Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

I looked at Into the Spider-Verse a few years late and with low expectations and I liked it a lot—don’t miss it, really. Then I went to this sequel shortly after it opened and with high expectations, and came away feeling a little meh, not least because it is obviously a bridge episode in a longer series, at least a trilogy. Ho-hum, getting tired of the big narrative arcs that feel big more for commercial reasons. Everything I liked in Into is basically still there in Across, but it wasn’t nearly as surprising this time. The effects are spectacular like fireworks, capable of burning into your retinas, figuratively speaking, I mean—high-contrast, colorful, very fast, and impressive. Already I’m seeing the colorful blurry ray used here (something multidimensional, I’m sure) showing up in memes. I also like the story of Miles Morales (voiced by Shemeik Moore), the Spider-Man who’s a Black kid from Brooklyn in a parallel universe. But they don’t lean into it as much here. Instead, it’s a lot of thunder and lightning about multiple dimensions and a multidimensional superhero / Spider-Man security team putting it all back in balance because otherwise we’d have to go through the Big Bang again, or something. Also rampant wisecracking, of course—it’s the Spider-Man brand to a certain degree so that’s always going to be there. It’s even the Marvel brand, come to think of it. And don’t think these characters don’t notice it and comment on it, because they do. The fights are too fast to follow but the action is rousing. One fun point here is all the Spider-Man variations mixed in with all the Spider-Man lore we know. So there’s a Lego Spider-Man, a horse Spider-Man (my favorite so far), Spider-Men previously seen in video games, a few Spider-Women, etc. And yes, there’s a brief scene where a cast of hundreds of Spider-Men are all standing in circles pointing at one another like the meme. That got a big reaction at the screening I saw. I can’t remember if it was in the first one too. The voice talent on hand is also impressive, though not necessarily particularly recognizable as such in the swift pace and clanging battles: Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy, Mehershala Ali, Kathryn Hahn, Oscar Isaac, Daniel Kaluuya, Ziggy Marley, Elizabeth Perkins, Jason Schwartzman, J.K. Simmons, ET freakin’ CETERA. So a big show and a reasonably good time and my first visit to a multiplex since the pandemic, but somehow, for me, just slightly underwhelming.