Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Story - 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.
Cast - Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Jason Schwartzman, Oscar Isaac
Crew - Joaquim Dos Santos (Director), Justin K. Thompson (Director), Kemp Powers (Director)
Runtime - 140 minutes

         

After a couple of months later, I finally had the opportunity to watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the sequel of the incredibly loved Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I missed the chance to see it in theaters and the 4K is still too expensive for me to get. Thanks to HBO Max for adding the film to its platform.

Having watched the movie with my family over the weekend, I have a lot to say and some key points I want to go over.

It is no surprise that this movie was one of the most anticipated movies to come out this year, the previous film won the "Academy Award for Best Animated Feature" and popularized the 3D shading style that we now colloquially call "Spider-Verse look"; this had to be bigger, bolder and with more action, better animation and a deeper story than before and, in some aspects it does. Several scenes in the movie are some of the most gorgeous images ever put on display, especially for a studio picture (Gwen's Universe in the opening scenes or Pavitr Prabhakar's India-inspired world).

The animation quality improved, not only in the artistic presentation but also in the variety of styles presented through this 2h 20min movie, to this day I am still impressed by Hobie Brown's style and the amount of effort put into his design is legendary. Who could have predicted that overworking and starving the VFX and Animator staff could make things more interesting (notice the sarcasm). 

Story-wise, it parallels the real-world (and perhaps internet-brain) discourse of "Is Miles Morales REALLY Spider-Man?" A question I have always found stupid and not worth entertaining due to its implications and racist origins. Twitter can also serve as inspiration when making a screenplay. While it does try to answer this by creating its own Citadel of Ricks and making a "canon" that serves as the analogy of what the racist pricks try to cage Miles in, it also attempts to balance this greater-than-life struggle to find a personal identity in the form of teenage rebellion with the clashes between his parents and the way he is growing up but also in Gwen as she tries to be herself in a world that often (and like many other Spider-People)  treats them like criminals.

Could this be where the "Gwen is Transgender" arguments stem from? I think so, while I personally do not believe she is trans (at least in the version that is being published by the studio) as countless stories have proven to us, executives will force animators, directors, and writers to remove LGBT stories, implications, and themes from their stories to not lose the precious homophobic and transphobic markets. Perhaps there is a version out there where Gwen Stacy could have been designed and conceived as transgender and honestly, it would have not been a bad idea. 

Hiding your identity, trying to not disappoint your parents, the world, or your friends, and staying close to the world and the people you love the most fearful of what they might say is not only a feeling many of us have felt especially during adolescence but is also very common for queer folks with the added pressure that there are people out there that look forward to hurting them and believe they do not exist.

When it comes to my enjoyment of the film it sadly does not get better than the first installment of this planned trilogy, the ending felt rushed and anti-climatic, I won't be alone when I say there are at least three or four endings in the last 30 to 40 minutes of the picture. My conspiracy theory is that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller not only forced the animators to rework many of the scenes in the movie, resulting in some uneven story bits and lots of repetition, but he also wanted the extra time to crown this movie as the "Longest Animated Feature from the United States" title that lost against a stop-motion movie called "Hello My Beautiful Creatures" and would not be surprised if this is the case, after all Phil Lord spent hundreds of Tweets boosting the popularity of his film on Twitter and diminishing the other nominees. When he lost against "The Boy and the Heron" he waited a long time before congratulating Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli for their win. 

IDK, perhaps in return Studio Ghibli should have invited the team to celebrate by watching "Soy Cuba".

Updated: September 20th 2024.