Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Movie Review
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a 2023 animated superhero film directed by Joaquim Dos Santos and starring Shameik Moore. It’s a ridiculously overrated movie.
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“Everyone keeps telling me how my story is supposed to go.
Nah. I’m-a do my own thing“
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Miles Morales embarks on a thrilling adventure through the multiverse and joins forces with Gwen Stacy and Spider-People to fight a supervillain. First off, I definitely enjoyed the first ‘Spider-Verse’ movie, though even that original flick was a bit overrated when all is said and done. But this sequel was so inferior to the original that it’s baffling to me that it has gotten better reviews. While there have been a couple of animated films in history that have been overly lauded by critics, this just might be the most overrated of the bunch given that it’s barely a serviceable movie.
The only reason to see it is for that animation. It’s even better than the already great-looking original. The visuals are so dazzling, colorful, unique and versatile that the end result is a film that at times looked like a moving work of art. The highlights were those scenes that looked like genuine comic book panels, the black-and-white sequences and the watercolor aesthetic in the first act.
The first movie eventually influenced a slew of other animated efforts in its style, which resulted in this fresh approach at CGI animated content that looks different and more artistic than your standard Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks look that has plagued this industry for decades. This sequel changing so many different styles throughout is its biggest accomplishment.
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But that is where my praise has to end. This is after all a film made for die-hard comic book and especially Spider-Man fans, which I am not myself, so I had no personal connection with it whatsoever. It’s also frenetically paced to such an extreme that it felt almost nauseous to watch. What is the point of having this gorgeously illustrated sequences if you cannot experience it properly? The movie wasted its visuals due to that extremely fast pace that never let you breathe for a single minute. It offers a further proof that today’s audience are ADHD-riddled, and for those of us who are over 20 years old these types of movies are a real torture to sit through.
There is one other aspect that cements this movie as limited to a very young demographic and that is the soundtrack. In a truly atrocious choice from the filmmakers, the soundtrack consists of hip hop songs that can only appeal to very young children and teenagers. For everybody else, it was overloud and obnoxious. On the other hand, the score itself is excellent. There is this very creepy theme that accompanies all the villain scenes and it elevated the action on screen effortlessly, but unfortunately those great cues are too sporadic.
Across the Spider-Verse confirms once and for all that today’s society consists of people who genuinely think that uniqueness lies in style and not substance. The originality of ideas is pretty much gone at this point and what we are left with is this film that is lauded as being innovative and authentic just because its visuals are gorgeous. Nobody cares about storytelling anymore and the reception to this overrated mess proves that unfortunately.
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Is there even a story here? Well, only a semblance of it. The movie is so obsessed with being “hip and cool” that it ended up being obnoxious in its pace, structure and multiverse sequences. I am sick and tired of this multiverse bullshit as this is by far the laziest concept ever to plague Hollywood – these stories have no stakes and are basically filler. Most of the universes that they visit here are, yes, visually dazzling, but thoroughly uninteresting when real story, tension and/or excitement are concerned.
Even worse is that whole plot about protecting the “canon”. In a nutshell, Miles is in danger as others accuse him of endangering the regular Spider-Man canon that has persisted for decades. Every Spider-Man universe has to be the same, so Miles trying to do his own thing poses a problem.
On the one hand, this can be considered to be a very toxic commentary about changing ethnicities of famous fictional characters and altering the IP beyond recognition and how that is actually positive, but on the other hand, you can just view it as the movie trying to say that all these stories should start anew and fresh. I would respect the latter messaging had this film itself been original, but it is anything but original in content, so it ended up being highly hypocritical. Content matters, not style, and this movie has no worthy content to speak of.
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The characters in Across the Spider-Verse got almost nothing to do because the hectic pacing prevented them from gaining any meaningful arcs. Miles continues to be rather uninteresting to me personally. Just because he belongs to a certain minority or two doesn’t meant that as a character he is interesting. Gwen got more to do here and their dynamic is fun, but again rushed. The whole parents subplot was beyond tiresome and boring while the other characters ranged from serviceable to forgettable with some villains being cool and Peter Parker stealing the show in terms of the humor, but most fading to the background.
Yes, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse features stunning animation. It is so stylistically diverse, artistic and bold that it was gorgeous to behold. The score is also very good. But that is where my praise for this movie ends. The pacing is so obnoxiously hectic that the film gives you no breathing room. It is a further proof that today’s ADHD-riddled audiences cannot enjoy a film if it’s not constantly frenetic. Couple that with a horrible soundtrack and very nerdy but familiar, uninspired and annoying multiverse plot and you’ve got a movie that was only meant to appeal to die-hard comic book fans and very young people and nobody else. This mess of a movie once again confirms that today diversity of style (and insignificant aspects such as representation of minorities) is more important to people than diversity of thought and content. The plot, characters and ideas here are so uninspired and familiar that this amazing animation could not save it. Consequently, it is by far the most overrated animated movie of all time.
My Rating – 2.5
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