Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

[JWeinCom]

First one was the best Spider-man movie, and possibly the best superhero movie altogether. This one was better.

I love a good origin story as much as the next guy, but it does limit you to a sort of formulaic story. Into the Spider-verse had a lot of fun with it, but it was still ultimately the classic hero's journey. Here, they had a bit more freedom to explore relationships on different levels. The first film was about Miles accepting his responsibility and becoming Spider-man, but deciding to do the right thing is the easy part. Figuring out what that right thing is is the hard part.

Visuals are absolutely phenomenal, the action set pieces are brilliant, and pretty much every joke lands. Really like how Miguel O' Hara is being brought into the story as a more vicious but still heroic Spider-man. It's similar to his arc in the comics which is interesting. Making Spider-Gwen the co-protagonist works well. I never felt like the pairing worked in the comics (they sort of tried to force it), but it does here. Especially from Miles' point of view, there's something very relatable about idealizing someone you have a crush on and then finding out they're not quite the person you thought.

I have a few pretty minor complaints. The biggest one is that this is essentially one half of a story and it's not quite complete on its own. I also would have liked a bit more of the characters from the first Spider-verse. Gwen gets a lot of time, and Peter B. gets a little, but the others get a cameo at most. I'm not sure how I feel about the Spot as the main villain. It's sort of fun to have the joke villain elevated to a universal threat but it just didn't really click. I guess you could argue that Spider-man 2099 is the actual villain of the film.

But those are nitpicks. It was really excellent and as a fan of animation, it really shows why the value of that medium. Glad it outperformed the first one so much, as that shows that in a world of hype, positive word of mouth and quality still matter. I would say though that calling it the third best opening for a Spider-man movie is a tad unfair. Spider-man 1 and homecoming would definitely be ahead after inflation, and maybe Amazing Spider-man 2 even.