Ani-May-Tion: Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse (Dir Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers & Justin K. Thompson, 2h20m, 2023)
How does one follow up a film that changed its medium? It's a question that's been posed to directors over the history of cinema, and films like The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens and The Godfather Part II have answered it. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018) is one of those films; I've already written, at some length(!) about my love for the first Spiderverse film, it being one of the few films I've ever revisited in a second review, and I've charted its impact on animation since. Coming five years
later, its sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, expands its world into multi-verse hopping, and from six Spider-Men (Spider-Folks?) a web of multitudes emerge as both allies and adversaries
to Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) as he battles the dimension-hopping The Spot (Jason Schwartzman).
It's thus bold that Spider-Verse spends nearly all of its opening twenty minutes with Gwen Stacey/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), caught, like all Spider-Individuals between the "Great Responsibility" of the role, and attempts at normal life, complicated by her father being on the very case that's hunting her alter-ego down. Whilst it's familiar to the majority of comic book readers, something that the latter two acts of the film riff on to great effect, as Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham's script deconstructs the Spider-Man creation myth, all the more effective for how visually different Gwen's world is from the familiar visuals of the first film's Brooklyn.
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| Welcome to My World: Every universe in Spider-Verse has its own visual style and sound |
Here, the visuals of the early Jason Latour/Robbi Rodriguez comic book run on Spider-Gwen (which of course I immediately bought), lush wet on wet watercolours, render the world in a radically different sense to Miles' world; made even more striking by the way they shift
across scenes and act as a reflection of Gwen's mood. We see this several times over the film, these delineations of universe by not only visual but soundtrack, from the drum-heavy score in Gwen's universe to the future
of 2099 being ultra-slick and the score by Daniel Pemberton dominated by Mark Mothersbaugh-esque synths, to the horror of a world without Spider-Man portrayed via heavy neons and electronic score. All of these add to the unique
feel of the parallel world(s) Gwen and Miles find themselves in.
Confronted by a Da Vinci-esque version of the Vulture which causes chaos across the Guggenheim Museum - and is just the first of a number of eye-popping visual feasts,
as one character rendered to look like it's made of parchment interacts with an entirely different world - so Gwen is unexpectedly aided, and quickly drafted, after she is forced to reveal herself, by Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man
2099 (Oscar Isaac)'s Spider-Society. Here she returns to Miles' Brooklyn, where he is also dealing with the struggles of balancing normality and his school life, being Spider-Man, and an ominous new threat
in the form of the Spot, whose ability to hop across Spider-Verses creates both some smartly referential comic moments, appearing in both Lego world and the setting for the Venom movies as he tests his powers, and a viable threat to Miles and those he loves.
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| A Visual Feast: there's too many spectacular moments to count from Spider-Verse- it's a masterclass in visuals and animation |
From here, a reunion with Gwen sees Miles catapulted into the middle of the multi-verse, and from
here the film becomes as much a metatextual consideration of what it means to be a Spider-Individual, as it is a dizzying web of references and cameo appearances. It's one of those films that begs re-viewing,
the dense homages to the 60+ years of Spider-Man lore that range from blink and you'll miss it incarnations of the webhead himself/herself/themselves that include a cat, a T Rex, a cowboy and their horse, Spiders-Man (look
him up, kids!) and a dune buggy, not to mention a whistle-stop tour through the rogue's gallery that may contain the best series of jokes in the film. All of this has a purpose, though, Miguel and his many Spider-Helpers
keeping canon ticking over, to which Miles and his opposition to the "canon event" of losing a loved one are a cataclysmic threat.
Across the Spider-Verse is not merely a meta-textual look at what makes, and continues to make Spider-Man the most popular of all super-heroes, but a tour-de-force of animation. One only has to look at the way, for example, Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) -one of hundreds of characters-
is animated, both visually, in a jagged, ragged bordered, often black and white or neon-coloured style that evokes classic punk albums and fanzines, but technically, on lower frame rates than other members of the cast, all of which makes
him stand out in a crowd, all of which narratively mark him out as a rebel even before he speaks. Hobie is just one of hundreds of characters, across half a dozen worlds.
It's almost unfair how good this film is, what a banquet for animation aficionados it is; but it is more than this, a celebration of what makes a quintessential part of modern
American comic books tick.
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| A celebration of all things Spider-Man; Across the Spider-Verse is a perfect sequel to the first film |
I regarded Into the Spider-Verse as a pitch-perfect homage to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the men who made Peter Parker our friendly neighbour Spider-Man. Across the Spider-Verse doubles down on it, but goes further, a celebration of everyone who has ever penned a Spider-Man story. I've been reading a lot of comic books in the three and a bit years since Spider-Verse came out, and I keep coming back to Spider-Man because, for all his powers, Peter Parker, and the hundreds of characters that have followed
him in becoming Spider-People, is the little guy, the every-man, the hometown hero. Few films have captured what it's like to be him like Into the Spider-Verse, and few films have pushed the envelope of the medium of animation like it.
Across the Spider-Verse only continues that stratospheric trajectory narratively, artistically and technically, ahead of practically the entire medium of
animation; it is a perfect sequel to continue our adventures across the Spider-Verse
Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse is available via DVD and BluRay from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and on streaming on Amazon Prime
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