Review of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) by Vader-Wan — 03 Jun 2023

Really great overall, though I preferred the first one. The animation was just as good as the original, as was the voice cast, script, direction and music. I loved the Spot, he was a much more effective villain than Kingpin and probably my favourite character in the film overall, managing to strike a great balance between being humorous and being threatening. I also really liked Miguel, Spider-Man India and Peter B Parker. Lots of great easter eggs and references as well.

As for weaknesses, I thought the sound mixing made dialogue quite hard to hear, and the animation, while beautiful, was a bit too frenetic to follow during fight scenes, though neither of these were a deal breaker. My biggest issue with the film is its plot, which is a substantial downgrade compared to the first. Putting aside that most of it is just set-up and exposition for the next film, resulting in pacing issues and flabbiness compared to the much tighter plot of the first film, how the film handles the "canon" concept is a complete misunderstanding of Spider-Man as a character. It was especially egregious to see Peter essentially refer to Uncle Ben as a necessary sacrifice. There is just no way Peter, or any other Spider-Man, would just stand aside and let people die. They would try and save everyone, and even if they failed, they would try again, and again, until they succeeded. Miles was the only one to act in character on that point, which is pretty eye-rolling. If your plot requires you to character assassinate most of your main cast in order for it to work, it needs a re-think, and if the whole canon aspect turns out to be nonsense in the third film (as I suspect it will), then all but one of the Spider-Men in the multiverse have been made accessories to murder. Abysmal.

Still, as I said, overall, the ride was very enjoyable, despite the plot issues. I'm looking forward to the final instalment, hopefully it will address some of the problems here.