"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" review — Miles and his amazing friends land another success
“Miles, being Spider-Man is a sacrifice. That’s the job.”
In 2018, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse brought a jolt of fresh creative energy to the world of superhero films. Managing to get ahead of the big boom of multiverse-related superhero epics, Into the Spider-Verse was noted for its distinctive animation and its fresh take on the Spider-Mythos. The film was critically lauded and won multiple major awards for animation. In all of the years since, the film has remained at the forefront of recent superhero films and recent animated films. To pull a literary illusion from its predecessor, there were great, terrifyingly great, expectations placed upon the sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Thankfully, the long four-and-a-half years of waiting have paid off. Across the Spider-Verse is full of the same creative energy that made the first film feel so unique. But it is not just a mere retread of that film’s story and visual style — instead Across the Spider-Verse pushes the filmmaking envelope further with bigger ideas at play, more intricate animation, and a visual flare unrivalled by any other.
While real-life audiences have been waiting some fifty-four months to get back to the Spider-Verse, for Miles Morales (Brooklyn’s one and only Spider-Man, voiced by Shameik Moore) it’s only been a little more than a year since the events of the first film. As Spider-Man, he’s doing quite well. While still learning the ropes, Miles has faced down many new supervillains and is winning the respect of the city. But as Miles Morales, things aren’t going so well. His relationship with his parents is fraught, he’s having a hard time balancing all of his responsibilities, and he’s slipping in school. More than anything, Miles is struggling to make friends. A year ago, he made some of the coolest friends of his life when a group of Spider-People from across the multiverse came to his New York to save all of reality. The one he misses the most is Gwen Stacy. But Miles’ life is about to get so much more complicated when a new villain emerges that threatens not just his New York, but every New York in every universe.
Universes away, Gwen Stacy (AKA Spider-Woman, voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) is on the run from the police after being falsely accused of murder. Things aren’t going well for Gwen either, both in her personal life and as a superhero. She is struggling to maintain her personal relationships and has to act more carefully when she operates as Spider-Woman. She’s also a bit depressed. A year ago, Gwen had her life changed when she was accidentally rocketed across the multiverse into a parallel New York City where she met a host of Spider-People from across the Spider-Verse. The one she misses the most is Miles Morales, another young superhero. One day, during a routine fight with a supervillain, Gwen encounters a multiversal abnormality. Thankfully, she’s saved in the knick of time by Miguel O’Hara (AKA Spider-Man 2099, voiced by Oscar Isaac) and Jessica Drew (AKA Spider-Woman [a different Spider-Woman], voiced by Issa Rae), two Spider-People from dimensions beyond Gwen’s, who offer Gwen a chance to join the Spider-Society.
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| Miles in an alternate universe. Photo: Sony. |
Across the Spider-Verse is among the best of the Wall-Crawler’s cinematic outings. The film deftly handles its outlandish visual style and sprawling narrative with grounded character beats. The scale of the film is absolutely enormous and takes full advantage of the possibilities of the multiverse but never forgets the characters that make the action matter. The characters are interesting, the action is spectacular, and there are dozens of details and easter eggs to be enjoyed as Miles and his amazing friends zip across realities. Like the original film but to an even greater degree, it is also a fantastic meta-exploration of Spider-Man’s legacy in culture and the greater meaning behind the character. With so many Spider-People across all of reality, the film emphasizes what makes the Spider-Man myth so compelling and so universal.
The characters of Across the Spider-Verse are particularly strong. Miles Morales remains a compelling protagonist as we watch him develop as a hero and confront the harsh truths about what it means to be Spider-Man. “Being Spider-Man is a sacrifice,” Miguel O’Hara reminds him. While the sacrifices that Spider-Man must make are well known to audiences who have seen the epic Peter Parker play out many times before, for Miles, these sacrifices and tragedies are still new for him. The film’s true central character is Gwen Stacy. With the most well-defined emotional arc of the film, Gwen is a bright spot in a film of highlights. She has a complicated emotional struggle between all of the demanding forces in her life that makes her ending in the film so particularly cathartic.
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| Miles faces off against The Spot. Photo: Sony. |
Miles is plagued by two great antagonists in the form of The Spot (AKA Dr. Jonathan Ohnn, voiced by Jason Schwartzman) and Miguel O’Hara. Teased at the end of Into the Spider-Verse, O’Hara is the humourless and rather frightening leader of the Spider-Society, an organization of Spider-People from all dimensions. O’Hara takes his role as the de-facto defender of the multiverse extremely seriously. His righteous sense of duty and dour personality make him an excellent contrast to the youthful energy of Miles and the humour found in most of the other Spider-People. The film’s main villain is The Spot, a polka-dotted, teleporting foe who was an accidental casualty from Into the Spider-Verse. Starting off as a bumbling clutz before eventually becoming a reality-destroying threat, The Spot is a force to be reconned with. While he disappears a little too abruptly at the film’s mid-point, we will undoubtedly be seeing more of him in next year’s Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.
While it may feel reductive to discuss Across the Spider-Verse on visual terms, especially as the visuals will be everyone’s big takeaway from the film, it is impossible to stress just how good this movie looks. Taking the comic book-inspired art style of Into the Spider-Verse and then cranking it to the extreme, Across the Spider-Verse is unparalleled in its visual splendour and captivating worldbuilding. Each frame bursts with colour and subtle details, adding so much character to how the story is told. The environments and universes are cleverly designed and intricately mapped out. The character animation is particularly compelling. The physicalities and movements of each of the film’s primary characters are so brilliantly thought-out and perfectly executed. There are a few character models that stick out as particularly striking: Miguel O’Hara’s brutish and animal-ish physique, the monkey-like movements of Spider-Man India (AKA Pavitr Prabhakar, voiced by Karan Soni), the pop art-inspired Spider-Punk (AKA Hobbie, voiced by Daniel Kaluuya), and the physical appearance of The Spot. Action sequences that would be the starring piece in a lesser film are thrown around like spare change.
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| Miles and Gwen share a tender moment. Photo: Sony. |
It’s particularly interesting to watch how Across the Spider-Verse handles its multiverse storytelling in comparison to other films and franchises. While the 2018 Spider-Verse film might have been ahead of the multiverse curve, Across the Spider-Verse is being released in the middle of its grasp. The MCU has hopped on the multiverse train with the Loki series, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and, most recently, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantiumania (2023). The DC universe has toyed with the concept on TV in the now-deceased Arrowverse and leaps in on the movie side of things later this month with The Flash (2023). Thanks to both its medium and its willingness to be as weird as possible, Across the Spider-Verse embraces the promise of “infinite possibilities” more than any of its superhero contemporaries. It explores the wildness of the multiverse more than Multiverse of Madness did, makes for a better commentary on the identity of Spider-Man than No Way Home, and is quicker to embrace the absurdity of the idea with crazy concepts and more imagination.
Building upon what made Into the Spider-Verse so great, Across the Spider-Verse is a great sequel and a fantastic film in its own right. A blur of vibrant colours, brilliant action sequences, and strong character beats, the film is full of wonder and awe and is guaranteed to charm just about anyone in its audience. It balances absurdity and humour with clever execution and immaculately designed worlds and characters. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will reaffirm love for the Spider-Man story and its bittersweet ending will make you desperate for the next chapter.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now playing in theatres everywhere.
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