One piece of advice must have been on repeat inside the heads of the creators of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”: With great first film comes great responsibility.
Because the superb sequel to 2018’s surprise hit “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” not only lives up to its genre-enlivening and Oscar-winning predecessor — it often surpasses it in terms of animated excellence.
A complex mix of ecstasy and frustration bubbled up when I realized that the first five minutes of this flick are more jolting and creative than any of the last ten Marvel movies. Easy.
Running time: 140 minutes. Rated PG (sequences of animated action violence, some language and thematic elements). In theaters.
Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson and writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham web-swing to such high heights by treating Miles Morales, our Spidey, as a complicated and hormonal New York teen who love-hates his parents and not just another cog in a franchise.
And they take their time — two hours and 20 minutes all told — which means character development is never given short shrift in favor of overlong action sequences or forging tenuous connections to other Marvel heroes.
It’s been a while since we’ve cared so deeply, and not at all cheaply, about an animated person.
Now with a full grasp of his Spider-Man powers, Miles (voiced by Shameik Moore) fights local crime in costume alongside his NYPD officer pop Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry), who doesn’t realize the masked vigilante is his son.
At home in Brooklyn, as the 15-year-old is beginning to look at colleges and dad is about to be made Captain, mom (Luna Lauren Vélez) has her own Spidey sense that something’s off.
The follow-up to “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” is just as good as its genre-enlivening predecessor. SonyMeanwhile, in another dimension, Spider-Woman Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) — Miles’ long-long-distance crush — reveals her secret identity to her own cop father, who then believes his daughter is a cold-blooded killer. On the run, she seeks refuge with the uber-serious Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), a different world’s hulking Spider-Man, and his inter-dimensional force, the Spider Society.
The plot is less befuddling than you’d think after reading that, because of the film’s laser focus on heart over head. Whenever we’re confused, emotion and top-notch humor fill the gaps.
Audiences are also now reasonably comfortable with the idea of the multiverse thanks not only to “Spider-Verse” and the MCU, but this year’s Best Picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) get flirty in “Across the Spider-Verse.”SonyObviously these filmmakers aren’t so boundary-breaking that they’ve done away with traditional villains in their superhero movie. The baddie this time is the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a scientist whose body became covered in black-hole-like portals after a laboratory accident. He wants to take revenge on Miles for what happened to him by killing the person he loves most.
We also meet some funny new Spideys: Spider-Man India, Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni); British Spider-Punk Hobie Brown (Daniel Kaluuya) and Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew (Issa Rae).
The animation itself, a dazzling mix of 2-D and 3-D that evokes graphic novels, gaming and pure reality at the same time, wows from start to finish. There are shoutouts to LEGO and Archie, and the look of the fight scenes and chase flirt with the “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” music video’s trippiness.
The animation of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is colorful and dazzling. SonyHow easy it is to forget how devoid of color films and TV shows can be until you’re confronted by so much boldness and vibrancy.
In its detailed bodegas and at rooftop BBQs, this drawn-and-generated film puts New York on-screen far better than most live-action movies manage to.
Lately I’ve been overcome by Marvel Cinematic Universe fatigue. But I couldn’t be happier that the Spider-Verse still has Miles to go.
