Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
When “Into The Spider-Verse” came out in 2018, it quickly became not only one of my favourite Marvel movies, but one of my favourite movies across any genre or style. Ever. The animation is wholly unique. The soundtrack is banger after banger. The cast is incredible. Everything about it is amazing. I saw it multiple times at the theatre and even took my Dad to see it for God's sake. So needless to say I was incredibly hyped for “Across The Spider-Verse”, it might have been my most anticipated film this year even. Well, I'm thrilled to say it's good. Damn good.
All the aspects that made ITSV so special are still here, and like any amazing sequel are elevated. The animation takes on even more uniqueness as each “Spider-Verse” has it's own distinct art style. We got a glimpse of this in the first film with how each Spider-variant had their own art design (Spider-Man Noir was black and white, etc), but now we see that art style expand to entire universes. Gwen's universal art style was my favourite being a mesh between cell animation and brush strokes to look like a watercolour painting come alive.
The soundtrack is also amazing. I was almost as excited for the new album as I was the movie itself, and thankfully it has many more triple A tracks. But not only is the album with tracks from many famous musicians awesome, the films original score is ALSO amazing. They've obviously taken the time to emphasize how important the soundtrack is to the films entire vibe, and it comes through in aces.
The story is great, as expected. It's a suitably darker story than the first movie, but there are still a ton of laugh out loud moments. There are a some very fun unexpected cameos and some really awesome character inclusions. But there's still room to break the internet with the third movie if they want to. I appreciate the restraint to not throw every possible thing into this sequel given the nature of the story. They did enough to appease the whole “Spider-Verse” theme, but didn't empty the clip on possible inclusions.
Is this the best Spider-Man franchise? It's hard to say given the track record the live action films have had. Spider-Man has always been the Marvel Golden Goose, and aside from “Spider-Man 3” and “Amazing Spider-Man 2” the films are almost universally loved. But it's hard to argue against the “Spider-Verse” films being the best considering what we've seen so far. I guess we'll have to wait for the final part of the trilogy before making hard and fast “best” statements. But two perfect films in and it's sure looking like the Spider-Verse is king.
10/10 - Masterpiece
