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When you are a follow-up to a groundbreaking film that not only took the world by storm but also changed the animation industry for the better, it seems like a nigh impossible task to follow up on topping or being even just as good as the film that changed everything. Most follow-ups can’t even hit the mark of being just as good as the original film. It’s a monumental task to try and make lightning strike twice, but in the case of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it would be like causing lightning to strike five times in one go. But then, we all remember how amazing the talented individuals who crafted the first film were mostly returning. Even if we had some new directors at the helms, what matters is that a mass majority of the team was still behind it, and we all knew that with such a fantastic first impression left by the first film, they only had one way to go but up, and boy howdy, did they ever go up. They went from 10 to 20 to 50 to 100 in one fell swoop with their ambitions with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. They turned the ambition dial all the way up.
This truly ambitious journey through filmmaking is directed by Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson, and Joaquim Dos Santos. The fantastical script is written by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham. The overall animation was handled by the prodigious team of animators and artists at Sony Pictures Animation. We once again follow Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore, who is struggling to balance out his life, time with his family, and being the one and only, for his dimension’s Spider-Man. After encountering a villain called The Spot, voiced by Jason Swartzman, Miles has a big argument with his folks and storms off to his room. Luckily for him, he gets a drop-in visit from Gwen, voiced by Hailee Steinfeld. Gwen tells him of the multiverse aka the Spider-Verse, and due to more antics brought upon the duo by The Spot, Miles follows Gwen and goes on a universe-hopping web-slinging adventure. He encounters other Spider-Mans like Spider-Man India, voiced by Karan Soni, Spider-Punk, voiced by Daniel Kaluuya, Spider-Woman, voiced by Issa Rae, and the leader of this team of Spider-Mans Spider-Man 2099, voiced by Oscar Isaac. Soon after saving someone in Spider-Man India’s universe, Miles is called out by Miguel (Spider-Man 2099) about how he can’t save everyone and shouldn’t be stepping in prevent incidents that all happen in the same stories for every Spider-Man. Can Miles find his path to what he wants to bring to the table as Spider-Man once more? Can he stop The Spot from tearing a hole into his and other universes? What is the ongoing mystery as to why Spider-Man 2099 is so controlling over what happens in everyone’s story and universe? Will Gwen confront the crevice between her and her dad’s relationship?
It was tough to know where to start, because after seeing this film two times in two days, all I could come up with was her screams and yells of thrills, chills, and excitement, because of how good this film was. Luckily, these are some words of what I have to say. Let’s get the story out of the way first, because we need to talk about the elephant in the room that isn’t an elephant in said metaphorical room. Yes, the film is only part one of two, and yeah, you can argue the film definitely paces itself out in a way where you feel the “part one” of it by the ending scene. It isn’t that big of a letdown though. Sure, it’s surprising if you didn’t hear the announcement about it being a part two that ruffled the feathers of viewers who sit there and realize that the film doesn’t really have an ending. Then again, we have endured decades of significant film series ending on cliffhangers. You can name a handful of them, including The Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, and The Empire Strikes Back, and you get the idea.
