Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

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Whether you like or dislike Sony's moves with the rest of their Spider-Verse, one thing remains certain - they nailed it when it came to Miles Morales. 'Into the Spider-Verse' was a damn-near-perfect animated comic book movie, complete with the look and style of an actual comic book. On top of that, we also had the urban feel of Mile's hometown of Brooklyn, NY, complete with graffiti and an excellent hip-hop soundtrack. It was yet another 'Spider-Man' film with a unique twist, making it a breath of fresh air for us Spider-Fans.

I remember this often being claimed as the best-animated film ever made. It's a lot to claim such a thing, but I will say this—it makes for an easy consideration for that title. This film takes everything we love about Into the Spider-Verse and cranks it to eleven with several different animation styles, this time getting some very real glimpses of other universes where the new members of the "Spider-Society" come into play. But more on them later. We open things up here in Gwen Stacy's (Hailee Steinfeld) universe on Earth-65.

We get a little more into Gwen's background involving her Peter Parker, her father, and her rocky relationship with law enforcement - her father being a police captain, unaware of her identity under the "Spider-Woman" mask (fans will know the costume better as "Ghost-Spider" or "Spider-Gwen"). One day, she gets caught up in a fight at the Guggenheim Museum with a Renaissance-themed vulture, whose animation is done with pencil sketches on what looks like old parchment - so cool! This is the moment we get a taste of what we're in for.

Gwen meets Miguel O'Hara, aka Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), and Jessica Drew, another Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), who have arrived using portal-generating tech. Eventually, she's granted membership into the "Spider-Society" - a massive team of Spider-Men (and women) from different dimensions who work together, monitoring the multiverse for anomalies and making sure "canon events" aren't disrupted. A "canon event" remains the same while the universes play out differently. Here, the most prominent specific is the death of a police captain close to the respective Spider-Man.

Meanwhile, on Earth 1610, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is living his hero life and, one day, meets "The Spot" (Jason Schwartzman), who claims that he's Mile's arch-nemesis without Miles understanding who he is. After the confrontation, Gwen opens a portal to reunite with Miles while secretly tracking The Spot, who, himself, is an anomaly, as he can travel to other dimensions, which brings Miles and Gwen to "Mumbattan" where we meet a couple of more Spider-People for this chapter - Pavitr Prabhakar, aka Spider-Man India (Karan Soni) and Hobie Brown, aka Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya).

During that whole bit, we get Miles disrupting a canon event, which leads him to realize this same canon event is supposed to happen in his universe. Still, the other Spider-People need him not to disrupt the timeline of what's supposed to happen, making for one hell of a personal inner struggle for Miles. And dear God, there's so much more to it, but I will be unfolding the whole movie if I keep going. It's hard to keep everything short about this one, plot-wise, but rating-wise, it is another story. If you enjoyed the first one, you're going to enjoy this one.

The variety in animation styles here are something to be admired, and they cover the spectrum. Beyond that, just like the first, there's also a killer soundtrack, and I enjoyed the introduction of some new Spider-People instead of just bringing back the old crew for familiarity. This movie takes a few risks, but those risks paid off, and it was so good to see the movie go for it with everything it did. I can't praise this movie enough as a near-perfect mishmash of a work of art, an interesting concept for a Spider-Man story, and a touch of every emotion coming through. It's just as good, if not better than the first.

5/5

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