Movies
It’s Incredible. Plain And Simple.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) is fucking outstanding. Plain and simple.
“Miles Morales catapults across the multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. When the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles must redefine what it means to be a hero.”
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Writers: Dave Callaham, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Stars: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfield, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, Jake Johnston, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzmann, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Karen Soni, Shea Whingham, Greta Lee, Mahershala Ali, Amandla Stenberg, Jharrel Jerome, Andy Samberg, Jack Quaid, Rachel Dratch, Ziggy Marley, Jorma Taccone, J.K. Simmons, Donald Glover…and more…
Release: June 2, 2023
IMDB
Yes, I know I am late to the party. I am like Miles Morales in that way, so don’t be angry at me.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) is fucking outstanding. Plain and simple. Across the Spider-Verse is not just an outstanding follow-up to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018), it’s one of the greatest superhero movies…ever. Is that fair to say? Across The Spider-Verse is the best superhero movie since Logan (2017) and has inserted its name on the shortlists of best sequels ever.
Why did it take me so long to get to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? In all honesty, it was superhero fatigue. There was immense trepidation about the idea of another multiverse story. Frankly, the Marvel dimensional traveling adventures have not been good. So many interconnected stories branching different media had my head spinning, and when I finally got the cinematic adventures, the majority were underwhelming to say the least. My patience with the genre was at zero, so much so that Across The Spider-Verse was pushed to the backburner.
Thankfully I grabbed an oven mitt and dragged this boiling adventure before my desire to watch it got too burnt. Across The Spider-Verse is not just a five-star (*nearly*) meal that fulfills every desire, it’s also fucking inspirational. Sure, the story itself is uplifting in its own way, but Across The Spider-Verse has a magic to it that can make even the most cynical movie watcher drop his red pen and fall in love with pure entertainment once again. It doesn’t matter if the Marvel quantity-over-quality sickness has vice-gripped your loins. Across The Spider-Verse is the chicken soup to the weary movie watchers soul.
The movie throws the audience on its heels right from the jump. We don’t start off with our titular hero, instead its Gwn Stacy (Halilee Steinfield) as Spider-Women on Earth-65 saving the day from a version of Vulture (Jorma Taccone). The battle ends up getting grand when a vampiric version of Spider-Man by the name of Miguel O’Hare (Oscar Isaac), alongside biker Spider-Woman (Issa Rae) come to aid Gwen in her battle. The prologue ends with the new characters inviting Gwen into the Spider-Society, but only after Gwen’s father George (Shea Whigham) attempts to arrest his daughter after she reveals herself as the webslinger she is.
What’s the Spider-Society? Good question. It’s an elite strike force made up of Spider-Man from seemingly infinite universes all dedicated to the security of the universe.
On Earth-1610, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is doing his best to balance his normal life and secret life, but the stress is starting to wear him and his parents out. It’s been 16 months since the climatic events of Into The Spider-Verse and he has yet to reveal his alter-ego to his parents, Morales encounters a consequence of the Alchemax Collider explosion, and he calls himself The Spot (Jason Schwartzmann). This former scientist blames his erratic ability to portal in and out of areas on Spider-Man, meaning that the loss of his job, life,family and face is all the high-flying costume wearer’s fault.
After a brief encounter, The Spot accidently enters a sort of dimensional purgatory where he learns to travel to different dimensions. Such a power is an intoxicating thought for The Spot, and he makes it his point to travel to whatever universes have Alchemax Colliders to make himself more powerful.
The tangle between Spider-Man and The Spot on Earth-1610 draws the attention of the Spider-Society, which means that Gwen gets to travel and see what’s happening. The young woman’s priorities are a bit out of whack as she makes a bee-line for her friend and begins telling him about the situation she has found herself in. Miles is now reeling mentally having learned about this group of fellow Spider-People he is not in while trying to communicate effectively with his parents Jeff (Brian Tyree Henry) and Rio (Lauren Vélez) and attempting to be cool with his crush’s surprise drop in. Such is the day in the life of a superhero teenager.
