Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse Review: Revolutionary Chapter from Marvel and Sony
Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jake Johnson, Issa Rae, Bryan Tyree Henry
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Where to Watch: In Theaters
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse is all set to release on 1ST June 2023 worldwide. When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrived at the cinema in 2018, the whole world was amazed. Amazed at the incredible work in terms of technique and animation style chosen by Sony Pictures Animation. For a soundtrack that almost seemed to come to life during the film to accompany the characters around New York. Open-mouthed to a story that was perhaps almost a pretext for the protagonists to interact with each other, weird and funny but incredibly functional. Agape – above all – because the whole world had finally met Miles Morales, discovering a character who had and has so much to tell. And that he’s somehow much closer to the kids of this generation than Peter Parker. The success of Into the Spider-Verse was total and planetary, to the point of even taking home the Academy Award for the best-animated Film.
Now, five years later, Miles, Gwen, and Peter return to the cinema with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. And just a few more – so to speak – Spider-Persona, clearly raising the stakes. Now, five years after the theatrical debut of the first chapter, the long-awaited sequel arrives on Thursday 1 June, the first part of what will be a grand finale divided into two cinematic appointments. In our review of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse we will explain why the six-handed sequel directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson stands on balance as one of the best multimedia products ever made on the figure of Spider-Man Until today.
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse Review: The Story Plot
After finding Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld, voice), the fifteen half-Puerto Rican and half-black Miles Morales (Shameik Moore, voice) – a character presented by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli in 2011 – “leaves” Brooklyn and his too-caring parents to the Multiverse, where he is, ahem, introduced to a team of Spider-Heroes geared towards safeguarding the Spider ecosystem. In the meantime, guided by the jumping and flying Virgil, we pass from Chelsea in the 1990s with Gwen Stacy’s house to Miles’s home already known in the first film, from the Manhattan and Mumbai mix of the future Mumbai, which truly echoes Metropolis by Fritz Lang, up to the even more futuristic New York and 1970s London triggered by Spider-Punk, which rediscovers Sex Pistols and graphic obsolescence via Xerox.
Lots of stuff, for an ironic and bitter film, highly cultured, aesthete to the core, and futuristic by bias: that of giving a radical, complex, demanding, and even more satisfying visual and sound experience, capable of taking the world animation. After all, the story does not count or, better, it counts up to a certain point: Lord, Miller, and company – really – beautiful manage to synthesize Blade Runner and Star Trek, Ready Player One and Tron, Akira and Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, Belle and Heat, quantum theory and Andy Warhol, Ghost in the Shell and, ahem, Donald Glover, finalizing a meta cinema which, reflecting and paying homage, transports us to a fusional, hypertextual and pop elsewhere in the sense of art, futurist for Chinese and glitchy for nemesis, which celebrates the heroism of Miles, Gwen and the other Spiders in framing them for what they are, border-crossers, therefore guardians of the Multiverse.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Review and Analysis
How nice to be back alongside Miles Morales. Five years is a long time but Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one of those films that pays off the wait in every way. Sony Pictures Animation has taken all the time necessary to maintain the high level of its film. And it couldn’t be done differently, given its predecessor Into the Spider-Verse. In this, Across the Spider-Verse (which since the announcement has been presented as the second chapter of a trilogy) the plot is so interesting and lively as to take on the characteristics of a real comic story. Comics, in fact, often go to recall elements that seemed only details or doodles in previous stories, only to come back useful in future narratives. Without spoilers, the film written by Phil Lord and Chris Miller does the same thing. Thus, the story of the origins of Miles is somehow prolonged, giving it new connotations until it can also give a boost to this new film. A film that takes off like a rocket from the first minutes, involving the viewer in its dynamic spiral.
