Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

★★★★★

When “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” swung into theatres in the winter of 2018, it almost instantaneously shifted the entire Western animation industry. Its hyper-stylized, expressive visual language was a breath of fresh air for a medium stuck replicating the uninspired Pixar house-style and trying to make photo-real water. A comic-book come to life, “Spider-Verse” was inventive, vivid and ambitious, and it didn’t take long for everyone else to jump on the bandwagon. Some attempts have yielded better results than others — this year saw both a garish miscalculation with “Wish” and an eye-popping marvel with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” — but “Spider-Verse” still stood alone as the pinnacle of the form, of the particular style it itself had pioneered. And its follow-up was widely anticipated, even if a dark cloud hung over it in the form of a lingering question: How can they go bigger than what they’ve already done? How can they improve on it, how can they revolutionize the industry again? Or would they even try?

And then, like his headfirst leap of faith into the vibrant unfamiliar, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” launched audiences into Miles Morales’ new adventure with an assured confidence that we had never seen anything like it before. In his second big-screen outing, Miles Morales struggles to balance his responsibilities as Spider-Man, student and son, as he is flung across the Spider-Verse in pursuit of the inter-dimensional being The Spot, reuniting with his friend Gwen Stacy and becoming entangled with the Spider-Society, an elite collection of Spideys from all corners of the multiverse, led by the ruthless Miguel O’Hara. 

Where Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s first film found a niche artistic style to innovate and perfect, this super-sized follow-up explodes into dozens of fresh new animation styles and techniques that blend and mesh in gorgeous, breathtaking ways. The streaking brushstrokes of Gwen Stacy’s watercolour universe alter to reflect the emotional state of its characters; Spider-Man India’s home universe of Mumbattan has a crude hand-drawn aesthetic that accentuates its chaotic hustle-and-bustle; Spider-Punk is presented as a fast-changing collage of cut-up newspaper clippings. There’s a Renaissance dimension made of parchment, a moody blacklight style world that gives indoor-mini-putt vibes, a universe made entirely out of Lego bricks. The level of creativity on display at any given moment is almost overwhelming. It comes at you fast and relentless, so much so you may feel disoriented at times. But it’s also such an achievement. Such an accomplishment. On the biggest screen you can find, it is enveloping and transportive, and in its best moments it feels just as revolutionary and game-changing as its predecessor.  The Spider-Verse itself is allowed the room to grow as big as the animator’s imaginations, and with the sky as the limit (and the skies of literally infinite worlds), their imaginations carry them astonishingly far.

Almost as far as Daniel Pemberton’s work carries the film sonically. His score is propulsive, energetic and thrilling, remixing dozens of musical styles and genres in a collection of tracks that echo the dazzling variety of the Spider-Verse itself. Musical ideas and themes both old and new are reworked and newly contextualized within each other, interweaving in an explosive, expressionist painting of sound. The electric piano riff that accompanies Gwen Stacy is like a jolt of lightning to the senses, The Spot’s theme of distorted strings is pure bone chilling horror, and the piercing synth melody for Miguel O’Hara is as powerfully intimidating as it is infectiously memorable. The film’s final track, dubbed “Start a Band,” erupts into a jaw-dropping crescendo of a finale that is both heart-racing and fist-pumping. Quite frankly, it’s my favourite film score of the year.

But the real heart of the film lies in the relationships between children and their parents. Miles struggles to live up to his parents expectations, while continuing to hide from them his double-life as Spider-Man. Their overprotective nature forces standard teenage-boy rebellion. Gwen’s strenuous relationship with her police officer father, meanwhile, is founded on his skewed view of Spider-Woman as a violent vigilante fugitive. Miles feels smothered, Gwen feels isolated. The two concurrent (in some cases, mirrored) emotional arcs arrive at the same conclusion for the three adult figures: they have some growing up to do, too. In the words of Miles Morales, offering his father advice in a comically deepened voice as Brooklyn’s anonymous superpowered hero: “You gotta let him spread his wings, man.” It’s not a particularly innovative theme, but it’s handled with sufficient weight, and resolves the parent’s storylines with enough temporary closure for this first half of the story. The conclusion of these parent-child emotional arcs for Miles and Gwen, however? They’re not quite on the same page by the film’s end, but such is the case for a dramatic “Part One” cliffhanger.

And what a cliffhanger it is. The film’s many narrative twists and turns are exciting and inventive, its story daring and unexpected. It dials up the stakes ten-fold, and widens the story’s world as any great sequel ought to do. The film is at its very best, though, when subverting the tropes and conventions that Spider-Man stories traditionally adhere to. The Spider-Society operates under a belief in destiny; that there are situations integral to the Spider-Man story canon that each Spider-Person must go through. There’s a metatextual level to Miles directly rejecting this, choosing to be master of his own fate, ignoring the rigid “rules” of being Spider-Man. “Nah, I’mma do my own thing.” It might as well be Lord and Miller speaking. At a time where fanbases rage with toxic possessiveness over the “right” and “wrong” way to adapt or reinvent a beloved franchise, and the very concept of a half-Black half-Puerto Rican Spider-Man is met with vocal resistance, perhaps this is the “Spider-Verse” writers fighting back. Saying no, our story our rules. There can be a Black Puerto Rican Spider-Man, just as there can be a T-Rex Spider-Man, and a cowboy Spider-Man with a web-slinging horse. After all, what’s the point of a new Spider-Man adventure if you already know the story?

There’s a non-zero chance the as-of-yet undated “Part Two” finale is unable to bear the weight of all this sequel burdens it with. But if there’s a team worth putting your faith in, it’s the “Spider-Verse” team, who revolutionized Western animation when it most needed it, and then came back swinging not even five years later to do it all over again. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is a monumental achievement in every form, delivering in spades everything one may expect from it, as well as a whole lot you’d never even think to want. Only one question remains: we’ve been “Into” the Spider-Verse, and “Across” it…what lies “Beyond?”