Film Review: Spider-Man - Across the Spider-Verse

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a movie that hit my by surprise.  In the comics, Miles Morales is incredibly lame and his stories are horribly unexciting.  So when they made a movie about him, I was less than enthusiastic.  However, I was blown away by the bold, exciting, and powerful film that they made and because of that I was very excited to see the sequel.

Based on my conversations with others who have seen it and the reaction online, I think my take will be contrary to the majority opinion:

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is not that good.

Don't get me wrong, it is not a bad movie.  In fact, it has some truly amazing parts.  

But sequels to successful films usually end up in one of three places:

a. playing it safe and being too repetitive (e.g. Iron Man 2)

b. getting full of itself and going overboard with creative freedom and budget (The Matrix sequels)

c. taking everything good in the first, but bringing to a whole new level (The Empire Strikes Back).

Across the Spider-Verse wants to be like Empire, but it ends up more like The Matrix sequels.

The story begins about a year after Into the Spider-Verse.  We begin with a LONG prologue with Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), stuck in her universe and at odds with her police captain father (Shea Whigham).  During a fight, she encounters other Spider Heroes like Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac) and Jessica Drew (Issa Rae), who invite her to a multiversal Spider-Team.  Meanwhile, Miles (Shameik Moore) is still stuck in his universe, where is father Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) and his mother Rio (Luna Lauren Velez) are trying plan for his future while he spends most of his time secretly fighting crime.  This tension provides much of the character drama.  Miles tangles with a seemingly incompetent villain named "The Spot" (Jason Schwartzman), whose power and danger grow throughout the film.  Eventually Miles finds his way into a multiverse-hopping adventure that will test his courage and his moral code.

The best part of this movie is once again how they handle Miles.  He is not Peter Parker and that is fine.  Miles' experience resonates on a universal level with the coming-of-age stories and sense of alienation from family that occurs in adolescents.  He has wit and charm, but he is complicated.  And I love the fact that he is written like a teenager.  Granted he is an heroic teenager, but there are some maturities that only come with age that Miles lacks.  Instead of this making the character more annoying, it instead makes us all relate to that time in our lives when we were in his shoes.

But the movie has a stylistic problem and a structure problem.

Into the Spider-Verse had such a bold and original visual dynamic that it felt like it was going to pop off of the screen, even without 3D.  The problem with this movie is that they crank that up to 11.  There are times when the movie needs a moment to breath and let the tone settle.  But it feels like directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson had a philosophy that they should never uses a simple shot when a complex one can be used.  Backgrounds are constantly shifting and change, the camera often never settles down.  As a result, the moments that should visually blow your mind get lost in a cacophony of over-stimulation.  As I mentioned in my review of Fast X, the action scenes go on WAY too long and slowly sour into tedium.  Overall, it feels less like a dedication to beauty than it feels like the film makers showing off.

But the bigger problem is structural.  It is very difficult to explain without spoilers so be warned:

SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE'S PLOT WILL BE DISCUSSED BELOW

The central conflict of the movie is a fascinating one.  

According to Miguel, there are "canon events" in the lives of every Spider-Hero across the multiverse.  For example, all of them have a relative who dies and teaches them a lesson of heroism.  But these canon events also involve the death of a police captain, usually Gwen Stacy's father.  But in Miles' universe, his father is about to become captain and is thus destined to die.  If he does not, then there is a risk that the entire universe will collapse.  Miguel says that he took the place of a dead Miguel O'Hara in another universe.  But because he changed things too much, that universe was destroyed.

The Spider-Heroes accept this.  That is, except for Miles.  

Miles refuses to stand by and let his father die, even if it means risking the universe.  This leads to some high-stakes drama and action.

So where is the structural problem?

Its in that the story makes you side with Miles too much.  He clearly has made the "right" choice, even though it is not that easy.  Part of the problem is how they portray Miguel.  He is clearly the bad guy.  He hulks over the other Spider-Heroes and carries with him an aspect of malevolence.  You cannot really appreciate his position.

I don't like Monday-Morning-Quarterbacking someone else's story, but the movie makes a big mistake in focusing so much on Gwen in the first 20 minutes on Gwen.  First of all, it is a mistake to think that she is as big of a draw as Miles is.  She is a fantastic supporting character, but she is not the lead.  If they were going to do a prologue, they should have done it with Miguel in the story he described about losing that universe.  If the film makers got you to carry about Miguel's new family and then make you feel their loss right at the beginning, then you would understand Miguel completely.  It would also force you to confront your feelings about Miles.

The movie also has a big problem in that it doesn't have an ending.  Back to the Future 2 and Matrix Reloaded also end abruptly with little resolution.  But there was clear preparation for the fact that these movies were made with another sequel prepared.  Across the Spider-Verse does not prepare you for this.  Thus it ends too abruptly, without enough resolution to make for an emotionally satisfying payoff.  Perhaps it will work out in the third movie, but because I did not know that going in to this film, it feels like the rug is pulled out from under you.

And I'm not sure why we have to wait until the third movie.  At 2 hours and 20 minutes, this movie feels horribly padded.  It feels like they could have easily lost an hour.  Yet even with this extra time, some things still feel too abrupt.  For example, Miles shares a few seconds of conversation with Spider-Byte (Amandla Stenberg) and a few scenes later we are to believe that she would suddenly turn against everyone else to help him.  But as I mentioned above, the film makers are clearly reveling in their newfound freedom.  And some of their choices are odd.  For example, Jessica Jones is fighting as a pregnant superhero.  This is incredibly unsettling, especially in scenes when Miguel must tangle with her.  Who thought this was a good idea?  And Spot is a horrible let-down of a villain from the mountainous Kingpin from the previous film.

Thematically, I love the themes of family, belonging, love, and sacrifice.  These work best especially when they are put in conflict with each other.  Online there have been people insisting that Gwen is trans.  There really isn't any evidence of this in the film.  She has a "Protect Trans Kids" flag in her room.  But the film makers also took it upon themselves to fill the movie with tons of not-so-subtle political messaging.  It doesn't make the movie bad, but it keeps breaking the spell that it is trying to cast on you.  Once you introduce real-world politics 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is not a bad movie, despite these flaws.  Instead, it simply fails to live up to the hope and promise of the first film.  It loses itself in its own style and structure.  I am hopeful that it can find itself again in the next movie.