Movie Review -- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse [2023]

I put this off for quite some time, didn't I? I actually wrote this review all the way back in 2023 when I watched it! Time flies!

I think one of the major reasons was the huge 'easter eggs corner', and suffice to say that the entire movie is a massive easter egg to the various Spider-Men across the multiverse. It was a delight to research them, but it was a pain to write here. And since it's been a while, I'm going to be a lot more succinct in this review than my normal fare.

But as a follow-up to the excellent Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse puts Miles in an interesting situation. Or rather, puts Miles and his newfound spider-verse allies in an interesting situation. Handling the multiverse with much better grace and continuity than the actual live-action movies, we start the movie off showing Spider-Gwen's Earth-65. Earth-65 is rendered beautifully with an almost watercolor-like art style, which clashes wildly when an alternate-universe Reinaissance-art-themed Vulture comes in, followed up by the louder CGI-artstyle Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O'hara. 

We don't learn it until a bit later, 2099 / Miguel is the leader of a multiversal group of spider-people... and he does feel heroic and honestly would be heroic in any other circumstance. 

Gwen, meanwhile, goes through a bit of a crisis with her own family particularly with her own dad, the police chief, who is staunchly anti-Spider-Woman. With Gwen being unmasked during the fight in front of her father, she elects to jump into the wacky world of this 'nexus' world with Miguel and a different Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew (who really doesn't do much in this movie). 

We cut back to Earth-1610, where Miles is. Miles has been trapped in a similar situation, hiding his dual life with his parents, having trouble in school, beating up supervillains in a montage... typical spider-hero stuff. This comes to a head when he royally screws up bringing a cake to his father Jeff's promotion to police captain, leading to a fair bit of conflict with his parents. Also, while doing all of this, Miles beats up and humiliates (not to badly, to his credit) a supervillain called the Spot, an ex-Alchemax scientist whose body was mutated during the big multiverse explosion in Into the Spider-Verse, giving him portal creation powers. 

The movie does a great job portraying Spot both with the voice-acting, the script and the animation of having him be an ineffective joke villain during the first fight with Miles, with many Looney Tunes style shenanigans... but while Miles is dealing with his family life, the Spot falls into a strange void at the center of different realities, and begins using his powers to its maximum potential.  

This leads to a crisis that, unknown to Miles, gets the attention of the multiversal spider-police. Gwen arrives at Miles' universe and we get a lot of nice moments where the two of them get a lot of cute, sweet moments. There is a bit of tension, however, as Miles has been separated from the rest of the multiverse and even trying to dedicate his whole career to creating a multiversal portal just for the chance to see Gwen again. Meanwhile, Gwen is evasive and hides the existence of the spider-police-gang from Miles, and of her mission to take down the Spot. 

Things go awry, the Spot teleports away to another universe, and Miles ends up following Gwen to the next universe. And despite the movie having lots of new characters, the fact that they are all variations of the 'bitten by spider, spider powers, dead uncle, great power great responsibility, there's maybe one gimmick' storyline that was parodied in Into the Spider-Verse allows us to skip through a lot of the power-establishing and backstory establishing. 

Earth-50101 is home to Spider-Man India, Pavitr Prabhakar, who is super-good and super-awesome and the source of some fun jokes. Great music and animation style here, too; and as Miles, Gwen and Pavitr chase down the Spot, they would later be joined by Spider-Punk, Hobie Brown -- who is animated in an interesting UK-style newspaper-y style. I'm not good at describing these things. Hobie is much more cynical, is cooler than Miles in different ways. 

The four of them end up saving people... but during the fight, police inspector Singh -- father of Pavitr's love interest -- nearly gets killed by debris of the collider. Miles has had weird visions when fighting the Spot, and being forewarned of that, zips in and helps rescue inspector Singh. The Spot escapes... and the world suddenly begins to collapse, until even more spider-people arrive to contain it. 

This leads Miles, Gwen and their new friends to arrive in Earth-928, Nueva York, which is the base of the multiversal spider-people, with dozens and dozens and dozens of cameos. Including the return of Miles' mentor from the first movie, Peter B. Parker and his adorable child May. Turns out that ease in understanding Spider-people 'tropes' extends to another thing... Canon Events. Which sounds cheeky, but is the exact kind of multiversal plot device that works in a story like this. A dour and angry Miguel explains that one such Canon Event is the death of a mentor-like police captain close to that universe's Spider-Man. 

