Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Review: Art in Overdrive

Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse worth watching?

Yes. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a visually astonishing sequel that pushes animated filmmaking further than almost any studio release before it, and it has the emotional core to match. Each universe Miles Morales visits looks like a different art form, yet the film never loses sight of a teenager trying to decide who he is. The one real reservation is structural: this is the first half of a two-part story, and it stops rather than concludes.

What is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse about?

Some time after the events of the first film, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is juggling school, his parents’ expectations and his secret life as Brooklyn’s own Spider-Man. When Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) reappears, he is pulled across the multiverse and discovers the Spider Society, an elite team of Spider-People led by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) that is charged with protecting reality itself. When the heroes clash over how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself at odds with the other Spiders and sets out on his own to protect the people he loves.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson. It is an American animated feature in English, runs 140 minutes and was released in 2023. Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Vélez return as Miles’s parents, with Jake Johnson, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Karan Soni and Jason Schwartzman among the voice cast.

Every universe gets its own art style

The first film’s comic-book look was already a leap. The sequel turns that idea into a governing principle. Gwen’s world is painted in soft, shifting watercolours whose hues swell with her moods; other dimensions borrow from punk collage, Indian comics and sleek futurist design, and characters from different worlds keep their own styles even when they share a frame. The effect could be chaos. Instead, it becomes the film’s language, a way of showing that every Spider-Person carries a whole world of feeling with them.

The action sequences are extraordinary in their rhythm and clarity, and Daniel Pemberton’s score, which mixes orchestral swells with hip-hop and electronic textures, keeps the energy pulsing. There are frames here you could pause and hang on a wall, and very few moments where the animation settles for the ordinary.

A superhero story about growing up

What keeps the spectacle from becoming exhausting is how much of the film is about family. The scenes between Miles and his parents are some of the best in any superhero movie: funny, warm and quietly anxious about a son they feel slipping away. Gwen’s story gets equal weight, opening the film with a long, beautifully judged passage about her own father and the loneliness of a double life.

Shameik Moore and Hailee Steinfeld give their characters real tenderness, and the supporting voice cast is full of sharp, specific turns. Jason Schwartzman’s villain starts as a joke and becomes something more unsettling, while Daniel Kaluuya’s Spider-Punk steals scenes with insolent ease.

The price of being a middle chapter

For all its brilliance, the film is not a complete story. It builds to a turning point and then cuts away, leaving several major threads hanging for the next instalment. Viewers who dislike cliffhangers should know that going in. The second hour is also dense to the point of overload, with so many Spider-variants, in-jokes and ideas crammed into the frame that the story occasionally strains to keep its momentum. At 140 minutes it is long for an animated film, and younger children may tire before the end.

Who should watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?

It is essential for anyone who enjoyed the first film, for fans of animation as an art form, and for superhero viewers who want something with more imagination than the usual franchise entry. Watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse first; this sequel assumes you have. The violence is stylised superhero action, with some intense moments of peril and loss that suit children around eight and up better than very young viewers.

Good companions:

• The Empire Strikes Back, the classic example of a darker middle chapter that leaves its hero at a crossroads.
• The Incredibles, another animated superhero film that is really about family.
• More from our animation shelf, for other films that push the form.

The verdict

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a landmark of studio animation, a film whose every universe looks new and whose family drama lands as hard as its action. The unresolved ending and occasional overload hold it back from perfection, but few blockbusters have ever looked this alive.

Rating: 4.5/5