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Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2023 film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Story
I love series. Most of the books I write are series. This didn’t have any resolution for Miles and that made it feel like half a story and not a full movie on its own. Honestly, for a movie called Spider-man he’s the character who get the 4th amount of story after the Spider-verse, Gwen, and Spot. I loved Gwen’s story, but it felt half-baked.
The movie was hurt by having way too much exposition.
The concept of the Spider-Verse and “cannon events” took so much time to get to a point that all the other stories felt rushed.
Score: 0
Characters
The arc for Miles was interesting. I like that he’s more confident and just because the others arrive in his life again, he doesn’t revert to a useless child. He’s confident in his abilities, his morals, and manages to outwit the villains. His personal story of trying to tell his parents and coming to terms with being the only spider-man in his world is barely explored. Hopefully in the next movie.
There was a nice heartfelt moment for Gwen and I really felt for her and loved the parallels between hers and Miles’s story. While his feels lost in the movie, hers feels rushed.
Vampire-angst Spidey is either the dumbest anti-hero or a terrifying villain. We’ll see.
Spider-punk deserves his own series and feels like one of the only reasons the plot moves past all the exposition in the 2/3rds mark.
Score: 1
Dialogue
The dialogue, outside the exposition, is quippy and fun. Lots of great lines and the characters really play off each other well. Watching Gwen and Miles talk while web swinging was wonderful. Unfortunately, they didn’t use that style with the bigger bits of exposition.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
I’m going to be nit-picky here and say that the animation isn’t as good as the first one. The first had clear crisp animation with amazing visuals. This one tried to cut corners by forcing our eyes with blurry backgrounds. It’s still absolutely gorgeous but instead of enhancing the scenes it often distracted from them. The pastel world of Gwen had both kids asking why her hair kept changing colours.
The music was excellent and made a great bridge between the first and second.
Score: 0.5
Fun
The action was great and both kids enjoyed it. The rest of the family found it fun. I’m familiar with the multi-verse concept (BECAUSE I WATCHED THE FIRST MOVIE) so I found the excessive explanations… well, excessive.
Score: 0.5
Overall
It’s great to catch up with old friends. The characters are there, but their story is rushed for extra explanations and world building. The movie is beautiful and fun but isn’t done, and suffers from not giving the audience any resolution.
Final Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5