Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse | Review, 5 things I liked and disliked about it

Plot:

The movie starts with the scene on Earth-65 where Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) who is struggling after moving back to her universe and making lots of friends earlier as we saw in the first movie, and a special friend as Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) on Earth-1610. As the story starts to spread out, we learn that Gwen was the one who got Spider Power in this universe instead of Peter Parker. Instead, Peter Parker of Earth-65 gets tired of being bullied and takes the dose of becoming the Lizard and is later killed in the fight with Spider-Woman (Gwen Stacy). And after that, she is now suspected as the killer of Peter Parker by her father, Captain George Stacy (Shea Whigham). Later as the story progresses, we see some kind of disturbance in the museum nearby Gwen’s house where we see Vulture has appeared from another universe. As Gwen fights the glitching Vulture in the museum, we see a portal opening from where Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) (Earth-TRN706) and Jessica Drew (Issa Rae), appear to catch Vulture. As Miguel and Jessica discuss and tell Gwen about the multiverse getting destroyed.

In the other universe, Earth-1610, we see Miles Morales becoming better being a Spider-Man and has started to fill in the shoes of Peter Parker of his universe who we saw die in the first movie. Miles has much better control over his powers, and now he is used to saving his friendly neighbourhood with daily thugs and dangers. As Miles tries to manage his personal life along with the Spider-Man life, Miles is too busy to keep in touch with his parents and make new friends in his high school. As Miles runs to attend the meeting of his parents with his teacher at his high school, he meets a weird-looking person who is struggling with stealing an ATM. That strange person turns out to be Jonathan Ohnn, a scientist who lost his body when Miles destroyed the particle collider in the first movie and now he calls himself as Spot (Jason Schwartzman), as his white body has spots all over. Later we learn that the spots on the body of Spot are portals that lead to a void that contains various portals going to different dimensions.
After spending some time at his house party with his extended family and getting grounded, we see that Gwen Stacy comes back to meet Miles and he later sneaks into the portal of a different dimension. From there we see more and more Spidermen arriving in the adventure of saving the Multiverse where Miguel O’Hara has his takes on Miles.

Review:

If the first movie was amazing, this movie is spectacular. The writers ramp up the story from the previous movie and expands the Spiderverse for the viewers to explore through the various Spidermen. Carrying out all the best things from ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse‘, like different art styles, music, cinematography, and character development, this instalment expands the Multiverse as it introduces us to concepts like cannon events, main timeline (sacred timeline), universe falling off (incursions), and disruptions of the timeline.
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse takes a really serious and complex story and narrates its viewers beautifully. Even though the movie is animated and involves kids’ favourite characters, this movie has a story that is quite above the ability to understand complex issues for a kid. The movie dives deep into what’s right or wrong, not just on an individual level but also on the wide spectrum where it determines the continuation of the entire multiverse. On one side, where Miguel explains that it is an essential part of every Spider-Man’s life where a Captain has to die, on the other hand, how can Miles let his father die after knowing the exact date and time of his death.
At last, I will say that it is a fun movie to watch. It is surely not for newcomers and people who are not good at quickly learning as the movie has a really fast pace and tons of details are showered upon you at many specific points. If you have watched the recent movies and series of Marvel Cinematic Universe where they have discussed timelines and variants like ‘Loki: Season 1‘, ‘Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness‘, or ‘Ant-Man: Quantumania‘, it might be a big help in understanding what Miguel O’Hara is worried about considering the timelines Miles Morales is disrupting. The artwork remains perfect as the previous one, and somewhere even surpasses the first movie. But don’t expect to get a perfect ending as the movie will be continued in the third instalment as ‘Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse’.

5 things I liked about Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse:

It was a spectacle to watch and experience this entire movie. The amount of fun, enjoyment, and surprises they present are something one can not expect before watching the movie. So, here are the things I liked about ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’.

1. The entire story of the movie is something that no one can anticipate before walking into the theatre. Not just most of the characters coming back from the previous movie, but more characters being brought into the movie. Even if there was not enough time to introduce certain loved Spidermen, they were surely brought in for some action. And now as we wait for the third movie, we can only wonder which new Spidermen we will be introduced to.
2. The character development of Miles Morales was the best I have watched in any animated movie. When Miguel tells that he was allowed to Spider Society for a reason and now they have planned to trap him, it was also planned out with the help of Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) and Gwen Stacy which completely breaks Miles’ heart and he realises that he has to stand up for himself and he can not trust anyone.
3. The animation style excels from the previous movie. Last time we saw different animation styles for each Spider-Man, but this time we even explore the universe of different Spidermen and along with that, the animation style changed as well. We saw Gwen Stacy’s universe, Earth-65 had watercolour style colour grading. Whereas, Miles’ universe, Earth-1610 had a colourful and vibrant colour grading, Earth-42 had dark and neon colour grading.
4. The entire movie was filled with easter eggs and hints at past Spider-Man projects there have ever been made, whether it was live-action or animated. Whether it was 1990’s Animated Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, or even live-action Spider-Man of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. And then we come to the comics, where the creators considered including every famous and popular comic book version like Spider-Monkey, Spider-Byte (Amandla Stenberg), Insomniac Spider-Man (Yuri Lowenthal, the same actor who voices Peter Parker in PlayStation games), and many more. It was really good to see that Sony acknowledged every Spider-Man ever made and put in an effort to bring them in for a special appearance. Also, J.K. Simmons returns again as J. Jonah Jameson.
5. The music was fantastically used. Whether it was the music tracks or the moments the tracks were used, everything was nailed to perfection to give the audience the best movie experience.
   After watching such movies by Sony, I am not sure why they can’t nail such perfection in their other Marvel movies like Venom, and let’s not talk about Morbius.

5 things I disliked about Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse:

Not much to talk about the things I disliked about Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse rather than a few things I did not like personally or had more expectations from the creators to include of manage in the movie.

1. As the creators tells us more and more about the connections and collisions between Spider-verse. Now this has confused me if the world of Miles Morales will collide with the world of Peter Parker in MCU. As Miguel mentions about “the nerd and the magician” messing up the timeline and a cameo of Prowler’s Variant (Donald Glover) from the MCU. We later see a scene from Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s movie. And now if Miles gets in the MCU around Avengers: Secret Wars, will he still be animated or made into live-action where the actor plays it himself, but he is older than Tom Holland?
2. The pace of the movie was way too fast for many people. The creators do not give you any time to settle and the story keeps on progressing with no time to understand everything that is happening. If you are watching the movie, you are in for a challenge to keep up with the story narration.
3. There were some previous and recent characters that were still missing from the movie. As the film progressed at full pace, I could not spot the variant from the ‘Ultimate Spider-Man‘ cartoon series. As a kid, I loved watching the series where Spider-man used to interact with various other characters like The Defenders, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and we explored the Spider-verse in the cartoon as well. I wished to see him in the movie, but maybe we will get to see the Ultimate Spider-Man being played by Drake Bell.
4. The cliffhanger where the movie ends was not something I wanted the movie to end. We see the Miles of Earth-42 being the Prowler and is now interrogating the Miles from Earth-1610. I get that the story will continue right from here in the next movie where Gwen has gathered her team to save and help Miles, but the ending was still a bit underwhelming.
5. There were some teases for all the live-action Spider-Man but even after that, we have no idea if they will be coming into the third and last Spider-Verse movie for some action. Although we do expect it to happen or Miles to interact with any one of the three Spider-Man, but I am not sure how the creators will fit in and portray those actors.