Review: Spider-Man - Across The Spider-Verse

Spider-Man:
Across The Spider-Verse
Cert: PG / 134 mins / Dir. Joaquim Dos Santos / Trailer

It's an odd one alright. I complain quite vociferously about the lack of new available content at my local 'small' five-screen cinema, while simultaneously seeming to ignore popular mainstream releases which should by all accounts be right up my alley. There are fatigue-related reasons that Sony's new Spider-Man movie opened at the beginning of June and it's taken me six weeks to get round to watching it.

While I didn't actively dislike its predecessor Into The Spider-Verse, the film was definitely saddled with the burden of being Sony's Spider-Man rather than Marvel's one. And Sony's output is increasingly like a 1980s pop band touring provincial venues with only one original member, and they're not even the best part of the band but they are somehow the one who won the legal rights to use the name. The 2018 animated feature was too long, too messy, too loud and with too much shit thrown at the wall in an attempt to make something stick.

With all this in mind then, I can confidently report that Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse is at least tonally consistent as a sequel.

MILES

The storyline follows on from last time, with Earth-1610's Miles Morales being back in his own world and struggling to find a trajectory as he nears the end of high school while moonlighting as Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Earth-65's Gwen Stacy battles with her own issues as Spider-Woman, living with a father who's unaware of her secret identity and determined to catch 'The Spider' for the murder of Peter Parker. But when a Renaissance version of The Vulture starts tearing through the multiverse, the multiversal 'Spider-Society' is tasked to stop him - which will mean reluctantly recruiting Morales to help...

In theory this is all fine; in practice it's too much simultaneous Content™ again. Visuals which would look outstanding for a three-minute music video become utterly exhausting over two hours. Each and every frame here is a work of art, they just make no sense when they're strung together too maniacally to keep track of. There's more detail than the eye can follow through the film's hyperactive editing, and the whole thing turns into the visual equivalent of white noise. Ironically for a film this active, it creates a soporific effect as the brain starts to shut down rather than keep attempting to process the information. Perhaps I just need to watch it on a smaller screen.

Part of the USP with the animation is that its art style is constantly changing, often within the same scene. Initially it seems to be doing this to reflect the character whose point-of-view we're experiencing, but scenes later in the movie only feature two people yet cycle through half a dozen looks. This precocious presentation results in a film which feels like watching a group of first-year art students have a collective seizure. Elsewhere, earnest and spirited vocal performances are rendered unintelligible by an atrocious sound-mix, poorly placed over intrusive, percussive soundtracking. And since around 60% of the dialogue here is catch-up exposition, Across The Spider-Verse basically has to be enjoyed (...) as a visual experience.

GINA

My real problem is bigger than all of this, though. The following is not limited to Spider-Verse, but certainly includes it. Put simply, multiverses are hands-down the worst thing to have happened to superhero cinema, and that's only getting more problematic. The concept works in print where the possibilities and limitations can be explored at a more careful pace (indeed, with comics it becomes needed as characters are relaunched for evolving audiences after years of literary service; multiverses allow for a soft-reboot), and I've admittedly enjoyed it at certain points previously. But the cinematic iteration of the superhero-multiverse has fast become the equivalent of 3D, a knee-jerk fad to be ordered at an executive level in lieu of creativity. And it's already on its arse.

As well as encouraging filmmakers to overindulge in distracting cameos and needless fan-service, the open-ended structure of parallel realities means that narrative decisions in one movie can be ret-conned, undone or just flat out ignored in the next (yes I'm looking at you, Gamora). When consequence is removed from the storyline then none of it matters on an emotional level, and cinema is supposed to be about empathy. But hey, why mine for a deeper pulse when you can just make the whole thing bigger and louder with more slightly-different versions of the same thing*¹? Audiences know by this point not to expect restraint from corporations desperately trying to keep their intellectual property fresh, and the race for More Stuff™ has become just as repetitive as the origins-formula it was trying to supersede.

Even more ironically with Across The Spider-Verse, Miles Morales (and by extension, the whole audience) gets a whole lecture about 'canon events' - concurrences which need to take place across every iteration of the hero's life (here it's the death of Uncle Ben, or equivalent guardian in each timeline), otherwise their path will be too different from all the other spider-heroes and things will become too unpredictable. What this deftly - if unintentionally - illustrates is that Sony are happy to bring in about a hundred different Spider-Mans from all the corners of the property they've got the rights to but are too afraid to do anything different with the character. Spidey's backstory is permanently locked into our pop culture at the same level as Bruce Wayne's, meaning nothing can be changed on a fundamental level without Sony taking a massive gamble in pissing off the legacy fanbase and also not enticing new viewers. In other worse, Spider-Man is precisely the wrong character with which to explore the multiverse. Well done, guys.

DICKIE

Truth be told, when Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse slows down and actually concentrates on its character-work, it is pretty superb. But the fact that this only happens twice in over two hours means that the film, on the whole, isn't. A textbook example of Style Over Substance. In all honesty, it feels like I'm done*².

All I really want out of Spider-Man is a third Andrew Garfield flick to close out his trilogy, and a new set of live-action movies for Miles Morales where possibilities can be broadened. And what are Sony bringing to the table instead? How are they maximising on their end of an historic deal from Marvel currently enjoyed by no other studio? With shit-Dracula and shit-Tarzan. We get the protagonists we deserve.

To make matters worse, I just know that Me in some other part of the multiverse is enjoying the good stuff...

*¹ "more slightly-differing versions of the same thing" is, to be fair, Marvel's entire cinematic business-model. And I have to admit it's done them well for at least the first ten years of the MCU... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² It's worth noting of course that this is Sony's mess, not that of Marvel Studios. But Marvel's name is on the can and they signed off on this - they do have that veto. Which means they are in a large and instrumental part responsible for it. And even that'd be easier to forgive if Marvel hadn't put out Eternals under their own banner. If they can be slack in what they serve up, they can expect consumers to give few fucks in return... ^{[ BACK ]}

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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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