Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 9 of 10

Kids Score - 7 of 10

When the first Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse first dropped into theatres back in 2018, it was quite the marvel, no pun intended. I don’t think anybody had much expectation for an animated Spider-Man movie, it’s opening weekend box office take procured a lowly $35 million here in the U.S.. Lo and behold that movie went on, not to just be a revolutionary animated feat garnering unanimous critical acclaim, but an easy Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination, subsequent win and it’s generally considered to be among the best movies of the 2010-2019 decade. Naturally expectations are through the roof for the sequel, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, which swung into theaters last weekend. The first film was such a revelation of filmmaking that the sequel had to try and push the same limits, both visually and in it’s storytelling. While Across The Spider-Verse is visually striking, unfortunately it’s storytelling is a bit chaotic. Jumping between universes for whatever reason your plot outlines is a tricky animal, one that both Everything Everywhere and Dr. Strange 2 executed more coherently just last year. Unfortunately this film suffers from doing a bit too much that will leave some adults but especially a key demographic for this film, kids and young adults, lost in it’s wake. So many of the other aspects of the film like the continued character building, most of the beautiful color palette and humor all work at a high level. But you might just find that despite enjoying this new Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, you’ll find yourself more in the Multiverse Of Madness than ever before.

SYNOPSIS - This trip back into the Spider-Verse starts with a recap of the original film, we’re in a pastel colored world of Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), who provides the voiceover tale of how she met Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) aka the main Spider-Man that the first story followed. As we watch her wail on a drum kit she begins, “Let’s do things differently this time”, a throwback to a phrase of dialogue used several times in the first film, seemingly comparing itself to it’s previous installment right from the start. Despite it’s insistence that we’ll be getting something new, this only solidifies the fact that it’s also trying to offer us more of the same. After Gwen takes some of her frustration out with her drumming, she storms out on her band mates, we get a glimpse of her home life before starting in on her back story. She’s in love with Peter Parker, but at the prom he tries to give himself powers and inadvertently turns himself into a giant lizard who Gwen has to fight and then accidentally kills. After laying some more ground work of Gwen’s contentious relationship with her father, some inevitable multiverse glitching occurs sending an 1800’s Vulture villain forward into her universe. Two more super advanced Spider-people, a Spider-Man named Miguel (Oscar Isaac) and a pregnant, black, motorcycle riding Spider-Woman Issa Rae (Jessica Drew) portal into her world and take a disturbingly long time in defeating the villain who looks like an apprentice to Leonardo Da Vinci in his flying machine.

After the fight, Miguel and Issa recruit Gwen to their multiverse patrolling Spider-Man team. As we keep treading water through the first act, which was by far the weakest link and the lightest on humor as well, we finally catch back up with Miles, but not before being introduced to The Spot (Jason Schwartzman). We see this supervillain’s beginnings unfolding right before our eyes, he fumbles around with his black portal creations as if he’d just gotten his powers that morning as he tries to rob a convenience store. As Miles fights this “enemy of the week” as he calls him, The Spot begins to learn that his portal powers give him “the power of the multiverse in the palm of my hand”, thanks screenplay, and we get the idea that they’re setting this guy up to be much more of a long term super villain. Now that Gwen joined the multiverse jumping squad, she comes to visit Miles and they’re reunited, but naturally she can’t stay long. The film picks up some serious steam moving into the second act from the tepid introduction and tedious exposition filled intro. But when Miles jumps with Gwen to the multiverse patrolling headquarters filled head hundreds and thousands of spider-people/creatures, things not only grow more interesting, with Spider chase scenes, reintroductions to previous characters and fun throwback moments, unfortunately the story also gets more convoluted. As the screenplay weaves it’s intricate web of universe jumping complexity, unfortunately viewers, especially the younger kids, will pay the price as they probably won’t be able to keep up with the many angles and plot lines the story opens up.

Digging into the technicals of the film, the first outstanding thing that strikes the eyeballs is the pastel color scheme of the Gwen Stacy characters’s world, many sequences look like an unfinished painting of an Easter Bunny that was high on cocaine. It was a bit off-putting at first but eventually the film leaves the teal blue, yellow, purple and hot pink world behind. In regards the main problems with the film, I attribute most of the issues to the screenplay, which is curious because the main writer, Phil Lord, wrote the script for the first Spider-Verse film. The success of first Spider-Verse may be an example of lightning striking, take The Social Network for example, all the elements in that film came together at just the right time to make a perfect movie, that could be the case with the original as well. It’s success won’t be able to be duplicated, even with the exact same team’s effort. When Miles uncle dies in the first film, it felt natural, like Spider-Man always experiences his uncle Ben dying and saying “with great power comes great responsibility”, we all know the rest. Across the Spider-Verse, again, needs to up the ante, without spoiling the new film, it felt that threatening to take the family drama and loss up a notch was the way to go, but it came across as fake, or inserted drama, just for the sake of getting us emotionally invested. If Across the Spider-Verse had simply focused on trying to be a great film with the characters and story we already loved from the first instead of going down the rabbit hole of trying to improve or one up it’s already stellar predecessor, I don’t doubt it wouldn’t have made the missteps that it did. All in all, I’m guessing most everyone that watches this film will have a good to great time with it, I certainly did, but I can’t shake the vibe this film gives, like a younger brother of the cool kid trying too hard to fit in.

SUMMARY - We can’t know how this installment of the Spider-Man franchise will fare upon scrutiny when we look back in a year or two, so I’m reserving full judgement for the time being. The facts are that despite it’s shortcomings, this movie is really good, it might not be Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, but you’ll have some slightly confusing fun all the way Across it.