"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse": review

[WARNING: spoilers.]

2023's "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse" is the second animated superhero action flick in a trilogy that began with 2018's "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse." It features a slightly amped-up version of the phantasmagorical animation style that made the first movie so beloved. It's also got big hair, multiversal heroics, and a full dose of themes like family and friendship. It manages to be fascinating on a philosophical level, and yet with all of that going for it, I nevertheless came away with mixed feelings. In fact, I felt it necessary to watch the movie twice before writing this review. "Across the Spider-verse" is directed by a different three-man team this time: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson. It stars the voice talents of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Shea Whigham, Greta Lee, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali, and Oscar Isaac.

Gwen Stacy (Steinfeld) lives in the Earth-65 universe with her dad George (Whigham), a police officer soon to make captain. Some time ago, Gwen lost her friend Peter Parker when he drank a serum and turned into the Lizard, forcing Gwen to defeat him before she even realized the Lizard was in fact Peter. Gwen plays drums in a band but comes off as stand-offish and unable to share what's going on in her life. The same communication gap exists between her and her father, and in both cases, this is because Gwen is her universe's Spider-Woman (formerly Spider-Gwen). In the present day, Gwen finds herself dealing with a version of the Vulture, but from a universe where everything looks like drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. Unable to defeat the Vulture alone, Gwen gets help from two other alternate-universe Spider-People: Miguel O'Hara (Isaac) and the pregnant Jess Drew (Rae). As seen in the first movie, people who enter a different universe are subject to quantum decoherence, familiarly termed "glitching." Staying in a foreign universe for too long means death. Miguel O'Hara, leader of the Spider Society, has solved the glitching problem through the use of portal bracelets that allow for travel between universes while also preventing glitching. Miguel and Jess help Gwen defeat the Vulture and return him to his home universe. In the aftermath, Gwen's cop father finds her and is about to arrest her when Gwen finally reveals her identity to him. Miguel helps Gwen avoid arrest by allowing her to come with him and Jess back to Earth-928, the headquarters for the Spider Society and a nexus for the Spider-People from all over the multiverse (thus giving the movie a chance to provide a million Easter eggs to comic-savvy viewers who can identify all the Spider-People).

Meanwhile, on Earth-1610, Miles Morales (Moore) is dealing with the pressures of high school and imminent college. In the meantime, he runs up against a strange villain called the Spot (Schwartzman), a man covered in patchy black holes that allow for portaling to different places in one universe and—later on—to different universes. Spot doesn't seem like much of a villain to Miles at first, and he's offended when Miles fails to take him seriously. We eventually learn that Spot was involved in the development of the Alchemax particle collider from the first film, which allowed him to portal in a radioactive spider from Earth-42. This is the spider that bit Miles and gave him his Spider-powers. When Miles destroyed the collider in the previous film, scientist Johnathan Ohnn was caught in the explosion, and this is how he became the Spot—a man with no face and blotchy, black portals all over his body, forced into a life of crime because no one will accept him as he is. Spot blames Spider-Man/Miles for his transformation, and he is now determined to make himself into a more serious villain "worthy" of Spider-Man. As the Spot gains in strength, he becomes a multiversal threat who gets the attention of Miguel O'Hara and the rest of the Spider Society. Gwen is sent by O'Hara to Miles's universe to track the Spot, and she uses the opportunity to visit Miles. The two are sweet on each other, but Gwen is aware that, in all the other universes, Gwen falls for Spider-Man, but things never end well. This makes her cautious around Miles.

O'Hara, meanwhile, tells Miles his backstory, and in doing so, he introduces the movie's most important concept: the notion that, in every universe, Spider-Man's life story must follow a "canon." Certain story elements must always be in place, and when they aren't in place, that universe can unravel and disappear. O'Hara tells Miles that he found a universe in which another O'Hara had been killed, and he stepped into that universe to live that O'Hara's life. This was a life of normalcy, not superherodom: he had a daughter and was a regular dad, and life was blissful... until that universe came undone because of his intrusion into it. What O'Hara learned from that experience is that all the Spider-People must follow the canon. For many Spider-People, this means losing an Uncle Ben. For others, it means being at the side of a police captain when that captain dies (cf. Captain Stacy's death in Andrew Garfield's "The Amazing Spider-Man," which gets referenced in this movie). Miles realizes with horror that his own dad, Jeff (Henry), is about to become police captain, and what O'Hara is saying is that Miles's dad is doomed to die because that's the canon, and preventing Jeff's death will mean the unraveling of Miles's universe, the end of Earth-1610.

So Spider-Man must face the rising threat of the Spot while reckoning with the existential inevitability of being a Spider-Person in a Spider-verse that's governed by a narrative canon. And as is typical with all Spider-Man adventures, Miles must do this while dealing with the realities of being a talented inner-city teenager who's growing up faster than his parents want him to. Miles's mom Rio (Vélez) worries about her son, and she struggles with the need to let him spread his wings even while she wants to protect him from the harsh outside world—not knowing that her son is Spider-Man, fighting criminals on a daily basis.

