'Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse' Dazzles The Heart and Eyes
Visually Auteuristic and narratively unpredictable, Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse is spectacular. It dares to topple its Oscar-winning original, Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse, and very well might have. With a length of two hours and twenty minutes, the film is taking a mighty challenge for an animated flick that usually clocks at an hour and forty minutes maximum. Despite its running time, the film hardly feels redundant or contrived. There's no guessing where the plot will take you down to its cliffhanger ending. Just buckle up and enjoy the ride.
From the minds of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, alongside the directorial credits of Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, comes a film unlike any other. There's a reason why animated films should hold a mantle next to live-action pictures. They can stun the eye and win the heart just as effectively as a live-action film could. The only difference is it takes much longer and more painstaking detail to complete an animated film. It's easier to make something in live-action which is why it dominates the box office market.
When Spider-Man Across The Spider-Verse hit the cinemas, it was unlike any animated film I had seen. The cross between 3D polygons and two-dimensional pencil sketches is a loving tribute to the comics and films brought before it by quite literally feeling like a moving comic book brought to life. A feat other filmmakers try to achieve yet fall short of. From Marvel's recent CGI vomit to Ang Lee's Hulk, trying to make a film feel like a comic book is hard to do, but these masterminds did it. The work put on the screen is excruciatingly intricate. The number of hours put into making the film deserves an Olympic medal.
When the picture started, I couldn't help but joke in my notebook if this movie provides seizures. The film has a very strobe-heavy, color-flickering style that caused an episode of Pokemon to trigger epilepsy back in 1997. The film is a major trigger warning if you have a problem with flashing colors. When the film isn't dazzling the senses, it's intriguing the mind. The story doesn't start in a predictable direction, nor does it ever wind up in one. We don't follow the character we think we're going to tail from the get-go, but that's fine, as who we do follow is an interesting new thread to take.
The story branches itself between Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). Cleverly the dynamics between Miles and Gwen Stacy are rather close. Gwen and Miles are Spider-Them and have fathers who serve in the police force. Miles' father doesn't know his son is Spider-Man, neither does Gwen's father know his daughter is Spider-Girl. The stakes could be significantly raised if the two were to find out. The film is full of surprises, from nostalgic cameos to internet memes brought to life. Yet the film's biggest surprise is how effective the story is.
Across The Spider-Verse is very meta, where its entire plot is about not breaking from your character's canon events. Severing that tie could result in cataclysmic danger. What makes this tale stand out is its path of the hero. The road that Miles travels represents Spider-Man’s greatest strength yet also his biggest weakness. Spider-Man cares almost too much for the people he's trying to protect. Miles can't save everyone, but he'll still try.
Peter Parker wanted to save Uncle Ben. But if not for the death of Ben, there'd be no Spider-Man. Miles mustn't break a canon event, or he'll set the multiverse in disarray. Spider-Man works as a character because he's empathetic. He goes out of his way to save a life by risking his own. How far Miles or Peter will go to save others is heroic. Whether it be Peter trying to rescue his adversary's souls in Spider-Man: No Way Home or Miles trying to save the ones he loves Spider-Man is a character who can't help but try to save lives.
The moral conundrum Miles faces in Across The Spider-Verse is a steep one. The path Miles takes is one most of us would take. Where the story zigs and zags its way across more portals than Mario jumps down pipes, the outcome of its unpredictable narrative ends on a cliffhanger that demands an ending to be seen as we're left with a "to be continued" at the film's end.
As soon as the picture roared to its credits, I wanted more. For multiverse movies, films produced by A24 studios with Everything Everywhere All At Once and Sony's Spider-Verse movies, other studios are outmultiversing Marvel at their own game. I want to see where things will go. Spider-Man Across The Spider-Verse, like its predecessor, is a remarkable imaginative feat that must be seen on the big screen to be believed. If part one of two is a nonstop two-hour, twenty-minute thrill ride, I'm excited to see what the imaginative finale will bring. March 29, 2024, can't come soon enough.
