I was one of the few skeptics when it came to the first Spider-verse animated film, the Oscar-winning 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I thought got too much credit for interesting animation and some great cameos but still adhered too much to the traditional superhero fight scenes to resolve its plot. However, this year’s sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is a banger. Not only do I think it’s going to end up the best animated film of the year*, it might be one of the best of all time.
* I haven’t seen The Boy and the Heron yet, and that’s already won some best-of-2023 awards as well.
We return to the story of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino boy bitten by a radioactive spider, who discovers there’s a whole multitude of spiderpeople and even spideranimals throughout the multiverse, including Gwen Stacy, who we saw in the first film, along with some new characters who have formed a sort of transdimensional guild to try to maintain the various timelines and prevent the multiverse from collapsing. This film, like the first one, doesn’t worry too much about the cosmological implications and focuses on the story and characters – actually, it does better with the characters than the first film did – and plunges Miles right into a complex story that has some fight scenes but relies far more on character development. There’s a villain, The Spot, who of course has a very personal beef with the titular hero, although as the story progresses he fades somewhat into the background of the plot. If anything, it’s more of a mystery than a typical superhero plot, as something is wrong with the timelines and Miles is in a unique position to find out what’s going on.
The animation in the first Spider-Verse film was different from that in most animated films, mixing some hand-drawn elements with CGI, dubbed “2.5D” animation because it combined the 3D style of computer animation with the 2D style of traditional hand-drawn work. The innovation didn’t go beyond that, however, and at times it became a little tiring to watch because my eyes would struggle to figure out the perspective. This film really perfects the method, though, and both enhances it to give it that comic-book-plus feel while also exploring different artistic styles – each instance of the multi-verse, and each Spider-entity that hails from it, gets its own unique look and feel, making the entire endeavor a visual feast unlike any animated film I can remember. It’s not the ultra-realism of Pixar’s computer wizardry, nor the artistic marvels of Miyazaki’s work, but a cornucopia of colors, styles, and textures that would alone make the movie worth watching.
The story, however, is miles ahead – pun intended – of its predecessor. That film set up the main character, but the plot was garden-variety superhero stuff. We’ll have to see if the writers stick the landing in the sequel, but the story here is much richer, with more complexity to Miles’ character, some more depth to Gwen’s, and a plot that doesn’t depend on beating the bad guy up – in fact, they try that and it doesn’t work terribly well. I didn’t see the ending and cliffhanger coming, although I may be unusual in that bit, and even so I don’t think it would have altered my appreciation of the plot up to that point anyway. There’s some “how will he ever get out of this?” to it, but that part is uninteresting – of course he’s getting out of it – relative to the broader stories of how they’ll repair the timeline and stop the Spot. (An aside: Jason Schwartzman voices the Spot, and might have the best performance among the voice actors in the film. On top of his strong performance in Asteroid City, he’s fighting to change the opinion I’ve held of him since turning off Rushmore 20 minutes into it.)
My daughter, who has been a big MCU fan for years (although that’s tapering off), absolutely loved this movie other than the cliffhanger and long wait for the final installment, for almost all of the same reasons I did: the clever story, the two interesting characters, and the wildly innovative animation. I assume it’s going to win the big Best Animated Feature prizes this winter, although The Boy and the Heron might get a boost as Miyazaki’s farewell film (maybe), and I can’t argue with that. It’s at least a lot more deserving of the honors than the first film.