusion of the last film, and it turns out that some Spider-People, led by Miguel O’Hara and Jess Drew (Oscar Isaac and Issa Rae) are able to cross dimensions with super-science wrist watches and Gwen had joined up with them not too long ago. Unfortunately, the reunion is cut short as one of Miles’s less competent villains, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), has somehow upgraded to an inter-dimensional threat and Gwen is forced to pursue him with Miles tagging along and experiencing the multi-verse for himself. Will Gwen, Miles, and a host of other fun Spider-People catch The Spot and stop his absurd schemes? How did Gwen end up with this group of Interdimensional Spider-Cops, and what secrets are they keeping from Miles? Is it the ultimate swing technique or perhaps the secret to a chafe-free Spider Suit?

Let me make this very clear upfront. This is an absolutely fantastic movie and will most likely be one of the best films of the year. However, it inevitably needs to stand next to its predecessor which it falls short of, and no matter how shiny that silver medal may be, you’ll always wonder what it would have been to have won the gold. I would say that Sequelitis is the root cause of the movie’s problems as everything about it is bigger without necessarily being better. Bigger action scenes, bigger scope, bigger ideas; all of which have more merit than not, but the movie feels more spread out and requires a lot more world-building to justify its narrative. Still, the movie does make time for the smaller moments and this is where the movie shines; perhaps even brighter than the original. The thematic weight of the movie is not in the action set pieces or the absurdly high stakes of the plot but in the lives and struggles of Miles and Gwen. The Sam Raimi Spider-Man starts with Peter telling us that his story is not for the faint of heart, and the best Spider-Man stories organically weave that in between the super heroics which this film succeeds at in its strongest scenes. Both Miles and Gwen are going through similar struggles with their families and the movie is at its best when we see them navigate these issues; both on their own and when they come together to bond over their shared problems. Gwen in particular has a heartbreaking story that is beautifully realized with a unique art style for her world, and I’d argue that this is more her movie than Miles; not because Miles is uninteresting or underserved, but as a deliberate choice to save his most powerful moments for the next half of this two-parter. If there’s anything that makes this movie as close to a masterpiece as the first one was, it’s definitely the characters as they’ve grown, changed, and are fun to watch as they fight the bad guys while also fighting their own demons. Once again, the animation is fantastic but this is an aspect of the movie where things start to slide. I rewatched the first one recently and the only thing that didn’t quite hold up for me was some of the animation which at times got a little overwhelming with various techniques and quick cuts interweaving at a breakneck pace. Here, that ends up being the rule rather than the exception as the set pieces have only gotten bigger and more elaborate. It’s still fun to look at with even more wildly different styles clashing together, but the action starts to blur with the excessive artistry on screen and I found myself appreciating the smaller details in the quiet moments more than the Spider antics

If I were to stop here, I’d say that the slight drawback in the overwhelming animation is compensated by the fantastic character moments to make this movie just as good as the original, but sadly we do need to address the elephant in the room, no doubt wearing a Spider mask, and that’s the Citadel of Spiders. Again, there is more good than bad here with all of the new characters being fun and interesting to watch; particularly Spider-Punk who steals the movie with every scene he’s in. The first one opened the door to many other Spiders being out there and this one has a lot of fun with the concept; especially if you catch all the little references to the comic’s absurdly long history. Where it starts to stick in my craw, however, is the plot itself which simply overcomplicates things in what has otherwise been a very personal movie. It’s the kind of plot that twists itself into knots to justify a frankly bleak and fatalistic status quo that I suppose ultimately works with the themes of the movie, but only in the most Comic-Book-Event way possible. I didn’t get everything right in my Twitter predictions, but I got a lot more of it right than I was hoping to which made it feel all the more predicable in ways that the first movie was not. I won’t get into it too much so we can avoid spoilers, but Spider-Man’s story works best when there’s no one pulling the strings on his life. We can follow a lot of the same steps and even acknowledge that we’re doing it like in the first one, but as soon as it feels like something is forcing it, whether it’s fate, a higher power, or a not-so-higher power who has a lot of tech, it ceases to have any meaning for me and ends up feeling like pointless cruelty to maintain a so-called status quo. The twists and turns in the movie are not arbitrary; the film sets up Miles’s journey rather explicitly and follows through on it with these exposition-heavy scenes and the machinations of the plot, but I just couldn’t stop asking why those machinations were being done that way in the first place. I had a similar problem with No Way Home that also found a way to turn the Spider-Man story into a plot mechanic and while I’ll grant that this one seems to be heading toward a rejection of the idea, we won’t know for sure until the next one and even then that rejection is still crafted around the status quo being a real thing.

Many sequels try to be bigger and better than the first one and very few of those manage to succeed at overshadowing the original. That is sadly the case here, but only by comparing it to the original does it fall even a little bit short of the highest possible praise as it is still one of the best movies we’ve gotten this year and is head and shoulders above what the rest of the Superhero genre has put out lately. It’s absolutely worth seeing if you have any interest in another Spider-Man movie, but for those who loved the original, I would suggest a minor tempering of expectations. It’s a little overstuffed which drags things down in places and it’s a little bit frustrating that we have to wait another year to find out if it all comes together in a satisfying way, but it does stand on its own as another great Spider-Verse movie and is sure to scratch the itch that we were all left with after the first one.