There's a lot to like about "Across the Spider-verse." It brings up themes of family and friendship, fate and freedom, and this weird idea of canon as a sort of predestinational force. The movie is visually rich and sumptuous, leading us into several alternate universes aside from Earths 1610 (Miles), 928 (Spider HQ), and 65 (Gwen). We visit Earth-50101, home of resident Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar (Soni), who humorously schools Miles on not saying "chai tea" because you're basically saying "tea tea." (Ironically, Miles had scolded the Spot, earlier on, for saying "ATM machine" since "M" stands for "machine.") Pavitr is in love with Gayatri, daughter of police inspector Singh. When Miles saves Inspector Singh, Gwen gets an alert that Miles has disrupted a canon event: Inspector Singh was supposed to die in a disaster. With the canon of Earth-50101 now disrupted, and with the Spot sowing mayhem in that universe as well, that entire universe begins to unravel while a team from Spider Society HQ tries to deal with the problem. Miles also ends up on Earth-42, and he initially thinks he's back in his own universe. Earth-42 is where the spider that bit him came from, however, and in this universe, there is no Spider-Man. Miles finds his mom, Rio, but when he confesses to her that he's Spider-Man, she expresses confusion: "Who's Spider-Man?" This is how Miles begins to realize he's ended up in the wrong universe, and as he looks around at the city, which is in flames, he understands that there's no superhero here to protect the place. He also discovers that, on Earth-42, his uncle Aaron (Ali) is still alive, but he isn't the Prowler as he was in Miles's home universe: in this universe, Aaron plays second fiddle to the real Prowler, who is none other than this universe's Miles Morales.

So, with all of this interesting stuff going on in terms of visuals, themes, and plot twists, what was it that bothered me about this movie? All the other critics have gone gaga over it, and yet, something about the film left me cold. I've been trying to put my finger on the problem over the past few days, and it may come down to a few things. First, the visuals are awesome but relentless, and I think I'm at that old, crotchety phase of my life where I don't want to be subjected to what feels like continuous bursts of lighting, repeatedly, and for minutes on end. The action sequences in this movie all have that flash and dazzle about them, and the net effect is tiring as hell for this old brain. Second, we have to come back to the problem of multiversal narratives. If, in the previous movie, you have one Kingpin creating a collider to portal into other universes, why isn't there an infinity of Kingpins doing the same thing, all needing to be dealt with by an infinity of Spider-Men? Multiverses suck all the meaning and suspense out of a story because you know that, in some other universe, everything is hunky-dory. And, really, why should I care about the net positivity and negativity of the multiverse? For all I know, the totality of badness and goodness all balances out in some way. Or maybe it doesn't, but who can be bothered to adopt a God's-eye perspective and worry about that? I have enough problems right here, in my own universe. And as much as I'm fascinated by the idea of narrative as ontology, story as the existential force guiding the universes, I have to wonder how workable or sensible the idea is in practice. For example: if the multiverse only holds together because the Spider-People's lives follow a canon, how did the universe hold together before there were any Spider-People at all? Or have there always been Spider-Beings from the beginning? (I'm now imagining Spider-Microbes from billions of years ago, web-slinging through primordial sludge.) From the little I understand of the comic-book Spider-verse, it eventually turns out that the 'verse is ruled over by a Spider-Goddess, which makes the whole "canon" thing make sense, but which also renders the entire Spider-Man multiverse somewhat hokey. Why does Marvel constantly expand its stories until we're at the level of gods and multiverses (DC, too)? In the planned sequel to this movie, "Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-verse," will Miles finally meet the Spider-Goddess? I'm already cringing at the idea of a simple kid from Brooklyn having a Moses-like theophanic moment.

Those complaints aside, there's plenty to like about "Across the Spider-verse." Perhaps you'll like it more than I did. The movie has a heart, and the action scenes are intercut with moments of quiet (or even menacing) dialogue. As the cliché goes with certain animated films, this is a movie in which every single frame could be made into a poster. A lot of it is genuinely beautiful, like the moment when Gwen and Miles use their Spider-powers to sit upside-down under a ledge while staring quietly out at New York, making the skyscrapers look like the reflections you'd see if a lake were there. One memorable character is Hobie (Kaluuya), an anarchic, punk-rock throwback to the 70s and early 80s who is something of a wild card in the story, undermining the idea that everything must follow a canon. Miles takes inspiration from Hobie and realizes he needs to forge his own story.  A lot of thought and effort obviously went into the making of this film, and I can respect all that raw talent. The film didn't quite touch my heart, but I can see its merits. I'll give "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse" a cautious thumbs-up, but if you're an older viewer like me, prepare to be exhausted by the end.

You might also find yourself thinking that the Spot sounds a lot like Deadpool.