Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
I am so, so, so happy.
I mentioned in my review of Into the Spider-Verse that it was my "<PERSON>" moment in cinema for that year, where I was totally blown away by what it represented for the art form. I had some doubts as to whether a follow-up could match that same level of raw, explosive creativity. Man, I am so happy to say my expectations were exceeded. Across the Spider-verse is a nuclear bomb of creative expression and experimentation at every turn. My mouth was agape through the entire runtime.
What really set this into the stratosphere for me was its continued boundary-pushing with regard to form and texture. Even more so than ITSV, this extends into even more art styles and artistic mediums to outstanding effect. Whether it's Spider-Punk's scanned-in zine appearance, the <PERSON> blueprints of Vulture, the pastel watercolours of Spider-Gwen's world that meld to match character emotions, or the pure and untethered sketch insanity of The Spot, I was utterly staggered by how much freedom and playfulness there was to behold here. 823
When the form is this experimental, it feels like anything on Earth is possible.
Thankfully though, this story is also grounded by the narrative of <PERSON> and his family. I love them and their performances so so much, and appreciate how much detail is given to the culture and warmness of Brooklyn and the <PERSON> family in amongst all the chaos. Spider-Man has always been a story about identities and priorities butting heads, and <PERSON> is the perfect protagonist to explore every side of that inner and outer conflict. You can feel him being pulled every single direction throughout this incredibly tense story, and constantly have this feeling that no matter what choice he makes there will be a negative consequence in one way or another. It's the essential Spider-Man philosophy that underpins all of this, and I was most surprised by how the film starts to interrogate the seemingly necessary tragedy that accompanies this myth.
We'll have to wait and see until the final entry of this trilogy to see how this all wraps up, but as it stands Across the Spider-verse nails this perfect sense of desparate tragedy which is critical to all great trilogies. I came out of this with the same feeling as Empire Strikes back or Back to the Future 2, where I am dying to witness the conclusion to the incredible stakes now laid before us. A thousand lightning strikes in a bottle 🔥🔥🔥 80