Every generation of film fans has their own version of this situation, and considering what the film’s plot sets up for us, it’s incredible how you don’t really feel it until you realize that the film has pretty much a really long act one and act two. It’s shocking how much the story carries on what was set up in the first film. At some points, it almost feels like a parody of The Spot’s connection with how sequels are built up, but as you see the story unravel, you can tell the team made sure everything felt connected from start to finish. Or, at least from start to finish of part one of two. We pick up with our story a year and a half or so after the first film, where we have a dual storyline of our leads having the stress put on them of living up to their expectations as what will define them as Spider-Man/Spider-Woman. Alongside the struggle between Miles, and Gwen with their parents, we also see how our actions have continuing consequences. Gwen’s struggle comes from the actions of accidentally killing her universe’s Peter Parker and her dad thinking (it was) Spider-Woman, and how the actions and trauma Miles has been dealt with in terms of his hand in life, has slowly been building up the consequences that start small, but then unwrap into what is quite possibly, the most threatening villain in a Spider-Man film. The theme of both how we define ourselves as well as our actions and consequences showing how we can’t control everything results in a gripping story that has no easy way out. Yes, Oscar Isaac’s Miguel could be seen as a “villain”, but the film takes a more morally gray route with the story. There are villains like The Spot, but it would be hard to justify calling Miguel the villain of the film. His actions are pretty much what ignites the forming of the whole justice league of Spider-People, due to not wanting anyone else to make the mistakes he made. Yes, he is extremely aggressive about it and doesn’t go about it the right way, but considering what happens if you do break canon, you can see why he is afraid of something happening like that again. The film does a lot to remind people that you don’t have full control over your story. You have control over what actions you pull off in life and don’t have to follow what fate may have coming at you, but even with all the control you think you have, you can’t save everyone. So few films actually follow through with the fact that even if you are in a film like Groundhog Day, you can’t save everyone. Someone is going to die. Sure, someone in the Spider-Man story’s main plot can survive, but someone else will die. Who knows, maybe that character is just destined to bite the dust. The fact that even until the last 20-minute twist, the film was unapologetically about how there was going to be no easy way out of the situation for Miles, Gwen, and everyone there. So many superhero films try to wrap up their plots and stories with nice little bows or try to give an easy way out, but the film so far wasn’t interested in that. It’s hard to accept the fact that you don’t have control over everything in life, but that’s the stellar reason why this film’s story works so well.
Every time the film makes you think it’s going to end in a typical way, it doesn’t, and throws another curveball into Miles’ hands. It has elements of why I enjoyed Squid Game’s second episode a lot. It’s because the show’s team basically answered every pedantic nitpicker online’s question, and that’s how I felt here. The film made sure that it could cover its tracks without it hurting the story. While Miles’s journey is mostly the focus, the more heartfelt and heart wrenching story focus goes to Gwen with her story of not feeling accepted by people in her dimension that also includes her father. It has undertones of feeling like an outcast that many people in the LGBTQA+ community feel when their families don’t get or want to get who they are. The film is able to find that perfect balance of serious story beats, comedy, action, and the emotional gut punches that match the absurdly stunning visuals that make the story beats hit even harder. It’s a film where the story is asking you to go watch it a second time to pick up on what it’s putting down. It works well the first time around due to how incredible the performances and writing are, but the second viewing makes it all fall into place and cements it as one of the great sequel stories. Granted, we have to remind ourselves that this is just part one of the sequel, and the second part could very well fall apart, but for right now, this is how you not only tell a follow-up story, but a story in general. Fancy and amazing visual effects can draw you in, but at the end of the day, we all come here for the stories, and the actors bring out some of their best performances not just for animation, but film in general in 2023. There are some minor gripes, like how some characters play a little too much in the background like Spider-Woman, but in general and to be perfectly blunt, any issues anyone could have will be squashed under the mind-blowing impeccable story and writing that is unleashed onto the screen for you all. Oh, and the action? It’s truly dumbfounding that with how this is all CGI with 2D visual flairs, they were still able to get some of the best action of any film in 2023, and that’s saying something considering we live in a film year where action has been on a real rock and roll time with some spectacular encounters. The film makes you feel truly small in a world full of thousands of Spider-Man variants, even when our lead is a Spider-Man. From the small encounters to the spectacular setups seen throughout its 140 minutes, it will keep your eyes glued to the screen so hard that you may need new eyes. You feel the weight of every swing, every kick, every punch, the strain of Miles trying to escape certain peril, and you will probably be leaning up in your chair, due to not knowing how to sit with your back against it because the action will lure your eyes to watch every single moment to see how it all untangle in front of you.
