2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse set a high bar, but Across the Spider-Verse is another masterpiece – a sequel that focuses on character and emotion as well as spectacle, while also continuing to push the boundaries of visual imagination in an animated film.

Premise: It’s been a year since Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) became the Spider-Man of his dimension after teaming up with Spider-People from other parallel universes to defeat Kingpin, but these days preparing for college applications is more of a challenge for him than dealing with ‘villains of the week’ like The Spot (voiced by Jason Schwartzman). But the return of Gwen Stacy (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) across the dimensions introduces Miles to a wider Spider-Society, led by Miguel O’Hara (voiced by Oscar Issacs).

Review:

When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hit cinemas in 2018, it was a complete surprise – a breath of fresh air that redefined not only what animated movies could look like, but also what a superhero movie could be. It deservedly won the Oscar that year (not to mention my Biggest Surprise of 2018 award!), and its influence can be felt in some of the best animated films that followed, from the incredible The Mitchells vs. The Machines to this year’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

But part of what made Into the Spider-Verse so much fun was that it felt like a one-off standalone film that was free to do its own thing without having to worry about how it all tied into a wider cinematic universe. When they announced they were making a sequel, I was concerned – not only had Into the Spider-Verse set such a high bar in terms of its technical excellence and visual inventiveness, but it had broken the mould in terms of its storytelling as well, by telling a story that had tonnes of heart and was unlike anything you’d seen in a superhero movie before. As much as I loved Miles Morales as a character, if the sequel told a straight-up superhero story with him as the main character, wouldn’t that feel like just another Spider-Man movie? But on the other hand, if the sequel contrived a way to reunite Miles with all of the other Spider-People from the first movie, wouldn’t it just feel like a repeat of Into the Spider-Verse?

“…tells a more expansive, more emotionally complex story on a larger canvas…”

Thankfully, I needn’t have worried. It’s clear that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse isn’t a sequel that was motivated by a studio’s cynical desire to make more money – it’s a sequel born of the creators’ inspiration to tell a more expansive, more emotionally complex story on a larger canvas. If Into the Spider-Verse reinvented what a superhero origin story could be, then you could argue that Across the Spider-Verse redefines what a superhero sequel can do.

Firstly, this sequel focuses just as much on Gwen Stacy (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) as it does on Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), with them both effectively co-leading the movie. The film’s extended opening sequence shows what Gwen has been up to in her dimension between the movies, and immediately adds a tonne of character development and emotional weight to the (already interesting) character that we were introduced to in the first film. The complex relationships between parents and their children is one of the central themes of Across the Spider-Verse (even more so than in the first film), and this starts with the introduction of Gwen’s father (voiced by Shea Whigham) in the opening section.

“…the emotional heart of the film is the relationships between parents & their children…”

Once the action returns to Miles’ dimension, the focus in the early stages of the film is still primarily on Miles’ awkward relationships with his father Jefferson (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry) and his mother Rio (voiced by Luna Lauren Velez, who gets a lot more to do in this movie than the last). The emotional heart of the film is in the not-always-straight-forward relationships between parents and their teenager children, and about the push and pull between the parental desire to protect their children from the world, and the adolescents’ need to find their own place in the universe. In lesser hands, these emotional themes could feel heavy-handed or even cliched, but here the underlying sense of love between the characters is palpable, making their inability to connect that much more emotionally impactful.

Compared to the problems he’s having with his parents, stopping new villain The Spot from robbing a convenience store is a welcome distraction for Miles. Despite The Spot’s insistence that he’s Spider-Man’s “nemesis”, Miles dubs him a “villain of the week”, and Jason Schwartzman does a fantastic job of capturing not only The Spot’s comedic bumbling, but also the underlying resentment that makes him more than just comic relief.

“…the animators give each dimension a completely different visual style…”

The cast also includes far too many alternate-dimension Spider-People to summarise them all here, but highlights include Oscar Isaac as Miguel O’Hara (aka Spider-Man 2099), the head of the inter-dimensional Spider-Society, Issa Rae as Jessica Drew (aka Spider-Woman), Miguel’s right-hand woman, and Daniel Kaluuya as Hobie Brown (aka Spider-Punk) and Karan Soni as Pavitr Prabhakar (aka Spider-Man India), two very memorable heroes from other dimensions.

Speaking of other dimensions, after Into the Spider-Verse saw inter-dimensional travellers all congregating in Miles’ dimension, Across the Spider-Verse lives up to its name, with the action taking place across several different universes. The best part of this is that it allows the animators to give each dimension a completely different visual style – for example, Gwen’s universe is all watercolours that shift with the characters’ emotions, while Spider-Punk looks like the living embodiment of a Sex Pistols album cover. Each universe (and the characters from it) have their own visual identity, and the film is so packed full of stunning visuals that there’s always something to catch your eye (and this is certainly a movie that’s crying out for repeat viewings).

“…explores interesting ideas & themes in an emotionally grounded & relatable story…”

To its credit, this sequel also avoids the ‘getting the gang back together’ trope that can often mean popular characters from the original film are brought back for the sequel, but for no real reason that makes any plot sense. The casualty of this decision, however, is that Jake Johnson’s middle-aged Peter B Parker (who basically stole the show in Into the Spider-Verse) has little more than a cameo in the sequel – but I’m okay with that, because whereas Into the Spider-Verse was, in many ways, Peter’s and Miles’ story, Across the Spider-Verse is unquestionably Gwen’s and Miles’ story.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot, as it’s fair to say that it developed in directions that I was not expecting. What I will say is that this is not your usual ‘superhero movie plot’, and the film explores some very interesting sci-fi ideas and philosophical themes, all against the backdrop of an emotionally grounded and relatable story about parents trying to connect with their children, and teenagers dealing with feelings of isolation in a universe that doesn’t understand them. All of which justifies its 2 hours, 20 minutes runtime (which interestingly makes it the longest animated US movie in history).

“…packed full of laugh-out-loud moments throughout…”

It’s also not a spoiler to say that this is the second chapter in a trilogy, but thankfully we only have to wait until next year for the concluding instalment, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. In this context, in some ways Across the Spider-Verse does feel like the ‘dark’ middle chapter – like Back to the Future Part II, The Empire Strikes Back or The Matrix Reloaded – but never in an oppressive way, as this sequel is still packed full of laugh-out-loud moments throughout.

Now we just have to hope that Beyond the Spider-Verse sticks the landing in 2024, to give us one of the all-time great movie trilogies.