Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) Review

"Let's do this one more time,"

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This movie was probably the most anticipated comic book movie of the year, so there was a lot of pressure for it to be good. And it was better than anyone could've expected. Every single aspect of this movie was done perfectly.

The story followed Miles as he became excluded from what is known as the Spider-Society, simply because he was never supposed to be a Spider-Man. He was shunned by Spider-Man 2099 (played by Oscar Isaac) and the many other spider-people for being an 'anomaly', and spent the movie trying to fight for his place: both with the Spider-Society and in his normal life, where he felt everyone was trying to force him into a narrative that he didn't belong in. The movie explored so many themes through this story, and showed the audience how the Spider-Society wasn't the perfect place Miles believed it to be, as they allowed people to die when it was part of their canon, thus trying to prevent Miles from saving his father from this inevitable fate.

The animation style for this movie was amazing, which makes it more understandable that it took four years to create (and also shows the love and effort that actually went into this movie). Each universe we visited had it's own specific art style, as well as each character (Spider-Punk alone took 3 years to animate, and different parts of his body consist of different art-styles and frames per second - really feeding into the idea of him never being consistent, as he states earlier on in the movie). The beautiful colours of this movie really emphasised each emotion for each scene, like how Gwen's Earth reflected the colour of her suit, and how Earth-42 consisted of mainly green and purple to demonstrate that Miles had entered the wrong place, where Spider-Man never existed and this version of himself had actually become the Prowler.

There were so many new characters that were introduced in this movie, with Spider-Punk, Spider-Man India, Spider-Woman and Spider-Man 2099 being some of the main ones and fan favourites. Not only did it focus more intently on some of these more Spider-People, but there were so many background shots of characters people love from both the comics and from previous Spider-Man media (Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, and even a plushie version of Spider-Man can be seen when Miles is cornered). We were even given some flashback looks at Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men, Insomniac's PS4 Spider-Man, and a mention of Tom Holland's Spider-Man was snuck into the movie, thus creating the perfect movie for any Spider-Man fan, with all their favourites in one place. Not only did we get all these different spider-people within the movie, but one of my favourite cameos was that of Donald Glover, who had a scene as the Prowler and spoke to Miles, which is the perfect way to honour the actor who inspired Brian Michael Bendis to create Miles in the first place.

As an avid Spider-Gwen fan, it made me incredibly happy to see this movie focus on Gwen and her life on Earth-65. It allowed her character to become more complex and have more depth for newer fans to experience, while further emphasising that she is more than just Gwen Stacy, who loses her life to influence Peter Parker's story. She has her own story, and she is a hero. The way they dealt with her grief over her best friend, and her father dealing with her being Spider-Gwen (who he had been trying to arrest) was done with such brilliance. Not only does this allow us to understand Gwen more, but many people have connected with her story as it has been seen as an allegory for being transgender, thus demonstrating how important this can be to so many different people on so many levels.

In addition to this, the voice acting within this movie was excellent. Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfield and Jake Johnson continued to bring so much emotion to their characters as they did in the first movie, but this was further complimented when working with actors such as Oscar Isaac (Spider-Man 2099), Daniel Kaluuya (Spider-Punk), Karan Soni (Spider-Man India), Issa Rae (Spider-Woman) and Jason Schwartzman (The Spot), who clearly all put so much effort into their characters in order to make this the best possible experience for the audience.

Furthermore, I was so surprised when it was revelead that The Spot was the main villain of this movie, because I really expected him just to be "the villain of the week". The way The Spot was portrayed was amazing. He was such a sinister and heartless villain, fuelled by his rage and by the vengeance that he craved after being turned into that faceless creature as a result of the fight between Miles and Kingpin. I believe that this was the best choice of villain for this movie, since he has nothing to lose and therefore has no shame when attacking anyone in order to get the revenge he wants.

Overall, this movie truly was amazing and so incredibly enjoyable. It has been said many times already, but this is definitely leading up to be one of the best comic book movie trilogies of all time.

Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse releases March 2024, where we will finally get some closure on that insane cliffhanger.