While Gwen and Miles and getting reaccumulated to one-another, The Spot has gained more power and inter-dimensional portal jumping is becoming easier for the unstable lunatic. Gwen has to jettison to Earth-50101 to attempt and stop The Spot, but Miles secretly follows her and together they team up with Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni) and Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) against The Spot.
The final moments of the battle include Miles Morales saving the life of Police Inspector Singh, who is the father of Pavitr’s girlfriend. Morales thinks he has done the honorable thing, but what he doesn’t understand is that his involvement has created a seismic quake in Earth-50101 known as a “canon-event”.
The quartet of Spider-Man all travel to the home of the Spider-Society and are summoned by Miguel, the de facto leader of the dimensional protecting group. Miles’ cheery optimistic mood is quickly stomped out when Miguel begins explaining to the young hero that each of the Spider-People share crucial events that are shared throughout variations and dimensions. These links between everyone’s various stories are known as “canon-events”, and when they are disturbed, fractures begin occurring that could collapse the entire multiverse.
Here is when it clicks for Miles. He saved a police chief who was meant to die and that had horrendous side effects. On Earth-1610, Miles’ dad is about to be promoted to police captain in two days, which means the next chapter in his father’s story is going to be the last. Miles wants to jump out of his shoes to save his father, but Miguel is dead set on making sure that can not happen. The vampiric asshole with a just cause also shares the earth-shattering truth that Miles was never supposed to be a Spider-Man. The spider that bit Miles in Into The Spider-Verse was from a different earth, Earth-42, meaning Earth-42 doesn’t have a hero to save it.
So begins a breathtaking chase throughout Spider-Society where Miles must evade the capture of every version of Spider-Man you can possibly imagine. Miles, fueled by a desire to save his father and fire to prove he isn’t a mistake, does all he can to evade being chained down while there is still a chance he can do something. Aided a tad by an old friend Peter Parker (Jake Johnston), Miles is able to make his way to the Spider-Society’s “Go-Home” machine that sends Spider-People and dimensional anomalies back to their rightful universe.
The machine hums to life, but it does not send Niles home. It sends Miles to Earth-42, the home of the spider that bit him.
Earth-42 is 180 degree mood swing from where Miles intended to go. The first switcheroo is Miles coming face-to-face with his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), and that’s followed by the knowledge that his father is dead. Seeing his father figures roles reversed, Miles is further dragged out onto the ledge when he sees that Earth-42 is rampant with crime, and a mysterious entity known only as The Prowler is behind much of the panic. The ultimate mind-fuck comes when Miles is restrained by his uncle Aaron and left helpless as The Prowler approaches him and takes off his mast. Miles of Earth-1610 finds himself looking…himself. In Earth-42, Miles Morales is The Prowler.
The Spider-Society is searching for Miles, hoping to catch him before he does any more harm to the multiverse. Gwen, who has been kicked out of the city, reconciles with her father quick, and then forms a search party consisting of Peter B,, Mayday, Pavitr, Hobie, Margo Kess, Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker, and Spider-Ham to search for Miles Morales.
WHAT A FUCKING MOVIE! Take a deep breath.
What makes Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse better than many other superhero movies? It isn’t about the heroes themselves. The characters of Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker and even Miguel are defined by their personality traits and not by the skills or capabilities they have. The stories each version of Spider-Man has are unique, and its rather remarkable that there is such care to make all characters so personal while also having the “Cannon Event” be such an integral part of the story.
The screenwriters Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham also raise the fair question as to whom this story is really about. Is this Miles’ story, or is it Gwen’s story? The fact that both answers can be correct is a great testament to the story itself. We begin and end Across The Spider-Verse with Gwen. Her story is about being accepted into somewhere she never thought she would find, while Miles is attempting to find out where he belongs and is denied entry or acceptance.
THe concept of dueling identities seems to be a theme this year among many of the best movies.
You have Miles Morales here, being part of Earth-1610 but having abilities given to him from Earth-42. Miles is an erratic son to his parents, but the web-slinging hero to a different sort of family.
Think about Past Lives (2023) with Nora having to dance delicately between the life she is living and the one she could have had with Hae Sung in Korea. This is a cultural battle for Nora, but there are also the puppet strings of a long lost friendship that stretches to potential romance. Nora has to wave through the emotions of different possible lives and eventually make a choice.
