Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Innumerable Spider-Beings collide in an endless, exhausting narrative mosaic of disparate animated styles.
It was Robert Altman who said that great art needed limitations in order to flourish. However, with the latest advances in computer animation, along with a $100 million budget pandering to the appetite of the TikTok generation, limitation is not even a concept here. Yet Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is not short on concept. There is no denying the comic-book pop artistry on display here, with a small army of graphic artists at the film’s disposal, and there is a kinetic, non-stop dynamism driving forward the various shards of narrative. Art students and fans of Everything Everywhere All At Once will find much to savour, but there’s an absence of humanity and dramatic discipline that renders it meaningless. The live-action Spider-Man films were at the very least great fun, and there are a few good jokes here (a police helicopter ensnared in a giant web is mistaken for a Banksy), but the 140-minute running time might best be experienced under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms. And it really is that long: in fact, the longest animated film in the English language.
The singer-rapper Shameik Moore returns as Miles Morales, the Spider-Man elect of Earth-1610, just one of countless Spider-things in the multiverse. He’s now 15 and is dealing with the usual school and family issues of a teenager, while missing Gwen Stacy (aka Spider-Woman) and his old friend Peter Parker, who was accidentally killed by Gwen. She, meanwhile, is being hunted down for Parker’s murder by her own father, a police captain on Earth-65 (of course, he doesn’t know she’s Spider-Woman). And if this weren’t enough for Miles, he’s trying to save the world from a supervillain known as the Spot (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) who is a faceless wonder composed entirely of portals to other dimensions, enabling him to slip in and out of the frame at any given second.
At its best, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – steered by three different directors – is like a spectacular firework display, a blinding symphony of artistic designs, from Leonardo-style sketch work and Basquiat-style graffiti to anime and even ‘live action.’ But at two hours and twenty minutes, it’s more than a bit much, with the eye unable to absorb every thing on the screen at any given moment. It is exhausting; gruelling even. And for this critic it would have been unendurable were it not for Daniel Pemberton’s remarkable score, holding everything together all at once. The story concludes with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, due next year.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Shea Whigham, Greta Lee, Amandla Stenberg, Jharrel Jerome, Andy Samberg, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali, Oscar Isaac, Jack Quaid, Rachel Dratch, Ziggy Marley, J.K. Simmons, Donald Glover, Kathryn Hahn, Ayo Edebiri, Elizabeth Perkins.
Dir Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, Pro Avi Arad, Amy Pascal, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Christina Steinberg, Screenplay Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham, Pro Des Patrick O'Keefe, Ed Mike Andrews, Music Daniel Pemberton, Costumes Brooklyn El-Omar, Sound Alec Rubay and Kip Smedley.
Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation/Marvel Entertainment/Arad Productions/Lord Miller Productions/Pascal Pictures-Sony Pictures.
140 mins. 2023. UK Rel: 1 June 2023. US Rel: 2 June 21023. Cert. PG.
