Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse takes place one year after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is unexpectedly approached by his love interest Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) to complete a mission to save every universe of Spider-People from the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who could cause a catastrophic disaster. Miles is up for the challenge, so he and Gwen journey through the Multiverse together and meet its protectors, a group of Spider-People known as the Spider-Society, led by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac). However, Miles finds himself at odds with Miguel and the Spider-Society on how to handle the threat.
It’s been five years since the first film was released, which completely took the world by surprise, delivering one of the best Spider-Man stories ever made as well as giving us a new kind of animation style that impacted the genre in big ways. It was a massive risk but one that paid off. Now the sequel is finally here after numerous delays and pandemic impacts that impacted many blockbuster films that are only now getting their release dates. But despite all this, the amazingly talented team behind the Spider-verse series managed to pull through, delivering another incredible Spider-Man story and quite possibly one of the craziest superhero sequels ever made.
It’s yet another insane multiversal story featuring the web-slinging hero. It’s visually masterful, packed with heart, and takes many insane leaps and bounds from both a character and world-building perspective. It’s truly a crowning achievement of a film on many different levels that sets a new standard for what other larger multiverse comic book stories can achieve when adapted to film. Basically, this is the film that I want Avengers Kang Dynasty and Avengers Secret Wars to be in the future.
First and foremost I have to give massive praise to the hugely advanced animation that takes the film’s visuals and action to a whole new level. It oozes with multiple details, textures, and colors across the spectrum and gives it one of the most unique visual identities of an animated film that has come out in years. Yes, it even manages to triumph over its predecessor visually.
What I loved the most was how each universe that we travel to and each new character we meet in this film has their own distinctive art style that is done incredibly well and is visually gorgeous from the first frame to the last. Some of the art and animation styles I could see included watercolor, anime, comic book panel, hand-drawn, stop motion, Renaissance, graphite pencil, punk visual art, and probably so much more that can be analyzed along with the potential thousands of references and easter eggs that nerds like myself are going to spend years analyzing and looking for in this film.
If you wonder how I know about all these art styles let’s just say it all comes from being raised by my mother who is an amazing artist that introduced me to a lot of these styles, hence why I love and appreciate the use of them in this film.
The action and cinematography are incredibly epic, fun, and intense across the board. Even with so much going on all at once on the screen, you’re still able to follow everything and feel so invested in what’s happening. You also really feel the hits the characters are giving or receiving when they are in action, especially with some of their unique abilities and gadgets.
The score by returning composer Daniel Pemberton is another absolute banger adding so much to the film as a whole enhancing the insane multiversal adventure taking place.
A wild film that throws so much at you like this can always run the risk of losing its audience but it manages to keep everyone hooked with its story and the unique, colorful, and engaging characters on screen, going on a path full of emotional depth and crazy turns. The voice performances are stellar across the board from both the returning cast and new faces that join in.
Shameik Moore once again plays perfectly as Miles Morales. The journey of Miles that started in the first film continues as he is adapting to being Spider-Man and is struggling to live up to everyone’s expectations, including those of his parents. Even with so many insane things that occur in this film Miles remains the central character of the story, bringing in a lot of the heart and core themes of the story, including charting your own path rather than always following the one people try forcing you to take. You feel very emotionally attached to his character all the way through, all because of the masterful writing of his character and Moore’s strong voice performance.
But he wasn’t the only one who had a strong arc and a powerful performance. Hailee Steinfeld returns as Spider-Gwen who gets major development this time around. Hailee gives major emotional depth to Gwen, feeling every ounce of emotion she is enduring on her own journey across the multiverse and cementing herself as one of the most talented as hell actresses of our current generation. I loved every scene with Gwen in this film way more than I did in the first one and again a lot of it is due to Hailee’s performance and the writing.
Jake Johnson also once again delivers the perfect amount of comedic charm for Peter B. Parker, though his role in this film is largely smaller in comparison to the previous installment in order to make way for most of the new characters.
