SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Sony Pictures Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 31, 2023

Everything that worked in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse continues and is expanded in this dynamic, imaginative sequel. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse takes the story of Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore), an unexpected version of Spider-Man who discovers a multiverse of superheroes just like him, to new heights of action, new depths of emotion, and, of course, a whole slew of new dimensions to explore.

We know the material, which offered such a clever premise based on one of the core tenets of comic books in the first film, is in more than fine and much more than capable hands with a trio of new directors. Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson don't simply give us multiple Spider-People (or other spider-powered creatures) in this installment, as the predecessor did (beating the current live-action iteration of Spider-Man to the punch by a few years in doing so, by the way).

This one opens with the continuing story of Gwen Stacy (voice of Hailee Steinfeld), one of the group of spider-bitten superheroes from other dimensions who arrived in Miles' world after a scientific experiment went awry. In Gwen's dimension, she's its one-of-a-kind Spider-Woman, playing drums in a band by day, fighting crime in costume whenever she has a chance, and trying to keep her superhero side gig a secret from her police captain father George (voice of Shea Whigham). In this realm, Peter Parker became a mutant lizard instead, leading to his death during a battle with Spider-Woman and her father's assumption that the vigilante murdered his daughter's best friend. It's complicated.

Beyond how well the screenplay (written by returning writer Phil Lord, along with Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham) develops these characters by answering questions we might not have considered even asking from the first film, the first thing to notice here is the extent to which the filmmakers embrace the notions of these different characters and distinct worlds. For the most part, the preceding film had a certain uniformity of design, apart from some clear exceptions—such as an anime-influenced girl and her robot, as well as a super-powered cartoon pig.

The style of that film was unique, though, in how it reflected the idea of a comic book brought to life—from being able to see the fine detail of something like dot-print and lines on the characters, to crooked sound lines and on-screen onomatopoeia accompanying the noises of the soundtrack, to split screens and insert panels and text blocks offering little moments of exposition or inner monologue. That approach is retained and, indeed, amplified in the sequel to such a degree that, this time, the filmmakers even have the confidence to include more such flourishes, including a couple of editor's notes for when one Spider-Man explains one of his unique powers and Spider-Punk (voice of Daniel Kaluuya) casually drops some Cockney rhyming slang.

Beyond even those touches, though, there are whole other worlds in this tale, represented by even more diverse styles. Gwen's, for example, is a water color-based realm that constantly shifts hues and shape within a scene as a kind of expressionistic heightening of what's happening in any given moment (There's an especially potent effect when, during a heart-to-heart between Gwen and her father, the backdrop begins to melt as if her whole world is crying). From the prologue, then, we're treated to this bold sense of style, which also allows for Gwen to battle a supervillain who comes from a dimension modeled after Renaissance Italy and has the appearance of a sketch from the era.

There are so many tiny and significant details here that any discussion of the film's look seems destined to become derailed by simply explaining and admiring them. There's a plot to consider, of course, but before getting to that, is it too much to note a few other of those details?

Spider-Punk himself is a particularly cunning bit of the character's design, which incorporates a combination of hand-drawn sketches and magazine cutouts, perfectly matching his devil-may-care, anarchic attitude. Then, there are brief flashes of other worlds, too, that fully embrace various mediums—from stop-motion-animated toys, to a 1930s comic strip, to video games, to live-action flashbacks and cameos to previous iterations of Spider-Man, as well as ancillary characters from those universes.

Okay, there is a plot to get to. Miles, trying to juggle school and crime-fighting while also keeping his super-heroics a secret from his cop father (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry) and his mother (voiced by Luna Lauren Vélez), confronts a villain called the Spot (voice of Jason Schwartzman). He seems a jokey, "villain-of-the-week" type, until it becomes clear that the Spot has the ability to travel between dimensions (Just to comment a bit more on design, the Spot has no definition, save for those floating spots of dark matter and the lightly sketched geometric patterns of his body, and gradually evolves into graphite-based vision of chaos).

Gwen has been enlisted into an elite group of Spider-People, led by a Spider-Man from a world of the year 2099 named Miguel O'Hara (voice of Oscar Isaac), trying to correct the dimensional uproar caused by the events of the first film. Miles wants in to the group, in order to be close to Gwen and to prove to himself and others that he deserves to be Spider-Man, but again, it's complicated, bringing up ideas of story canon as a kind of fatalistic necessity for a hero to endure in order to actually be a hero.

Bursting with ideas and visual flair, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a gorgeously animated film that carries on and deepens the characters and tale of its predecessor. It is also—and fundamentally in almost every fiber of its being, right down to its tantalizing, twist-filled cliffhanger of a finale—an affectionate tribute to the creativity and ingenuity that have kept the comics, mainly of the superhero variety and specifically those involving some form of Spider-Person (or, yes, Animal or even Thing), a mainstay of pop culture for almost a century. It's quite creative and ingenious in its own right, too.

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