Movie Thoughts: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

• Released: May 31, 2023
  
• Directed by: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
• Running time: 2h 20min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

Miles meets up with Spider-people from across the various universes and must put a stop to a new villain named Spot. But Miles soon realizes that this may include a sacrifice he's not willing to make.

My Thoughts

I know everyone loves the Spider-Verse movies. I see nothing but praise for them and if you can get something out of them, honestly good for you. I'm glad you can enjoy them. But these movies are just not for me.

Let's put my usual disclaimer first: I don't care about superhero media. I just don't. But I did check out the first movie in this series, plus this one, because people keep going nuts about them and telling me they're the best animated movies of their respective years. And maybe this is just the genre, but they're not for me. They're really not.

I will get the good out of the way first: Just like the first, this movie is gorgeous and I love the art-style it has going on. It's flashy and super creative and blends all sorts of styles together which is neat.

But a movie needs more than interesting visuals to keep me engaged. And that's where this one, like the first, just doesn't do it for me. The characters? I don't care about them. I don't think they're particularly interesting and the whole superhero concept is just too out there and hard to take seriously for me to relate to them. Doesn't help that they keep saying annoying one-lines during fights. Spot, the villain? Again another character I cannot take seriously.

The plot is engaging enough but since the characters don't do it for me I truly fail to be invested. The pacing is also off, with particularly near the middle there being a painfully long expository scene where Miles is told his father will die. Meanwhile other scenes go by too quickly and don't give the audience enough time to breathe between action scenes.

And the visuals, while great, can also be really overstimulating to me as an autistic person. So bright, so flashy, so quick, that it just becomes a visual overkill. It'd been nice if they could've had this great art-style without it being too much, but they didn't really deliver on that front because I had to pause watching this movie several times due to how overstimulating it was. Also, that aside, there's also just a few shots where it's supposed to be raining where the animators just flat out forgot to animate the rain in the windows. Bit sloppy of a mistake since the entire prior scene established it does rain.

I am really not trying to be a hater here, I'm not. I want to enjoy this movie, I want to see what other people see in the Spider-Verse franchise. But while there are some good elements here (story, the visuals when not overstimulating) the rest just overall doesn't leave me with a very good and appealing product. I guess I'll watch the third (presumably final) movie in the trilogy to finish it off but I guess it's just not for me. But I also admit that this is, pacing and overstimulating visuals aside, just because I cannot take superhero media very seriously. This is not a bad movie and since most people seem to love it I do ultimately recommend it if you think it speaks to you. But if you're like me I guess this is more of a skip.