What about Maestro (2023)? Leonard Bernstein is living two lives, the one that the public sees and the one that his wife knows and understands. There are often times that Leonard blurs the line and it creates friction in his life, but it’s that balancing act that infuses his art with his hyper energy. There is the stage Leonard that he acts out to the public audience, and then there is the backstage no make-up version who is far more fragile.
Let’s slightly read into American Fiction (2023), which has the character Monk pretending to be someone he isn’t to prove a point, only to find that his fictional persona is more profitable than his true-to-life stubborn self. American Fiction shines a light on the stress of pretending to be two people, especially when one of the performances is something you despise.
Maybe you could throw in Anatomy Of A Murder (2023) as well, which is playing on two ideas: Innocent or Guilty.
Dueling identities and the inner task of trying to understand oneself seems to have been on the mind of many of the best screenwriters during the year 2023.
Alright, back to Across The Spider-Verse.
I have to credit Sean Fennessey of The Big Picture podcast when he said that Across The Spider-Verse is equivalent to Star Wars: Episode V – An Empire Strikes Back (1980). Both movies crank up everything about their predecessor. The stakes are higher, the action is grander and in the end, the bad guys win. When the credits are rolling, our hero is tied up and being confronted by a version of himself he never thought he’d see.
What, the idea of a hero seeing himself behind a mask of pure evil? That hasn’t been done before. Oh wait, Luke Skywalker on Dagobah when he is training with Yoda. That exact thing happens.
The last 10 minutes of Across The Spider-Verse are goosebump inducing. The way that the visuals and writing allow for the audience to slowly unfurl what’s happening is, simply put, great filmmaking. In a movie stuffed with outstanding visuals and exhilarating action set pieces, it’s the story that leaves the last knockout blow. It’s the characters and their predicaments that have you gripping at the edge of your seat and screaming at the screen at the end.
Across The Spider-Verse doesn’t end with the massive CGI fight sequence and a hurried tie-it-all-in-a-bow ending. It simultaneously acts as a great closing moment for this one story, but also a dramatic intermission in the overall arc. Who knows what’s going to happen to Miles, Gwen and all the other compatriots? And let’s not forget that The Spot is still out there wrecking dimensions and becoming even more powerful.
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse is filled with a robust voice cast whose talent matches the remarkable visual accomplishments. It’s safe to that that this style of filmmaking is new and nothing like anyone has seen. Hell, even Phil Lord and Christopher Miller didn’t know what it’d take to make the movie. In the end Sony had to hire the largest cast ever for an animated film. Over 1,000 people worked to create the 240 unique characters and six different universes visited. It was an arduous task, one that nearly went down to the buzzer in terms of final cut before release date.
It doesn’t matter how late you hand in the project if the final product is this good. Across The Spider-Verse is a rip-roaring superhero movie that absolutely blows away expectations and hesitations. The non-stop action is matched by the film’s crazy heart, and each facet is propelled by an OUTSTANDING music score composed by Daniel Pemberton.
There were a few Oscar snubs that got attention when the nominations were announced, and Across The Spider-Verse deserves to be in the basket of most overlooked when it comes to Original Score. The whole movie is like an electric shock to the system, and the constant vibrations leaking from whatever audio setup you have helps one get carried away tenfold.
Dare I say, Across The Spider-Verse also deserved attention in Best Film Editing, and most assuredly, Best Picture. In the end, the picture has the chance to take home just one Academy Award, Best Animated Feature. Spidey’s steepest competition is The Boy And The Heron and the web-slinger isn’t just taking on another story, but also the reputation of Hayao Miyazaki. This is potentially the last film Miyazaki is making (at least rumored), so the Academy may love the symmetry of bookmarking his career with an Oscar win seeing how he won for his first nomination with Spirited Away (2002) in 2003.
Regardless if it takes home any hardware or not, Spider-Man: Across The Universe gets a rousing standing ovation for reinvigorating my personal enjoyment in superhero films. The movie proves that compelling storytelling can still be a part of this fading genre. It gets a whole-hearted endorsement and everyone should tune into Netflix to watch it as fast as they can.
STANKO RATING: A
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