One such canon event? The death of a police captain close to Spider-Man. And that cannot be disrupted. Miguel is adamant about this, and has the sense of an old warrior too grizzled, having sacrificed too much to compromise or deal with the more naive arguments of the naive Miles. Miguel then tells Miles that disrupting the Canon Events of stories will cause the stories to collapse... as almost happened to Pavitr's world, and implied to have happened and claimed the lives of Miguel's family. 

Having seen visions of the Spot becoming uber-powerful and wreaking havoc in his home dimension, including killing his dad Jeff... Miles is understandably upsent and wants to go back and do something to warn and/or rescue his father. Miguel and his loyalists imprison Miles to stop him from interfering with another Canon Event. 

And Miles... he hasn't really had a good impression of the spider-people, particularly from the people he thought he was friends with. Gwen kept the existence of the multiversal spiders away from Miles for admittedly emotional reasons, and Peter B. is sympathetic and conflicted but ultimately doesn't seem willing to rock the boat. With so many information withheld from him while every other spider-person seem to have been recruited into the Spider-Army, Miles snaps and decides to rebel. 

Thankfully for Miles, Spider-Punk, who has been making vague anarchist and anti-authoritarian comments all movie long, ends up being his surprising ally. Spider-Punk springs Miles from prison, and we get a very thrilling, very fun sequence as Miles flees and fights through dozens and dozens of various spider-people. We get an emotional confrontation with Peter B, we get some fun action scenes with random concepts like a cowboy Spider-Man, or the 60's cartoon Spider-Man and his limited animations, a Spider-Cat, a Spider-T-Rex, and more. 

All this culminates with the fight against Miguel (and the way the show animates Miguel's 'vampire-like' movements and the neon lines of his suit is probably my favourite visual effect in this movie). Miguel would reveal that Miles was never supposed to become Spider-Man, that the spider that bit him came from another universe of Earth-42... a universe that is now bereft of Spider-Man because the spider came to Miles's world. This marks Miles as an anomaly... but again, Miles says 'screw you' to that, tricks Miguel and the majority of his army on a wild goose chase before activating a brand-new stealth ability in the climax. 

The final arc of the movie is an interesting one. Miles manages to befriend one of the other minor spiders (Spider-Byte), and escape to what seems to be his own universe. After the confrontation, Gwen and Miguel get into an argument and Gwen gets ejected back to her own universe... then sends out his own hit-squad of Spiders to hunt down Miles. 

This sets up a nice little coda for Gwen's story, as Gwen reconciles with her father George. It's revealed that part of rather than struggle with duty and family, George has resigned from the force instead of arresting Gwen. With that little plotline resolved, Gwen gets a package from Spider-Punk -- a multiversal portal of her own. She recruits Peter B (who gets talked into it in a short but sweet scene with his Mary Jane) and a bunch of others to support Miles. This forms the final scene as they go and rescue miles, with Gwen, Peter B, Pavitr and Hobie from this movie joining up with the other three heroes from Into the Spider-Verse -- Noir, Peni and Ham -- to rescue Miles. 

And as Miles swings through what initially seemed to be his universe, to stop the Spot and save his family, he goes back to his house and reveals his secret identity to his mother... who is confused. Not because he's Spider-Man, no, but because she doesn't know what Miles is talking about. Uncle 'Prowler' Aaron, who should be dead, also shows up...  and ends up restraining Miles. Miles realizes -- and is confirmed when he glitches out due to the lack of the multiversal-anchor wristwatch plot device -- that he hasn't actually returned to Earth-1610, but to Earth-42. Here, Jeff is dead, Aaron is alive, and this universe's Miles is the Prowler. Cliffhanger! 

And honestly, it is surprising how coherent this movie is, even as I write down the plot. Relying on common tropes throughout spider-stories and superhero stories itself is a nice crutch, but it would be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the easter egg alone is enough for the audience, something that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness arguably failed to do since their incarnation of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc are just there for a wink-wink nod and there's no real stakes or gravitas when they get killed. Here, the individual Spider-variants are properly introduced even if it's quite simple, and it is clear which are just one-scene jokes and which are meant to be a bit more impactful in the future. 

More importantly, the focus on Miles and Gwen is great. Miles moreso than Gwen, but the focus on story, characterization, and Miles constantly struggling with his identity and belonging is shown very strongly in this movie. Gwen gets a bit less screentime and ergo less focus, but even her little story arc about choosing loyalty and secrecy is quite well done. Miguel is a nice antagonist that fits 'you can understand where he's coming from' better than others like Thanos. And Peter B, Hobie, Pavitr, Spot and Papa Jeff round out the main cast rather nicely. It's also a visual treat to watch. 

Now we're just waiting for them to finally cook and finalize the final part of this trilogy!