Does whatever a spider can.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was one of my favorite films of 2018 and there’s only one reason I haven’t watched the sequel until this week. It is two and a half hours long. And I say that knowing full well that this website is chock full of nearly three hour long films that I had no problem reviewing. It’s just that the collision of me wanting to watch Across the Spider-Verse and the mood of me wanting to sit through a two and a half hour film weren’t quite in sync for a very long time since this popped up on Netflix.

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, Across the Spider-Verse is of course the sequel to Into the Spider-Verse. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) returns home to continue his daily life of being Spider-Man. He fights crime, goes to school, gets into arguments with his parents, causes the end of the world. Wait a minute. Miles has a new arch-villain in the form of The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) who escapes and begins traveling through the multi-verse to gain power, with the hope of ultimately defeating Spider-Man. As they all do.

Meanwhile in her world Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) is dealing with her own problems. Her own father thinks she killed Peter Parker and Spider-Girl is being hunted by the police as the suspected killer. Little does George (Shea Wigham) know that he’s hunting his own daughter. Gwen has a “protect trans kids” flag in her room and George has a trans pride flag on his uniform. There’s been a ton of speculation from fans that Gwen in this universe is trans and that’s only because the theory is completely correct and she absolutely is. But more on that never.

I guess it goes without saying that this movie is absolutely gorgeous, both in its visual design and the soundtrack. It is incredibly impressive how many Spider-Men and Spider-Women the movie manages to cram in here while keeping the various distinct designs that they’ve had over the years. We even get a few live action Spider-Men, including the appearance of Donald Glover, Peggy Lu, Toby McGuire, Andrew Garfield, Kirsten Dunst, fand a ton of other characters. It takes a lot of talent to integrate live actors into an animated world and not have it look awkward, but damn do they pull it off.

This is of course a Spider-Man movie so you can expect to feel the feels, and there are a lot of Spider-Men to spread around the betrayal, grief, and sadness. Between Miles and Gwen there are plenty of moments of heartfelt emotion with their friends and family, the feeling of being alone, living with the consequences of your actions, trying to be a better person and living up to the expectations of those around you. There’s also a lot of quips and comments poking fun at the machinations of Spider-Man without disrespecting the world or its many creators.

In other words it is majesty on screen that’ll make you weep a little but also give some hope. Until the ending that is, which in my opinion is the worst part.

Across the Spider-Verse is a big cock tease, and you should approach it as if it is the middle of a trilogy because it is. Where Into the Spider-Verse had a neat ending that tidied up a lot of its stuff, Across the Spider-Verse ends with a big “to be continued” and its plot threads not wrapped up at all because they split the second film into two movies. Thankfully the third film is set for release in…2027. Son of a bitch. Well it took me two years to watch this one, so at least I don’t have the same kind of wait that people who watched day one are dealing with.

Sorry folks.

Rating: A+