Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse – Review

“SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE”

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was one of my favourite Spider-man movies, and while my earlier review wasn’t as complimentary to it as I should have been, a rewatch definitely made me appreciate the film a lot more. This sequel, Across the Spiderverse, brings back writers Lord and Miller along with new directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson.

There is a lot to talk about, but I will be very coy and brief for this review. Given where this movie goes, I was really unclear about how to review it, hence why I waited a week (plus, it meant I didn’t have to go and see the new Transformers movie). I will stress, I am only going to talk about characters that have been in the trailers and promotional material.

As a result, there is no plot synopsis here for the film. Obviously, it involves Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) teaming up with a team of other Spider-people, the main returns being Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), as well as new characters, Jessie Drew (Issa Rae), and Miguel O’Hara, aka Spiderman 2099 (Oscar Isaac) who I will point out was one of the best parts of this movie.

I will stress to not go on the IMDb page for this movie because it does give away a few characters. The only one I feel completely confident talking about is the fact that Daniel Kaluuya is in this movie as Spider-Punk and he’s another one of the best parts of this movie.

One of the things that I found fascinating about this film was not only the stellar animation that is even better than the first film, but it’s also the fact that it tells a Spider-man story that really gets to the heart of not only what it means to be a spider-person, but several aspects of how people view Spider-man and the line of comics, movies, and video games. It almost dives into several aspects of various incarnations of the characters.

This film is really funny, which is no surprise given the writers, but it can also really tug at several heartstrings. The writing here is excellent and it staggers me that I can’t go into more detail to explain why! But I must stress, going into this film with minimal knowledge is best.

I also really appreciated that Spider-Gwen is a much bigger part of this movie, and considering I’m a fan of the comic series, this was a massive enjoyment for me. This is probably the best her character has been written and it helps that Hailee Steinfeld is really great at playing this character. There have certainly been some rather toxic aspects of her character depiction online, but I think if you’re able to push that to one side, you get a brilliant character arc for her.

The one thing that this film really does better than the first film, is that it cements that Miles Morales is just as important to Spider-man mythology as Peter Parker is now.