Review of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) by Isteffy — 11 Jun 2023

Good movie but vastly inferior to the first.

Unfortunately if you liked Spider pig or the other spidermans from the last movie, you won’t be getting them here despite the movie introducing a plethora of characters who don’t live up to the last movie’s spiderman noire/pigs.

The movie still maintains that signature style from the first movie although sometimes the colors and flashing lights are a bit chaotic and the movie too heavily focuses on needless action/movement scenes. The tone of the styles also varies widely, some making my eyes hurt. Someone who has epilepsy should 100% not watch this movie. At times I felt like a horde of unicorns were vomiting in my face. Some action scenes go on for way too long with awkward comedic dialogue in between like this first time where they chase the villain who can make holes. It just dragged on and on and just had so many one line quips from this hole guy that just fell flat. I kept waiting for some sort of conclusion or wrap-up but nope, this like everything else in this movie is not concluded. Don’t get me wrong, the action scenes are great but it comes at the expense of the characters. Characters like ‘afro lady’ spiderman and punk spiderman did not connect like spiderpig, noire, etc. Spiderpunk would make cringy lines for modern 2023 audiences along the lines of ‘capitalism bad!’ And afro lady seemed to have only existed so the movie could fill their diversity quota since she had 0 personality and didnt act, dress, or look like anything attempting to be a ‘spider something’. They werent terrible but compared to the contrasting personalities of spider pig and spider noire, these characters just felt uninspired.

The end action scene of the film, which can hardly be considered a ‘climax’ unfortunately doesnt make too much sense as it says that it is canon that miles father must die, however the film completely ignores that spiderman’s uncle already died. Spiderman canonically must have some loved one die and they establish this in the first movie too, it does not need to be a captain, so it was awkward and contradicted itself when they tried to shoehorn in that ‘oh yeah miles, your dad will die because he is a captain even though your uncle already died’. What was the point of showing spider gwen and every other spiderman’s dead loved one if you are going to introduce a new concept that two loved ones must die? Why didnt spider gwen care if her captain dad died? Why is it ok that gwen just spontaneously leave her timeline and that has no timeline consequences? Why are all of mile’s spider friends suddenly uncaring a-holes who would try to stop their friend from saving his own dad? I like that peter parker has a baby now but he’s really swinging his toddler around as he does extremely dangerous stuff when this movie establishes over and over the theme of parents protecting their kids. Another awkward addition to this movie for a few attempts to make the audience go ‘awww haha the baby does spiderman stuff too’.

Worst of all, the movie opens up three huge plot points and doesnt care to conclude anything! Ok ok we get another movie but at least attempt to finish something. The cliffhanger ending felt like it belonged in a TV show, not a movie that I’m watching in theaters. The movie doesnt even have anything remotely close to a climax. It just ends. When ‘to be continued’ flashed on the screen, I could hear ‘what!?’ And ‘really…’ from people in the theaters. There are good and bad ways to do cliffhangers. The empire strikes back had a cliffhanger but it still had a climax, and still concluded itself in someway to finish this chapter of star wars. Spiderman did not do this and it was just unsatisfactory. They tease a ‘final battle’ w spider pig, noire, etc and it was such a cop out and made me wonder why all of them only decide to show us at the very end. Was every character from the first movie really so indifferent to mile’s problem after they risked their lives to help him in the first movie? If yes, why deteriorate these established characters? Because the writers wrote themselves in a hole and needed to explain why everyone wouldnt just help spiderman, or why any spiderman, many who are pure hearted do-gooders, wouldnt help another spiderman save his dad.

I am saying a lot of critical stuff here but only because I love the first movie so much.