Across The Spider-Verse’s writing comes out ahead of the first film; offering a well-paced and thematically rich story that’s marred only by a few questionable choices for its characters. In spite of that success, the movie is hurt severely by an apparent lack of directorial coherence, with unhinged stylistic choices making it borderline unwatchable at times, and adding an inescapable feeling that it’s more concerned with Easter Eggs and cool visuals above all else.

I have a confession to make – I didn’t see Into the Spider-Verse until the start of this year. I’m not usually one to miss something that had such a big impact, but it didn’t particularly appeal to me at the time, nor did that particularly change down the road. More than anything however, all the praise levelled against it had set my expectations very high, and that tends to be when I get disappointed the most, so for a long while it avoided my judgement. Nevertheless, I got round to it eventually, and as expected, I found it to be pretty overrated – it wasn’t a bad film by any means, and its unique visual style was a high point of praise for me, but it didn’t feel deserving of the endless reverence lavished upon it. Fast forward to now, and with the release of the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, I decided to rip the band-aid off and watch it with tempered expectations, and well… let’s just say I’m surprised.

Spoilers ahead!

I’m going to take a bit of a different approach as compared to my usual review structure, and address the glaring, multicoloured, high-speed elephant in the room. At way more moments than I’m comfortable with, this film was incredibly fucking hard to watch. I’m sorry, but there’s no two ways around it – this was the most visually grating movie I’ve ever seen. Into the Spider-Verse‘s visuals were one of its biggest strengths, and while fast and flashy in their own way, there was never a moment that it became too excessive, or I couldn’t discern what was going on. Yet, it seems that because of the acclaim that said visuals received, whatever checks and balances were in place for the first film were ditched for Across the Spider-Verse; consequently unleashing the full force of the animation team’s combined mental handicaps. Right off the bat the whole introduction to the film felt pretty hard to watch with its exclusive use of Spider-Gwen-esque pinks and blues, but when it focused in on catching up with Miles (Shameik Moore) and the visuals were dialled back down I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I was out of the woods. Boy was I wrong – it’s pretty clear that the team behind this film were living and dying by the “every frame a painting” mantra, with as many overbearing and overcomplicated shots crammed into two hours as possible, but the worst of it was by far the action scenes; bright, colourful motleys of imperceptible movement and effects, rattling along at breakneck speed to the point where I could actually feel my attention span being eroded away. Looks like I’ll be swapping out the video essays for thirty second TikTok videos after sitting through all this.

It’s a shame that the animation seemed to go so over the top so often when some of the more understated moments showed just how good it could be. There’s a lot of subtle visual cues that clue you in to what characters might be thinking, and even the final scenes with Miles use colour and lighting brilliantly to foreshadow the Prowler twist at the end. The use of different animation styles like the cartoonish pop-art or stop-motion animated Lego sequence prove to be fun alternatives for the film to explore; even if the same can’t be said for the various attempts to paste in some live action footage from other Spider-Man films also. Truthfully, the film places a lot of stock in its countless multiversal iterations of Spider-Man, with a seemingly never-ending barrage of characters from the Spidey mythos spewed across the screen during the film’s “Spider-Society” sequences, and it’s not necessarily a good thing. Sure, it might be fun here and there when something catches your eye, making you wiggle in your chair and point excitedly at the screen crying out “I know that character, I know that character!”, but it’s frankly a cheap and superficial form of entertainment that relies on other material. On top of this, the velocity with which you’re dealt these tidbits of content makes them nigh incomprehensible, suggesting to me that they’re included more for the benefit of “Easter Egg Breakdown” YouTubers as opposed to the general audience. Truth be told, many of the issues I had with the visuals were piled on top of each other by the film’s end; souring my experience with the movie far more than I would’ve liked.

As hard as I found it to look past the visuals – or even look at them – there is a surprisingly good story buried beneath Across The Spider-Verse‘s endless ocular assault. Building on the previous film and the consequences of those events gives us a basis for our plot and a villain, but the bulk of Across the Spider-Verse deals with the Multiversal “Spider-Society” led by Spider-Man 2099, aka Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) and their mission to re-stabilise the fabric of reality. The opening focuses on the Gwen Stacy/Ghost Spider (Hailee Steinfeld) character, setting up the context for the film nicely as she battles a Renaissance-inspired version of The Vulture, before jumping forward and reacquainting us with main character Miles. When he is reunited with Gwen and it comes to light he is being kept out of the loop, his curiosity ultimately causes more issues and pits him against the Spider-Society when his own reality is threatened. The story flows very well, never with a dull moment right up until its fun cliffhanger ending (you might remember this was originally conceived as Part One of two movies), and its paced well with regular plot development and very little in the way of wasted screentime. Thematically the story is very strong too, with a focus on family and acceptance that carries across multiple characters and ties into the film’s core concept of “Canon Events”. Now, I’ll be brutally honest – this is a stupid idea, being that EVERY Spider-Man or related offshoot supposedly all experience the same certain set of events, namely losing an uncle and being responsible for the death of a police captain, which, even if you’re a casual Spider-Man fan, you will probably realise this isn’t true, and binding the Spider-Man character to a few select experiences that crop up in most mainstream adaptations seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of who the character actually is.

Nevertheless, the writers hammer home their take on the character with the twist ending that reveals that without these Canon Events, Miles Morales of Earth-42 was doomed to take up the villainous mantle of The Prowler from his uncle. It speaks to Miles’ characterisation across the film, which ultimately stems from his relationships with other characters, and more often than not made him a stronger protagonist because of it, especially with how well it leverages the classic comic book trope that sees Miles balancing his personal life with his heroic endeavours. We see this in Gwen Stacy too, who gets a nice bit of depth in the introductory sequence that focuses on her character and backstory, although it feels a little alienating that she ends up being so sycophantic to Spider-Man 2099 with little elaboration as to why, and the same can be said for the Peter B. Parker character also returning from the first film. As for Miguel O’Hara himself, he serves as a solid antagonist for the majority of the film, with understandable motivations and a strong thematic anchor to his character that examines his wildly different approach to his Spider-Man identity, and how that shapes his aggressive and totalitarian view of the film’s events. As for the film’s “true” antagonist, and undoubtedly the best character of the film, The Spot is played off as a joke with the mild annoyances he causes for Miles, but left to his own devices and the exploration of his powers, he unexpectedly becomes a nightmarish threat set up to sow destruction for the finale of the trilogy. It’s certainly an inventive tool that misleads you as to where the story is going, but with a solid origin story, unique powers, and an engaging personality provided by Jason Schwartzman’s performance, The Spot quickly became the film’s most exciting element and has a lot of potential for the upcoming sequel.

At the end of the day, Across the Spider-Verse leaves me in a difficult situation – although it was by no means perfect, the writing far surpassed my initial expectations, and quite easily outshone the prior film too, but I can’t forgive the frankly atrocious approach the filmmakers took to the visual style of this project. It’s rare that I finish a film and the thought crosses my mind that I shouldn’t ever like to watch it again, but this might be the first instance that I’ve ever been turned off from the prospect of rewatching a movie based solely on its visuals. I can see why they might appeal to some people, but in spite of an engaging plot, solid characters, and an excellent soundtrack courtesy of composer Daniel Pemberton, the visuals severely hurt my enjoyment of the film, and on top of other issues, they bury my estimation of the film at a point far lower than I would have wished for.

5/10