If you have been paying any attention to the movies, it has been easy to see that there has been a massive influx of Marvel movies into the theaters, but since 2019, when End Game came out, many of these movies have not been up to par with the standard that Marvel had set. These movies, and tv shows, have largely been live action, except for What If?. In 2018, Marvel and Sony released one of the most incredible animated features, and that was Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. This is largely regarded as one of the best animated films of all time. This week the sequel to that movie came out.
Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse continues the story of Miles Morales and Gwen. Both characters feel lonely after having to return to their own universes, because they formed such a strong bond with each other, but they are no longer able to communicate. Miles gets into a fight with what initially seems like a normal villain, Spot, but Spot ends up in the multiverse, and this gives him the chance to grow his powers. Unaware to Miles, there is a league of Spidermen, who have the goal of keeping all the universes in line and from deviating from their plan, but Spot has created a leak in this glass, and the league of Spidermen must step in, and they send none other than Gwen to Miles’s universe.
Gwen cannot help herself but to go and visit Miles, but this ends poorly, because while she is with him, Spot escapes, and he starts to gain power. Miles learns about the league of Spidermen from Gwen, and he secretly follows her to another universe to help her fight Spot, and after that battle, Miles is taken back to the headquarters for all the Spidermen, where he finds out that his dad is in grave peril. When he tries to go back home, Spiderman 2099 tries to stop him, because he knows what happens if a timeline is interfered with too much, and this leads to a massive Spider fight, where Miles tries to make it back home, so that he can save his dad.
This movie was visually incredible. The first one looked amazing, and this one continued that trend, and then expanded upon it even more. In the first one, they had slightly different animation styles for the different Spidermen that were present, but in this one, when they entered a new world, the animation style of that Spiderman went with them, and it created a whole new world. It replicated the real-life comic format of these stories. For example, in the comics where Gwen is Spiderwoman, they use watercolors for the illustrations, and in the movie, when they were in Gwen’s universe, the art was heavily focused on the watercolors. This made it all the more jarring, and easier to understand, when a character entered a universe that was not their own.
The first instance of this was when Gwen was fighting the Vulture from an alternate dimension. He was a hand drawn depiction of the villain, and he was drawn onto brown paper, like a lunch bag. At first, I was a little taken aback by this, but the longer it went on, the better it was, and it was no longer off putting but awesome. The Spiderman that best fits this depiction was Spiderpunk, who got a large amount of screen time.
At first I had a similar reaction as I did to Vulture. He did not seem to fit in to the movie. He is made out of what looks like magazine pieces, like a child’s art collage, and his movement is very animated, as the pieces of art change with him. Also, he is a little hard to understand at first in his heavy British accent, but as the story progresses, so did my love for Spiderpunk. This also seemed to reflect Miles’s view of him as well. At first, he thought of him as a threat to Gwen, but then he came to have him more as an alley.
The music in the first movie is almost impossible to beat. One scene that will never leave my mind is the one with “What’s Up Danger” in it. This is the scene where Miles fully commits to becoming Spiderman, and he jumps off the sky scrapper. A true goosebumps moment if there ever was one. Now this movie does not have a moment quite like this, but the music is still incredible. No matter what, it seems to fit the vibe perfectly. After the first one, I was doubtful that the sequel would be able to live up to the original in a variety of ways, but the music did not let me down. It was not quite to the perfect level of the original, but it did come close. My favorite of the new songs is “Am I Dreaming,” it is beautiful.
This movie also touched on some great themes. The best of which was hit hard in the first scene with Gwen, when she is practicing with her band, and it is brought back up throughout the film. She keeps mentioning all these things that she has gone through, and how she feels alone, but she is not. One of the defining traits of Spidermen is the trauma that they go through. They lose an uncle, a parent, or a police chief that they are close to, or in some cases all of the above, and these traumatic events of loss can leave a person feeling alone. It can be so easy to get lost in our own grief to forget that so many others have gone through the same thing as us, and that is important to reach out to others for comfort and help.
The family element was so strong in this film, and it had more of a focus on Miles’s family, and at the beginning and the end, it brought Gwen’s family into it as well. Miles felt like his family was placing too much pressure on him, and that they were expecting too much from him, and he could not deliver, because he was too busy being Spiderman. He also felt like he could not confide in them as to his true identity. Gwen went through something similar, when she lost her version of Peter Parker, her universe blamed Spiderwoman, which was her, even though she did not cause this loss. Her dad also blamed Spiderwoman, so she had to hide herself from her dad in this formative time in her life, but in the end, she is able to reconcile with her dad in a touching moment.
There is also the romance element to this movie between Miles and Gwen. Clearly there is chemistry between them from the first movie, and it carries over into this movie, but they get to enjoy their romance in a much cooler way than the average person. They are web slinging through the city, and they are testing each other’s skills as they go through the city, and it ends at one of the skyscrapers that Miles enjoys visiting to escape, and Miles and Gwen end up sitting next to each other upside down under an overhang on the building. Ever since seeing the new Candyman, where the opening shot was an inverted drone shot of a cloudy Chicago, I have been obsessed when movies do this inverted depiction of a city. Something about it is off putting, but it always looks amazing.
Sequels are never this good, but just like the first Spiderverse, this movie breaks those norms, and it creates a visual experience that is unlike any other, but it goes beyond just visual excellence. It also has emotional excellence. It managed to make me tear up multiple times, and it had me locked in for the two plus hour run time. When the movie ended, me and so many others were shocked. It felt like it could have kept going and going. It could have run for five hours, and I would have been okay, and I probably would not have noticed. I cannot wait till next March to see the conclusion of this trilogy. It is the best movie I have seen this year. I gave it 4.5 stars. I gave the first one 5 stars, but this one is incredibly close to receiving that 5-star review. The crowd I saw it with agreed by giving it an ovation when it ended.
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