Now that Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) knows that other spider-people exist, he now travels across the spider-verse to become part of a team of superheroes. These superheroes, however, are tasked with saving their own existence, ensuring that they don’t all simply disappear–and Miles doesn’t agree with their methods. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse depicts Miles’ greatest test yet, as he must determine what it means to be a hero and what it means to be Miles Morales.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has been deemed by some viewers as the greatest Spider-Man film of all time. Others have named it the best animated film of all time. And other viewers have said that it’s simply the best film of all time. I went in with an open mind, and I tried to analyze this film as if it were something new, not part of a greater multiverse or of Spider-Man lore. It’s almost impossible not to have high hopes considering what Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was able to accomplish–but I did my best nonetheless. With all of that being said, with all of my expectations–I think it’s fair to say that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is in fact the best animated film of all time. It’s more than just a cartoon, however, it’s a vessel for emotion, passion, pain, and excitement–and it never fails throughout its two-hour runtime.
The rumor is that Spider-Punk/Hobie Brown (Daniel Kaluuya) took months to animate–that the attention to detail needed to bring this character to life was unlike anything that this team of animators had faced before. When you release a statement like this you leave yourself open to criticism when the character and the animation don’t live up to expectations. Hobie Brown, however, is one of the most sound animation jobs that I’ve ever seen. There are literally moments in which I forgot that I was looking at animation and that he was somehow human. Every minute detail of his clothing and his face come to life from the moment he steps on screen until Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse concludes. He’s brilliant as a character for sure, and the animation reflects his suave, powerful nature–and yet he’s just the tip of the iceberg in this film.
The animation is obviously what drives this film, it’s what makes it possible because, after all, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an animated film. The way this team uses different styles of animation to juxtapose one another and to tell a story is stellar, almost perfect. In Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen’s (Hailee Steinfeld) world she is the most prominent animation, she always remains at the forefront of the film, crisp and calculated in her creation. While she always sits front and center, even when she isn’t front and center, the background always remains blurred. The walls and other seemingly unimportant objects strewn throughout her world are underdeveloped in a way that lets you know her world is crumbling, that she is in a bad place. Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, and Writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham, don’t have to tell viewers about her emotional state, all they have to do is develop multiple styles of animation and layer them on top of one another. The visuals are beautiful; not just aesthetically beautiful, but emotionally beautiful as well.
Emotion transcends the entirety of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, never taking a backseat, and never failing to reach viewers along the way. Much of that emotion comes from the score, from what Daniel Pemberton is able to develop in terms of sound. He creates something so brilliantly vivid that viewers can’t escape its power. It evokes emotion at every turn, heighting the visuals and adding new meaning to every second of the film. The animation is the key to the film’s success, but the music by Pemberton is just as important to the success of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
In a world full of redundancies, in a world full of unoriginal ideas, it seems unlikely that another story about the beloved Spider-Man could be original–yet Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse manages to exist all on its own, separate from the numerous superhero films that have come before. Without giving too much away, this film separates itself from the rest of the superhero genre, and it makes a name for itself from the opening moments and it continues to develop an original story throughout its entirety. Creating something original at this point is a feat in itself, but to create something so brilliantly original, so perfectly developed is something else entirely.
From the opening moments it was clear that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse would play off of what had happened in the previous film, that it would take parts of the narrative and develop it, making it stronger and more appealing than before. It does this throughout, but it continues to develop a story through the animation and the score that creates emotion like I’ve rarely seen in an animated film and like I haven’t seen in some time from Marvel in general. I love Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse from beginning to end, and going forward this may prove to be one of the best film franchises of all time.
Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson.
Written by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham, & Stan Lee.
Starring Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, Jake Johnson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Karan Soni, Shea Whigham, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10
Comments