According to common parlance, even in the face of continually enviable box office takings, Hollywood’s superhero boom is super over. The fatigue is real. DC lack coherency, Marvel have lost their creative spirit. While the reality of such a judgement remains up for debate in the sphere of live action super cinema, the argument holds no sway at Sony. Herein lies the revolution. A sequel to 2018’s wildly successful, entirely groundbreaking, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, 2023’s Across the Spider-Verse serves up the apex of blockbusting coherency and creative vigour.
When it comes to the multiplex, it’s proving an increasing challenge for the likes of Batman and Superman to challenge the status of Brooklyn’s own Spider-Man as king. The friendly neighbourhood web-slinger has spawned no fewer than nine box office hits since 2002, with audiences unphased by the rotating faces beneath the mask. Certainly, there were already three Peter Parkers hanging around, one still very much in action, when Phil Lord and Christopher Miller swung their take onto the Spider-scene. Imagine the audacity, then, when the newbie proceeded to more than quadruple the number, kill one off in the first ten minutes and alt left the whole premise by throwing a Miles Morales into the web.
A firm fixture of his own comic series since 2011, Miles offered up a variant Spider-Man, an Afro-Latino teen, the son of a cop and a nurse, with a brain for the hi-tech. On the big screen, meanwhile, Miles cracked open the multiverse and the infinite opportunities the concept posed for exploration. Not the nostalgia hewn hodgepodge simultaneously done to death by the MCU but a means of cross-dimensional character study. Where Doctor Strange flirted with the notion of alternate realities. Into the Spider-Verse embraced then. It was here that the animation came into its own and boy did it come into its own. This was game changing, groundbreaking good stuff. Animation to make rivals take notice. DreamWorks now imitates the style with every feature. Disney will follow suit with anniversary offering Wish later this year.
Well, good luck to them. Across the Spider-Verse achieves the impossible. As directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, part two looks even better than the first. From open to close, eye popping visuals burst from every pixel of the animated screen. A pulsating score from Daniel Pemberton propels the action from universe to universe, each completely distinct in design. There’s Mumbattan, a richly coloured fusion of cultural heritage; a punk-rock Britain, all Sex Pistols and Vivienne Westwood; and the Lego-verse, a cheeky nod to Lord and Miller’s other great success of recent years. Best of the bunch is Earth-65. This is Gwen Stacey’s realm, a gorgeous pastel paradise, seemingly indebted to the colour field works of Rothko, Noland and company. A fragrant backdrop shifts in tone and hue to the ebb and flow of emotions felt by those in the fore.
It is with Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) that the story opens and it is through her that Miles (Shameik Moore) is once again drawn into the Spider-Verse. Gwen and the seemingly omniscient Spider Society, a vast collection of multiversal Spider-Men, dourly led by Oscar Isaac’s joyless Miguel. A frantic narrative follows, building to a rug pull of a final twist – a sequel is due in 2024. Much of the finer detail here is, somewhat inevitably, lost in the maelstrom of both visual and narrative conceptualisation. The experience threatens to overwhelm and, once or twice, does so. For the most part, however, this is a slick, innately character driven, operation. Action never hits at the expense of humanity and comedy never in the face of personality and development. Across the Spider-Verse is the longest American animation in history but there’s no bloat. It’s all breathing room.
Amid the Aunt Mayhem, knowing references to the vast pantheon of art history – all from Da Vinci to Jeff Koons receive a nod – posit comic books not as cultural bookmark material but fine art in their own right. It’s hard to argue with so radiant a display