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.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

It's one thing to tell big immersive stories, but comic book narratives for decades now and increasingly TV shows too inevitably run into continuity problems. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want the drama and gravitas of killing off an important character, for example, but you don't want to lose the character forever. And you don't have to! Haven't all the major DC and Marvel comic book franchises "erased their work and started over" numerous times now? Silver age DC used to solve this with the "Imaginary Tale" (and Marvel eventually followed with its "What If" series) but nobody liked this solution. Lately the vast reaches of outer space and potentially infinite "other" dimensions have offered another possibility. This Spider-Man treatment takes a page from the Green Lantern plot, in which it was eventually revealed that Hal Jordan is not the only Green Lantern, there is a virtual army of them across the universe, patrolling home planets and vulnerable to the color yellow (which—isn't green an amalgamation of yellow and blue?). Now we learn, in this dazzling animated feature of a few years ago, that Peter Parker is not the only Spider-Man but there is an army of Spider-Beings across parallel dimensions (full disclosure, I can't speak to any sources in comic books because I don't follow any comic book anymore, not even Spider-Man, an old favorite but from a long time ago). Into the Spider-Verse is here to yuk it up over an existential crisis across a widening dimensional gyre portal opened up thanks to the Kingpin (so massive his head appears to be mysteriously located on his sternum). There's a host of fancy web-slingin' and some nice coming-of-age notes too as a Black kid from Brooklyn, a new Spider-Man in an alternate dimension, assumes the mantle and learns the ropes, so to speak. It's quite entertaining, bursting at will into impossibly fast pinging comic book action, and also capable of some impressive psychedelic effects to suggest interdimensionality and such. There's also approximately one metric fuck-ton of wisecracking, random comic book graphic devices such as splashy sound effects words, a Stan Lee cameo (albeit animated and note not "reanimated" as he was still alive at the time this movie was made), and some ingenious reimagining of Spider-Things, including Great Depression noir, anime, and Warner Brothers cartoon versions. Example of wisecracking: Spider-Ham (the WB version, which attacks with a giant wooden mallet), near the end: "That's all, folks." Peter B. Parker: "Is he allowed to say that? Legally?" Ha-ha-ha. On the nose again! Sometimes I think the entire Marvel universe was derived from one performance by Robert Downey Jr., but let's not get started on the MCU. I'm not even sure exactly what I'm doing here. Everyone else has no doubt already made up their minds about this picture and the MCU franchise at large, not to mention specifically Spider-Man. You don't need me telling you Into the Spider-Verse is worth a look even if the continuity is obviously too much for newbies to fathom. It's like dropping into an episode in the middle of a TV series. Everything may seem intensely great but you obviously don't understand everything; much is over your head because you haven't done your hours and hours and hours of TV-watching homework. I say never mind how this one fits into the Spider-Man universe. Enjoy the psychedelics and another good nod to Black culture.