And oh my word did all the new characters stand out hugely in this one, the most notable being Spider-Man 2099, Jessica Drew, Spider-Man India, Spider-Punk, and the established villain the Spot.
I want to start off by talking about my most anticipated variant which is Spider-Man 2099, aka Miguel O’Hara voiced by Oscar Isaac. Ever since he first appeared in the post-credits of the first film I was incredibly hyped to see him on the big screen and I was not disappointed at all. He was perfect in every way I could have imagined.
Isaac once again delivers a spectacular performance as another favorite Marvel superhero of mine, giving life to this very different variant of Spider-Man whose morals and personality are very different compared to others, which ends up being a central conflict in this film’s story. Much like in comics, he’s a very flawed and darker Spider-Man due to the world he came from and the experiences he’s endured which have made him into a complex individual that is willing to do anything to protect the multiverse by any means necessary. He’s an extremely powerful presence on screen and one that’s given an equally powerful performance by Oscar Isaac, making for a perfect opposite for Miles to deal with in this film.
Jessica Drew voiced by Issa Rae is an absolute badass in many ways. I wasn’t really expecting too much from her character but I was honestly surprised by just how much I dug this portrayal of the character and how damn good she is in action.
And then there are the two spotlight stealers, Karan Soni as Spider-Man India and Daniel Kaluuya as Spider-Punk. Karan Soni gives us an energetic ball of fun as Spider-Man India, delivering fast-paced but effective humor guaranteed to win over people’s hearts instantly even for the short amount of time he’s included.
Daniel Kaluuya absolutely rocks as the badass, anarchistic, and British Spider-Punk that I was obsessed with from the very moment he was onscreen. What was even more impressive about him was his animation style which was incredibly unique compared to every other variant. While most of the characters have 3D models with unique textures, Spider-Punk is a unique blend of 2D and 3D animation done in the visual style of 80s punk aesthetic that I’ve never really seen accomplished in a film before. Apparently, it took the animators three years to accomplish these effects for this specific character and I’ve got to say I am very impressed with it. Next to 2099, Spider-Punk was my absolute favorite in this film and I believe he deserves his own spin-off.
Now as for the villain the Spot, voiced by greatly Jason Schwartzman, this is where things got really interesting with the way he was handled. At first, he seemed to be depicted as a silly “villain of the week” kind of character and is even treated as such by the characters in a very meta fashion, but this all turns out to be a ruse to hide the potential horrors he is truly capable of. He goes from being a silly chaotic villain to being established as an Avengers-level threat on the multiverse, all because of the simple desire for revenge. You’d think a villain with such a simple motivation wouldn’t cause such a major raise in stakes but that is not the case here. You get to see firsthand the destruction he can bring to anyone attempting to stand in his way, making for a very compelling threat and a fitting antagonist to this insane story.
While the narrative does hit the ground running from the start and has you by your throat from start to end, I do appreciate the fact that it never lost sight of the most important element that drives the film, which is the heart and emotional depth filled characters we follow through the madness. The film finds appropriate places to slow down and allow audiences to connect with the major characters and themes that hit hard because of the respective performances and the writing. Again, in a film that literally has thousands of Spider-People that come in all shapes and sizes as well as many crazy-as-hell cameos and connections to other universes (MCU especially), it would be easy for it to lose its audiences, but it never lost its eye on the ball even once.
Now something to keep in mind about this film is that it is, as I mentioned before, a middle chapter that caps off with a major cliffhanger that will have jaws on the floor. Certain major twists occur that completely change everything we know and set the stage for a climatic event that will determine the fate of the infinite universes and the characters living within them. All the groundwork has been set for the upcoming third and allegedly final installment of the series Beyond the Spider-Verse and I for one can’t wait to see how it all concludes.
This film left me shaken in the best way possible and was masterfully crafted by a dedicated team that went through a lot to make this film happen. It is to me another perfect and immensely satisfying comic book film to add to the collection. I’m going to give Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse an A+ = 100.
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