The dynamic spiral, of course, also works thanks to the incredible animation style of this Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Needless to hide it, Into the Spider-Verse has set a new trend. He did it with the now iconic technique that mixes 3D with 2D, then adds a whole series of details and real pencil strokes that end up making the film look like a real animated comic. The result was so incredible that it influenced the whole market. Suffice it to say that DreamWorks has created something similar, simpler, and perhaps even more accessible, with Troppo Cattivi and with Puss in Boots 2 and who knows what else the major has in mind, taking into account that Shrek 5 and Kung Fu Panda 4 are planned. We must also remember that Nickelodeon arrives at the cinema at the end of August with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And from the trailers, it seems that audiences will be staring at a work that will be at least as sensational as Into the Spider-Verse.
That’s why the new film by Miles Morales manages, without even too much effort, to be decidedly more majestic than the first chapter of the saga. Beyond what is being repurposed, Sony Pictures Animation still puts so much love into the making of the film that it’s truly amazing and breathtaking. The number of details, color palettes, and goodies that pass on the big screen are so many as to leave – once again – the viewer speechless. To give just a few examples, the world of Gwen Stacy is practically identical in style and colors to that created on the Marvel comic pages by Jason Latour and Robbie Rodriguez. There are colors halfway between neon and watercolor that are distinctive of the character. Character that the film manages to render in a stupendous way: from the angular and shy Gwen we pass to the elegant, sinuous, and rapid Spider-Woman, in an even stronger way than what we saw in the first film.
Still, characters like Spider-Punk or Ben Reilly’s Scarlet Spider– both already seen in the trailers – have a style of their own and are completely different from the whole animation system. However, the production still manages to amalgamate everything, while maintaining the visual detachment between the various characters. Many of the Spider-Men you see on screen have their style and hatch, bearing in mind that each of the Spiders that appear in the film comes from its universe, which has its own visual and graphic peculiarities. When you see Pavitr Prabhakar’s – the Indian Spider-Man – everything will be absolutely clear. And if you want to keep talking about the characters, all the new additions are fine. Except for Gwen and Peter B. Parker, all – or nearly all – of the Spider-Persons featured in the film are brand new to the big screen. And if the general public, as it should be, is in fibrillation for Spider-Man 2099, it will not be disappointed at all.
Miguel O’Hara, in the scenes in which he is present, punches the screen like few other characters. It is truly a pleasure for the eyes to see him in action, both in the first action moment in which he is seen as the protagonist and in the following ones. Whoever worked on the film studied the character very well, in the characterization and the graphic sector, giving an almost feral and cynical, and mature version of Spider-Man 2099. And the same could also be said for Blur, the “bad guy ” of the film that will be a nice surprise. A tacit convergence of intents, that of content and exquisitely technical, which makes it a practically perfect second chapter on balance, so much so that at the end of the central work of what is about to become a trilogy, one wonders, with his mouth wide open and with eyes and ears still full of adrenaline and honest emotion, if you haven’t witnessed the best cinematic product ever made on the charm and legacy of Spider-Man in the pop imaginary of the last century and the current one.
Provided that the already highly anticipated Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse scheduled by Sony Pictures Animation for next March 29, 2024, does not steal the crown from its predecessor. With all due respect to Tom Holland and the Marvel Cinematic Universe still in (shaky) progress. Astounding, alienating, and even disturbing: starting with the journey of our first hero, whom a stream of consciousness will ferry from uniqueness to, if all goes well, primus inter pares. Power of the Multiverse, which elevates the collectivization of comics, the multiplication of identities, and, indeed, our horror vacui. We don’t know how much and how this amazing Across the Spider-Verse will tell the kids, strange is that it seems to require a surplus of attention, equal encyclopedia and agenda, and also empathy, an existential awareness superior to the last live-action of the Spider. No Way Home.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Review: The Last Words
In June there is the possibility of giving yourself a huge gift: going to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse at the cinema. The new chapter in the story of Miles Morales is adrenaline-pumping, fun, and exciting like a real journey in the Multiverse because the animation manages to give each element on the screen its own uniqueness and strong identity, continuing in an exemplary way what was started in the first chapter of the saga. Between Spider-Persons, enemies of the moment, and quantum anomalies, Miles will have to find his place not only in the world but throughout Spider-Verse. What emerges is a story with a real beating heart that will involve the audience in the best way. Net of a perhaps slightly excessive duration but which does not affect what is the simplest but most important comment that can be made.
