Spi­der-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

The cin­e­ma land­scape for the cur­rent mil­len­ni­um is notice­ably more infan­tile than the one that pre­ced­ed it. Sex­less good guys are stal­wart and true, the bad guys are clear­ly defin­able by their giant pur­ple heads and vil­lain­ous 3^rd act mono­logues, and the path to box office suc­cess is count­ing on adults embrac­ing the child­ish joys of watch­ing bad guys get smashed.

When Miles Morales (Shamiek Moore) first came to the screens in 2018 in Spi­der-man: Into The Spi­der-Verse, it seemed like it would be more of the same. But instead, it became the crown jew­el in the super­hero land­scape. Slick ani­ma­tion that paid trib­ute to com­ic book art while play­ing with tex­ture, frame rates and roto­scop­ing to cre­ate a heart-stop­ping­ly gor­geous and love­ly tale of an Afro-Lati­no Brook­lyn teen team­ing up with a cohort of Spi­der-peo­ple from par­al­lel uni­vers­es to save the day. The sequel has every­thing that made the first film so spe­cial, but most thrilling­ly, it puts away child­ish things. There’s moral ambi­gu­i­ty, mean­ing­ful stakes and com­men­tary on race, cap­i­tal­ism and the state of cin­e­ma that have matured along­side its protagonist.

A year has passed for Miles. He’s shot up in height, gained noto­ri­ety (includ­ing a guest stint host­ing Jeop­ardy and an ill-fat­ed baby pow­der endorse­ment deal), and he’s try­ing to per­suade his heli­copter par­ents to allow him to go to Prince­ton. He longs to reunite with Gwen Sta­cy (Hailee Ste­in­feld), but she is deal­ing with her own prob­lems in her dimen­sion, feel­ing alien­at­ed and alone as her police cap­tain father is hunt­ing down her alter-ego Spider-Woman.

We com­mence with a jour­ney into Gwen’s world, which acts as a stun­ning mood ring, each colour palette shift­ing and abstract­ing in line with her emo­tion­al state. Gwen’s drum play­ing punc­tu­ates her tur­moil, with taps on the snare in sync with her sharp wit, deliv­ered with deli­cious snark by Ste­in­feld. When bat­tling a Da Vin­ci-esque Vul­ture in a mod­ern art muse­um who can­not believe that Jeff Koons is con­sid­ered an artist, she fires back, ​“We’re talk­ing about it, aren’t we? And it’s more of a meta-com­men­tary on what we call art.” This sets the tone for what lies ahead.

The likes of Zucker­berg and Whe­don have made ​“meta” seem like a pejo­ra­tive descrip­tor. In the Spi­der-Verse, it thrives, every­thing from bill­boards for ​“gener­ic soda brand” to speech­es from Miles’ moth­er Rio (Lau­ren Velez), about uni­ver­si­ty touch on com­ing-of-age, race, love, ani­ma­tion, the MCU and the com­ic book art. Sim­i­lar­ly, there are ample inter­pre­ta­tions of the film as a whole. Is it satire on the orig­i­nal film’s unex­pect­ed suc­cess? The sug­ges­tion is there. Is it grap­pling with the bur­den of low expec­ta­tions that POCs face? Adds up. Is it about the fal­la­cy of free will if you accept your des­tiny, the tac­tics of cults and a com­men­tary on the overuse of trau­ma as char­ac­ter devel­op­ment? Also works!

The new uni­vers­es intro­duced are an absolute riot. Beyond Gwen’s world, a trip to ​“Mum­bat­tan” to vis­it Indi­an Spi­der-Man Pavitr Prab­hakar (Karan Soni) is a delight. New char­ac­ter-wise, MVP goes to Daniel Kaluuya’s Spi­der-Punk, who is part Basquiat, Part Sex Pis­tols album cov­er and all auda­cious­ly cool anti-estab­lish­ment swag­ger. This is very much a mid­dle chap­ter of a tril­o­gy, and so it doesn’t con­clude neat­ly, set­ting up that we will see if and how things can be resolved in 2024’s Beyond The Spi­der-Verse. But suf­fice to say, it comes down to much more than good vs evil and know­ing who or what needs to be smashed for a happy-ever-after.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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