THE STORY
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” stars Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy, and Oscar Isaac Spider-Man 2099. After the events of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, Miles Morales reconnects with Gwen Stacy and learns about a group of spider people known as the Spider Society, led by Spider-Man 2099.Their mission is to protect the Spider-Verse from multiversal threats.
Meanwhile, a new villain begins to rise known as The Spot, played by Jason Schwartzman. He quickly becomes a threat to the multiverse.
THE GOOD
The story of this film is quite amazing. The audience gets to spend time in Miles’ world and catch up on his life. His loneliness makes for a nice contrast to the large number of spider people in the second and third act of the film.
Another strong part of the movie is the character development of Gwen Stacy. She goes from being someone who is afraid to commit to friendships after the loss of her best friend, to someone who is able to come to terms with that loss and find a new friendship with Miles. Overall, one could argue that she is the main character of this movie.
All of the music in this movie is amazing. Both the instrumental themes for the characters and the soundtrack produced by Metro Boomin are beautiful. They greatly enhance an already strong movie.
The animation in this film somehow tops the previous. Each character’s world feels entirely different. Some of the amazing worlds include: the Lego universe which was animated by a 14 year old, Gwen’s universe, which looks like a painting come to life, and the futuristic 2099 universe that has both bright skyscrapers and dark alleyways.
There are also some fantastic character animations, whether it’s the vulture that looks like he came straight out of Leonardo DaVinci’s journal, or Spider-Punk who is animated to move every third frame to make him feel out of place, just like his character. It’s clear the animators truly cared about this film.
The Spider-Society features many recognizable Spider-people, but the cameos don’t feel forced. Instead of throwing them in the viewer’s face they are “blink and you’ll miss it” easter eggs.
Almost every character is easy to fall in love with. Standouts include Spider-Punk played by Daniel Kaluuya, whose rebel attitude makes him a great foil for Spider-Man 2099’s more serious, by-the-book traits, and Peter B. Parker played by Jake Johnson, who is hilarious as a father for his daughter Mayday. Then there’s Spider-Man India played by Karan Soni ,who is simply very charismatic. The voice actors did an amazing job portraying these characters.
THE BAD
One of the very few issues with the film is the cliffhanger at the end. It makes the movie feel incomplete. It is obviously meant to set up the sequel “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse”, but that still means that this movie suffers from feeling incomplete. This issue is made even worse due to the writers and actors strike causing the sequel to be delayed.
The Spot feels like he doesn’t get enough time to shine. In the entire film, he only appears in about three or four scenes. This is mostly due to the focus on the Spider Society storyline. For much of the movie, he feels less like a main villain and more like a side character.
One major plot point of the film is canon events. They are moments in a spider-person’s life that must happen, like losing an important figure in their life. The issue with this is, it means that the Spider Society is letting people die. This is very uncharacteristic of many spider-people. Hopefully this issue will be resolved in the next movie.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Overall, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is an amazing movie with a few minor flaws. It definitely deserves a 9 out of 10.