Summary
The cinematic Multiverse is vast, never-ending, and filled with spiders. Our favourite webslinger is back with some groundbreaking animation, a killer soundtrack, and a whole lot of heart.
Ok, so let’s do this one more time.
His name is Spider-Man and he’s been in pop culture since the 1960s. He’s been a comic book character, animated, on live action television, in blockbusters, rebooted, crossed over, and traveler of the Multiverse on more than one occasion. Five years ago, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse landed and gave us one of the most startlingly original takes on both animation and hero stories in years. His name is Miles Morales, but he is far from being the only Spider-Man.
The thing is, the landscape has changed in the last couple of years. Multiverses are all the rage now. They are not just a central part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but of the DC Extended Universe as well. The live-action Spider-Men have teamed up. Then Everything Everywhere All At Once showed them all up with its Oscar-winning perfection.
So, this sequel comes with some big expectations. The film opens on a downbeat note, as Gwen (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) is shunned by her father after coming out as Spider-Woman. She is soon whisked into the Multiverse by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), a Spider-Man from a future world who leads a secret task force of Spider-People in fixing anomalies caused by the first film.
Back on his Earth, Miles (Shameik Moore) faces the familiar Spider-Man problem of balancing his personal and costumed lives. As his father (Brian Tyree Henry) is about to be promoted to police Captain, Miles is confronted with new villain The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who has the ability to travel to different dimensions. Miles is inevitably reunited with his old friends, but the experience is not what he’s expecting.
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE has a big story to tell. Going in and knowing that this is just the first part gives screenwriters Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham time to explore the edges of their Spider-Verse. While I don’t necessarily like the trend of deliberately halved films – the kind we’ve seen from The Hunger Games through Fast X – I also appreciate that they aren’t trying to cram all of this information into a single outing.
This is because the core of this series is still about Miles and Gwen. There are long stretches of the film that focus purely on relationships: the two leads, Miles and his parents, Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) and his new baby Mayday. At times, it feels like a much smaller and more intimate movie, certainly more character-driven than its predecessor. Indeed, new faces Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India (Karan Soni) and Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) are so well rounded that they could easily carry their own solo movies.
Of course, none of this stops directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson from staging some expansive action sequences. There’s a centrepiece moment where Miles is being chased by hundreds of Spider-People, and it’s exactly the kind of insanity that was missing from Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. You’ll need multiple viewings, or a pause button on home release, to catch all of the Easter eggs from the comics, animation, and even live action outings. (A favourite of mine was several winking references to the much-maligned Clone Saga of the 1990s comics).
The animation stylistically matches the original, but it has been upped in just about every way. Opening with abstract shapes set to Gwen’s drum beats, it feels like an indirect descendant of Disney’s Fantasia. Gwen’s world is literally painted in broader brushstrokes, while Spider-Punk frequently looks like a series of postmodernist paste-ups ripped out of a black and white newspaper. The way cloth moves on people is so naturalistic that some of the brief live action sequences look artificially constructed in comparison.
It’s almost unfair to judge SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE on its own merits. It throws a lot at us in a relatively small space, and leaves audiences on a deliberately constructed cliffhanger. You might even argue that it’s only half a film. Still, it’s hard to feel anything less than thrilled walking out of this one. Like the best comic books, we can’t wait for the next issue to come out.
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson | WRITERS: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham | CAST: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar Isaac | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 140 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 June 2023 (AUS), 2 June 2023 (USA)
