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

 

It's a rare thing for a second film to be even better or on par with the first one, and the stakes were indeed high with this sequel to Into the Spider-Verse. Yet somehow, this film not only ends up being better than the first, but takes advantage of different styles for each of the Spider-People and the worlds that we end up visiting. Yeah, these kinds of films are definitely worth your time and should be given a chance at the awards because this is a film that looks like a lot of time and effort went into it with all the stuff I mentioned. Also, people saying this is unexpectedly doing well, that's rubbish. Anyone who knows Sony and Spider-Man well, will know that this film will do well, whatever happens. Clearly, the people using the word "unexpectedly" haven't seen these Marvel films before. But anyway, it's going to be a difficult one to talk about with revealing too much, but here we go:

On the Earth that is designated as Earth-65, Gwen Stacy (reprised by Hailee Steinfeld) is having a hard time living up to the expectations of her police captain father (voiced by Shea Whigham) who is unaware of her being Spider-Woman and blames that superhero for the supposed murder of her best friend and that Earth's Peter Parker (voiced by Jack Quaid). On one of Spider-Woman's patrols, she encounters an Italian Renaissance version of Vulture (voiced by Jorma Taccone of Spider-Man 67 fame) who is then stopped by a group of Spider-People from other universes, known collectively as the Spider-Society. With Gwen's identity revealed to her father and feeling like not wanting to stick around, Gwen leaves with the team, who offer her a place. Meanwhile, on Earth-1610, a villain known as the Spot (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) who has interdimensional abilities, makes himself known to Miles Morales (reprised by Shameik Moore) and with plans that threaten the multiverse at large, he too encounters the Spider-Society who grant him a place somewhat too, but with some shocking revelations that could endanger the multiverse even more.

I will say that the complexity of what the Spider-Society is and so forth, makes this film one that theorists will have a field day with, for sure. I love the styles that the animators gave to the different Spider-People in this, like the British one who looks like British newspapers and the Lego one which feels like and almost certainly is a nod to The Lego Movie which Lord and Miller, who wrote this film, directed. It's also great to see references to No Way Home and the Spider-People that appeared in that. Of course this being a massive film, it ends on a cliffhanger because it's just too big to be in just one film. The firsts succeeded as one film because it was a small group of Spider-People there. But this time, there are many more of them and it's good to finally get a taste of the multiverse on the big screen too. I have a feeling that Oscar Issac's Spider-Person could end up being the main antagonist for this two part adventure, but who knows. Anyway, this was an amazing sequel (one that once again uses some mature themes to make out that IT'S NOT JUST FOR KIDS!!) and I cannot wait to see part two (Beyond the Spider-Verse) next year. 10/10