The concepts of multiverses and people traveling from one reality to another existed long before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. But the 2018 animated feature did such a tremendous job of using those ideas to define Miles Morales and deconstruct the very idea of Marvel’s iconic webhead that it almost single-handedly got the whole of Hollywood hell-bent on producing as many genre-bending multiversal epics as it possibly could.
Save for Everything Everywhere All at Once, few of these other parallel dimension narratives have really been able to hold a candle to what Sony and Marvel managed to achieve with Into the Spider-Verse — a movie that told one of the most powerful Spider-Man stories of all time.
Similar to the way Into the Spider-Verse never felt like it was explicitly trying to stunt on any of Sony’s previous Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — from co-directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson — always feels like it’s thoughtfully drawing upon the stories that came before it in hopes of tapping into some deeper, fundamental truth about what it takes to wear the spider-mask.
But rather than simply using Miles to expand upon and celebrate Marvel’s 60-year-old Spider-Man mythos the way Into the Spider-Verse did, Across the Spider-Verse is much more focused on artfully blowing the webhead’s canon so wide open that it’s almost hard to believe as you’re watching it.
Across The Spider-Verse is a beautifully animated film that’s bursting with wild color and inventive artwork. It takes everything from the first movie and does it bigger. Every single scene is something to gawk at. The movie isn’t content to simply follow the art-style of the first film. Instead, it builds on that style, layering each moment with color and emotion and sound. It’s honestly a little hard to describe. There’s still that comic book feel of the previous movie, but it’s so much more.
Like Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse’s story revolves around one Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), the one and only Spider-Man operating on Earth-1610 after the untimely (but cosmically fated) death of his reality’s Peter Parker. As an experienced savior of the multiverse, Miles has every reason to think of himself as hot shit and one of the more impressive Spider-People thwipping around in any universe.
But as the sole costumed hero working to protect his New York City from its supervillains, Miles can’t help but feel profoundly alone in his day-to-day civilian life, where he’s surrounded by normal people like his mother Rio (Luna Lauren Velez) and father Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry).
The performances are all as terrific as the animation and the writing. We get a lot more of Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) which I consider a very good thing. Other characters from the first film return, including Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) as well as some newcomers like the anarchist punk-rock Spider-Man, Hobie (Daniel Kaluuya) and even the video game Spider-Man played by Yuri Lowenthal.
It’s a brilliant animated movie and, like the first film, honestly one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen, bringing not only fresh and new to a genre that feels rather stale, but also superbly crafted storytelling. I think the plot might be a little difficult for younger kids to follow, but they’ll enjoy the action and humor and wild animation that’s truly unlike anything else out there. Go see it on the biggest screen—with the best sound—you can find!
