Spiderman Across The Spiderverse

When Spiderman Into The Spiderverse came out it was nothing less than revoloutionary. In a world of more grey, lifelike 3d pixar-esque cartoons coming out in a homogeneously dull way, Spiderverse was unapologetically fun. It was a comic book movie which looked like a comic book. It oozed fun and charisma, with its exciting visuals and enjoyable story. The leap of faith moment was jaw-dropping and changed animation forever. Since then, we’ve had an increasing number of spider-verse style films, from Mitchells and the Machines to Puss in Boots 2. This means Spiderman Across the Spiderverse comes into a totally different world, one where we’ve seen this sort of film so they need to amp it up and smash the high benchmark they set themselves. Now, did they meet this standard? Well, it’s tough to say.

MINOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

Spiderverse 2 takes place an unspecified amount of time after the original, with Miles, Gwen and Peter back into their universe. The first 30 minutes focuses on Gwen, whose police captain father is still after spider woman. When she goes out to fight an odd looking enemy from another time, she meets Miguel O’Hara, the spiderman from a different spiderverse on Earth 2099, who recruits her to an elite spider crew to deal with anomalies who fall into other spiderverses. Meanwhile, back on the Earth we know, Miles is still being the friendly neighbourhood spiderman, dealing with villain of the week The Spot, a character cleverly integrated from the prequel, but who doesn’t seem a serious threat. Gwen comes along, and he joins her on an adventure with the spider crew. However, as we go into act 2, Miles starts to have conflict with the spider crew. That’s all I’ll say.

First thing to say, this film looks phenomenal. Its scenes may even look nicer than its predecessor. There is an creative freedom as the shackles are off. The scenes can be madder, faster and more artistic. It’s an exciting visual spectacle with so much more.

The new characters brought in are all exciting. Miguel O’Hara, Spider-Punk and the Indian Spider-Man are all amusing and each have their moments, although at times having such a big cast and full film meant they were skipped over, unlike in the last film. Miles and his parents are on top form, however his relationship with his mentor Peter Parker seems to have ret-conned as he becomes another goofy side character.

The film is thankfully fairly easy to follow. In a world of animation, it’s still some of the best looking we’ve had. In a world of increasing multi-verse trend movies, this movie remains simple despite there seeming to be everything, everywhere. All at once, it seems like a brilliant film where everything

However, despite what comic movie nerds may think, bigger is not always better. This film is the second in a trilogy and looks to end on a cliff-hanger as a set up for film 3 which is released next year. This is fine, but what it means, much like Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is that you end up with lots of half baked areas, and nothing concluded and feeling a slight lack of satisfaction. This is particularly an odd choice as we end the film with three powerful antagonists at large. They could have potentially instead focussed on their first story and concluded that with a potential cliff hanger being the start of the second half. This would have been a bit more exciting, as essentially instead what they did was do half a film then just leave it aside to set up a totally different plot.

Across the Spider-verse is at least a fun energetic film. However, a lack of wow moment and plot issues which are synonymous with middle of trilogy films stop it from being as elite as the original.