Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse (Review)
Chai tea? Chai means "tea"! You are saying "tea tea"!
Since we’re once again talking about the multiverse, let us scroll our minds back to the halcyon days of June 2017. It was in that gentle, pre-pandemic summer that news broke that Phil Lord and Chris Miller had been fired from Solo, the Han Solo prequel Star Wars film. Lord and Miller, who had come up in animation but made names for themselves with the 21 Jump Street films, had a reputation as directors who could make bad ideas very good. Jump Street was an example. The Lego Movie was another. Maybe Solo would actually be good, despite common sense. But now, they were fired. What had happened? Had their golden run come to a sudden, shocking halt?
Except, now that they had the time on their hands, they were able to refocus their attention on a couple animation projects they were producing at Sony. One would become Mitchells vs the Machines, my personal favourite film of 2021. But more immediately was a film that Lord had co-written. A film that, when it was announced, was met with tepid neutrality. See, Sony had acquired the theatrical rights to Spider-man back in the nineties, and in order to keep them from reverting back to Marvel (and now, Disney), they have to keep making Spider-man films. Except the Spider-man films had started to suck. And they kept rebooting the franchise. Movie goers were suffering Spider fatigue. In 2016, Marvel and Sony worked together to bring Peter Parker into the Avengers movies, but Sony wanted Spider-man for themselves. They greenlit every ill-conceived project based on every minor Spidey character and villain, some of which actually got made, in a desperate attempt to use Spider-man to prop up their IP machine and fight the colossal tide of Disney dominance.
Into the Spider-Verse, released in 2018, was one of those ill-conceived projects. An animated (ugh!) Spider-man movie (another one‽) about multiple universes (confusing!), focusing on an unknown-except-to-comic-readers character named Miles Morales? A Black Spider-man (that one brought out the racism inherent in the system)? Except, Lord and Miller have the Midas touch. They know how to take an idea that could be mismanaged, find the heart of the story, and then wrap that heart in ten feet of comedy. And instead of being saddled to the languishing corpse of the Star Wars franchise, they reinvigorated the public enthusiasm for an overworked IP, and reminded everyone that animation is transformative.
So, now it’s five years later and they have returned with a sequel. A sequel that in almost every respect matches or exceeds the quality, character, and pure aesthetic cinematic beauty of the original. Across the Spider-Verse is the wailing triumph that post-pandemic cinema needed. Where as movies like Top Gun: Maverick and Super Mario Bros have been successful, they have also been largely soulless. Made to be successful. Despite being a Spider-man film, there was no guarantee of success here. In the five years since Spider-Verse, we’ve now also began to suffer multiverse fatigue. There was every real chance that Into was a fluke, and that audiences wouldn’t come out for more from Miles. Except that Lord and Miller’s script, and directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson have created an item of singular beauty. A showcase of how to work within a system, with a piece of crass marketable IP, and make it unfettered art.
Across the Spider-Verse is, in fact, about how all art is valid. That there is no superiority between animation or live action, movies or television, comic books or novels, video games vs passive entertainment. That art exists despite those who don’t like it, because art exists in a multiverse, and if you don’t like one kind, you don’t have to become angry and try to destroy it. Art is larger than you, and you will not win that battle. What you can do is keep looking until you find the art that works for you. And while you are going on this personal, individual journey, all that art exists together, informing one another, working together and at odds, all for the sake of itself. There are tropes, and styles, and patterns, and some art is great because it follows those things. But not all art does, and those that don’t - that lack their canon events - aren’t lesser for it. They are unique, and no less valid. And artists certainly shouldn’t be fighting amongst themselves, claiming that they represent the best form of art and others should bow to them. And also, sometimes art is a horse that wears a mask to protect it’s secret identity.
If I had to nick pick, it’s that the comedy is less prevalent in Across than it was in Into. It’s still there, and Across is a funnier movie than you’ll find elsewhere at the box office right now. But I think that’s Lord and Miller recognizing that the audience is with them, and will go with them on what feels like a far more personal journey this time. Miles (Shameik Moore) is struggling against his parents, against his self doubt, and eventually against a multiverse of other Spider-peoples who are all trying to tell him what to do, in the way they want him to do it instead of trusting Miles to do his own thing and have it turn out. I suspect their experiences with LucasFilm informed some of those feelings. It’s also I suspect informed by every time they release a new animated film they have to relitigate if animation counts as good filmmaking (this despite the fact that movies are so augmented with computer animation now that most big budget films count as Roger Rabbits). So you feel the fight from the creators in Miles’ struggles against the system.
Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) gets considerably more screen time this time, to the movie’s boon. A character that is all too often sidelined as either girlfriend or victim has depth and pathos here. I would argue that the scenes between her and her police captain father are the best of the film. The emotional maturity on display in this film is something you don’t see in even the most white-guy-mid-life-crisis Pixar films. And sidelining Peter Parker, Spider-Ham and Spider-Noir from the first film in favour of Pavitr Prabhakar, Jessica Drew, and Spider-Punk is smart, as it leaves expectations behind and avoids rehashing what worked in the first one in favour of finding something new that works just as better. Even the use of the Spot as the film’s antagonist is smart, as it avoids reusing villains that are better known or have already featured in movies. The audiences comes to the Spot with nothing, and the film can use him however it likes.
The movie is achingly beautiful. While the first film was championed for it’s unique style, the animators here have gone for broke, filling every scene and every cell with as many animation style, flourishes, extensities, and experiments as it can muster, and it is a visual feast. The film is able and more than willing to make use of the medium - one with practically no limits - to do and accomplish things that no live action movie would dare, or could pull off and maintain credulity. But animation is a wonderland, and watching the backgrounds dissolve into watercolours as characters pour their hearts out touches your soul. To me, Across is not only a triumph of animation, but of cinema. It weaponizes and demonstrates the strengths and power of the medium, absorbing you and challenging you and inviting you into the screen. I once worked with someone who without hesitation said that movies could never be art on the level of the old masters, a ignorant statement I refused to engage with. But even if you personally don’t consider Top Gun: Maverick art, I would challenge you to describe Across the Spider-Verse as anything but. It is a masterpiece, undercut only the fact that it is a second in a trilogy, and thus cannot exist for itself, but must serve its successor as well.
Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse is in theatres now.
Give This A Watch
Across the Spider-Verse
Yeah, I’m breaking format. See this movie. See this movie in theatres. See it on the biggest screen you can find. See it in the environment that it was intended to be seen, in the way that best suits the craftwork of the artists who made it. Seeing it at home in six months is fine, but do yourself the favour: see it on a movie screen first.