The animation is hard to describe because words can not describe the upgrades and improvements that you see from the first film’s already incredible visuals that basically gave the animation industry new life. The amazing artists that have been working on the various animated films have constantly been showing they are outstanding individuals, and recent films like Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. The Machines are why we are in a new era of the evolution of the art form. If you think you have seen what this art style and visuals can pull off, then you have seen nothing yet. There are just so many ways you can say this animation is nice-looking. It’s magnificent, ravishing, bewitching, enticing, jaw-dropping, captivating, bonny, superb, first-rate, and many other words you can use to describe the film’s visuals. The intense amounts of upgrades and improvements to the visuals make my brain short-circuit due to how out of the way they went with it all. Every character from a different dimension has its own animation and visual style that doesn’t clash with everyone else. It was tough to pick a favorite piece of animation due to how astonishing the world, the human designs, the colors, the tone, the atmosphere, and so on are handled. On one hand, you have The Vulture who looks like Renaissance-era 2D visuals and my favorite detail of his character is when he loses a wing and crafts another one. Spider Punk’s bleeding late 80s early 90s punk rock vibes with its flashing colors have similarities to paper cutouts. As the character said, he is just that cool at all times visually and personality-wise. The team of amazing and talented animators captures the moods, the tones, the characters, and so on, but I think some of the best animations come from The Spot himself. Not only is this a fun villain to design and how it can go from silly to cosmic horror in an instant, but the progression of the character can also all be seen throughout the body language. In the beginning, he comes off as pathetic and frail, but nimble. By the time the story progresses and he gets more comfortable with his holes, the villain then gains confidence. By the end of the movie, he looks like a monster from another dimension ready to zap you into another realm in an instant. The astonishing use of colors from the watercolors in Gwen’s universe, Spider-Man India’s Mumbattan’s comic book sun-scorched visuals mixed with bright hues over an infinite city, the slick whites and blues used in Miguel’s universe, and everywhere else look amazing. Every world looks distinct and not even once do they feel similar to one another. Even at certain points, you can tell there is more than meets the eye. The use of said colors to portray and contrast emotions kept the bottom of this reviewer’s jaw hitting the floor. Even if you turned off the sound, you could absolutely see and tell what the emotions are during the scenes in question. Oh, and whoever was in charge of the designs and making sure the multitude of Spider-Man designs had ranges of lanky, buff, thick, curvy, pear-shaped, handicapped, small, big, this was so welcoming to see after the nonsense of the superhero movie workout routines not being the healthiest things around. Anyone can be Spider-Man and that means anyone. Still, the voice cast they got do a stupendous job delivering their lines. Everyone from the main names like Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, to Karan Soni are great, but no role here feels wasted. Brian Tyree Henry, Greta Lee, Andy Samberg, Jake Johnson, Lauren Velez, Shea Whitman, Jorma Taccone, and Amanda Stenberg bring in some charming and witty performances as well. The music, to no shock from Daniel Pemberton, brings bombastic, grand, imposing, technical, energetic, and delightful tunes that fit the mood when Spider-Man swings his way across the screen. Leland Tyler Wayne aka Metro Boomin collaborates with a ton of artists to bring a killer tracklist that helps fill the void and make the worlds feel more alive in between Daniel Pemberton’s incredible score.
There has been a talk about superhero fatigue that has also bled into the world of movies in other avenues, like other big tentpole franchises and even other major movies and some smaller releases. It’s not really fatigue towards superhero movies. It’s fatigue towards films that were either not given enough time to craft their stories or they came up with stories that weren’t great at investing you in the characters that are on screen. People like seeing flashy things and big names, but if the writing isn’t there, if the people in the audience aren’t getting something new or something that feels refreshing and original, then people won’t show up. Spider-Man: Across the Universe is a checklist of how to make not only a good sequel, a better sequel, but an amazing film. Miles and Gwen are put through the wringer as their worldviews are challenged, and these challenges are thrown at them through some of 2023’s best animation and visual storytelling. You have animation that is an awe-inspiring rollercoaster of sights and flair unlike anything else out there, characters that are complex to the core of the human experience of isolation and stress of living up to the way people see you, writing that is whip- smart and continually engaging, action set pieces that should give the animators, artists, and visual effects people all the raises in the world, and it’s only part one! Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a monumental web-slinging time at the films as 2023’s most exciting cinematic experience. Obviously, by the way this film is making money hand-over-web-shooting-fist, people are seeing this film, and if you haven’t done so, it’s an undoubtedly herculean adventure that everyone should go to the theaters to see.
Rating: Essentials
The Other Side of Animation 