Thoughts: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Let’s do this thing one last time: When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrived in theaters during the summer of 2018, it marked a sharp shift in what an animated film could be amongst a sea of Pixar copies. It challenged both traditional concepts of hand drawn animation and the most recent trends of a Pixar-style character in a photorealistic setting. That first film made its impact immediately known by having the story jump from a comic book right onto the big screen, while pulling together a multiverse story before it became the current cinematic trend. Now, here we are five years later for the sequel, and in a word: Wow!
Every frame, every tone, every movement, every performance shines throughout the rather brisk pace of this two hour film. We already had an understanding of the animated technical prowess this film could have, but the amount of extensive detail that went into this film deserves all the praise on its own. Every frame is a painting (tm) that meshes different mediums into a seamless transition of the vivid and off-beat worlds that are visited within the Spider-Verse. There’s even some awe-inspiring crossover animated scenes that cross multiple lines between the unbelievable and the unimaginable. This, of course, is held together by magnificent performances, as the goofy tones turn serious from wide scale impact. All the emotions through character interactions are upheld by such top notch performances with some scene stealing memorable monologues. However, as important as the visuals is the story.
This film has two main protagonists in Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), as he continues to prove that he is worthy of Spider-Man name, and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), as she tries to find somewhere she belongs, even amongst the backdrop of the Spider-Verse. Both heroes parallel the struggle of family and finding your place amongst even your peers. They face the seemingly impossible tasks of confronting their dual identity, their feelings for each other and their family bonds; specifically the ones they have with their fathers. The ever-weaving parallels strike the core of the Spider-Man mythos which help to drive home the central themes of identity and what it means to become Spider-Man amongst an overwhelming crowd of other Spider-People who have taken the same journey.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is everything a sequel needs to be and more. It provides growth of the characters that we already know while also recontextualizing the canonicity of the Spider-Man mythos. It even provides a new take on the previous film or enhances details that may have been missed even after multiple viewings. The creative team behind this film puts everything else out there to shame as if they knew exactly the story they wanted to tell from the beginning. It’s a cinematic masterclass that may only be beaten by its inevitable end that would cap one of the greatest trilogies in modern cinema.
