The Pitch: All right, let’s do this for… what will not be the last time. Kid gets bitten by radioactive spider, gets spider powers, and (as we saw in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) discovers that he’s not the only one with these special gifts. At the end of the previous film, teenager Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) had to say goodbye to his new Spider-friends as they returned to their respective alternate universes, until Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) appeared in a portal to tease the next chapter of Miles’ story… And whoo boy, what a story it is.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the second in a planned trilogy, expands its focus beyond Miles’ world to a whole new array of universes, each host to its own Spider-person. It also properly introduces Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), a Spider-Man first seen in the Into post-credits sequence who oversees an “elite squad” of Spider-People from various dimensions. Miguel’s goal is to keep the multiverse intact and free of anomalies. Unfortunately, when Miles stumbles into the mission Gwen came to his universe to complete, he proves to be a big enough anomaly to cause a whole lot of problems not just for his fellow Spider-kin, but the multiverse itself…
Like a Streak of Light, He Arrives Just in Time: At a certain point, while watching Across the Spider-Verse, it’s best to stop trying to track every single reference that the film is flinging at you, and simply surrender to the experience. That’s because for any level of fan, there’s a literally overwhelming amount of jokes, asides, nods, Easter eggs, and beyond packed into this film, which plays with literally every possible form of animation (not to mention a few touches of unexpected live-action) to create a stunning spectacle that also still manages to tell a smart, character-driven story about fate, friendship, and the cost of being a hero.
One aspect of the first Spider-Verse film that made it so fun and engaging was how it showed the seams of the animation process, putting both art and sound design elements front and center (like the elephant-based sound effects which accompany The Prowler’s attacks). This remains a key part of the aesthetic, though directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson have evolved upon the first film’s look to blow past every benchmark it established.
The attention to detail found in each individual frame is remarkable, as are the visual distinctions given to each individual universe: Sometimes the differences found are subtle, and sometimes they’re more prominent, such as Spider-Gwen’s world, rendered in rich watercolors that take on impressionistic overtones at certain points.
Yet overall there’s a fluidity to the visual approach, with numerous experimental touches that well exceed any expectations you might have for an animated movie released by a major studio: In case you forgot, Into the Spider-Verse won the Oscar for Best Animated Film, and the producers clearly cashed that shiny gold man in for a blank check to go hog-wild here (no offense meant to Peter Porker). There are choices here that prove reminiscent of the iconic Looney Tunes cartoon “Duck Amuck” — if “Duck Amuck” was over two hours long, and Chuck Jones had chugged four dozen Four Lokos while directing it.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony)
