Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

In my more cynical moments, I wonder if I watch entirely too many mediocre-to-bad movies in an attempt to keep up with all of the new releases that come out in a given year. The more I watch, the less I seem capable of being genuinely impressed by anything, of being truly moved or even completely absorbed by what I'm seeing on the screen. It feels like there are no surprises, nothing new being said, nothing noticeable about the execution. That goes double (or even triple) for superhero movies, a genre that has left me colder and colder over time, even though I continue to watch them all like an idiot.

I can usually get out of this headspace by reminding myself that there are still plenty of wonderful and thought-provoking movies being released all of the time; it's just that, for me anyway, those kinds of movies are generally not mainstream Hollywood movies or IP-driven entertainment.

And then every once in a while, a minor miracle.

Here I was in a packed theater watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a big-budget sequel (!) of an animated superhero movie (!!), finding myself unable to stop grinning or giggling like a child, shedding tears and getting chills. If the first Spider-Verse movie is one of the best superhero movies of all time, the sequel is just as good, if not better. It's a non-stop, jam-packed, sensory overload of a movie with characters that are easy to care about and animation that pushes beyond anything we've ever seen before. It may seem like everything being written already about this movie is hyperbole, but I'm here to tell you otherwise: this is the real deal.

The story picks up one year after the first movie, as Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) returns to her home universe and goes through the regular Spider-routine of being a crimefighting teenager while trying to balance her own life and protect her identity from her cop father. Things fall apart as they are wont to do for Spideys of all universes, and Gwen is enlisted to an interdimensional group of Spidermen dedicated to capturing anomalies who end up in the wrong universes and sending them home again.

One of the biggest anomalies, of course, is Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), who got his powers from a spider that didn't belong in Miles' universe to begin with, causing all kinds of multiversal havoc. Miles runs afoul of Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), the leader of Spider-verse police who tries to tell Miles that every Spider-Man's life is defined by a set of canonical pre-ordained rules that must come to pass no matter what (kind of like how the comic book Spider-Man must always be reset in order to be able to tell the same stories over and over again, forever).

The multiverse is becoming familiar territory in these kinds of stories, and while the plot hits a lot of those same beats, there are enough creative wrinkles (such as the aforementioned meta commentary on superhero stories) to keep things interesting. The story is primarily concerned with fighting back against determinism or the expected direction of your life, and forging ahead with your own story while leaving behind your worries about what might have been. It's powerful and relatable material for everyone, even if it's dressed up in superhero trappings.

There's a plot by the comical and then unexpectedly terrifying villain named The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who develops the power to hop between universes while harboring a serious grudge against Miles. Miles must deal with the Spider-verse police and The Spot while bouncing around between universes and trying to figure out who is friends really are. There are some truly powerful moments between Miles and his increasingly worried family, particularly a heart-to-heart scene with his mother ((Luna Lauren Vélez), as well as some teenage romance that's very effective thanks to the excellent chemistry (?) between the animated Miles and Gwen.

Every frame is loaded with gags, references and colorful supporting characters, so much so that it can approach overwhelming at times. As Miles flies around the Spider-Verse police's HQ, he runs into enough version of Spider-People to make your head spin, each lovingly given their own characteristics and gimmicks. The movie may take a little while to truly get going, but once it does, it's a chaotic train ride at a million miles per hour.

And then there's the animation. The first Spider-Verse movie was an innovative mix of various animation styles that all fit together in an impressive collage, unlike anything we had seen before. This sequel takes that concept to eleven. Every universe, every character, seeemingly every frame is a dazzling mix of animation styles, resulting in an explosion of unbridled creativity that really speaks to the benefits of giving a talented group of people as much time as they need, and then getting out of their way. Gwen's home universe is so strikingly beautiful that is approaches the level of an art installation, with swirling watercolor backgrounds that flow and change depending on the mood of the scene. The scene of Gwen and Miles taking a break to chat upside-down while overlooking the city left me with my mouth hanging open, and it's just one of the many visual highlights throughout.

The biggest knock against the movie is that it ends on a cliffhanger in the middle of a particularly fist-pumping moment, resulting in one of the loudest groans of collective pain that I've ever heard from an audience. I'm positive that we all could've sat there for a few more hours, unaware of how much time has gone by, completely taken in by this wonderful and wild Spider-Verse that we've been blessed with. March 29, 2024 can't come soon enough.