Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson
140 minutes (PG) 2023
Sony 4K Ultra HD
Rating: 6/10
Review by Steven Hampton
The
complexity of alternative worlds in Marvel’s expanding multi-verse means that almost
anyone, at any time, can be Spider-Man... so why aren’t you? Can you stand on ceilings, dangle
from bridges, hop over highways, or jump between city skyscrapers? If there’s a radioactive spider
number ‘42’, perhaps you are supposed to get bitten in this reality of Earth
2023. Emerging from a weirdly trans-dimensional ‘cocoon’ of spoofy super-action,
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
(2018) enabled an older, but still quite familiar, Peter Parker (voiced by Jake
Johnson) to support his own replacement, youngster Miles Morales (voiced by rapper Shameik
Moore), as the NYC neighbourhood’s friendly new kid on the block, gifted with 'the
usual', plus invisibility and ‘Venom’ related energy powers.
We
get intros for Spider-Woman, alias Gwen Stacy (voice by Hailee Steinfeld, so good as
Kate Bishop in Marvel TV series Hawkeye),
and other multi-verse Spidey variants, including a b&w Noir (voiced by Nicolas
Cage). Apart from the ‘thwip’ of web-shot and many other sound-effect graphics,
the picture evokes ‘splash pages’ from print-media, like motion-comics artwork
fused with rotoscoped imagery, and split-screen visuals perhaps suggested by
Ang Lee’s HULK (2003). “You got a problem with cartoons?” says Peter Porker,
mutant pig, Spider-Ham. Well, yes... When any supposedly caricatured characters
are hardly original ideas, there’s only mild amusement, instead of clever
jokes, to be derived from their particular TV-grade sit-com dialogue.
Irreverence
blends with poignancy, sometimes skilfully but often very clumsily, especially
when the movie-makers are determined to be quite daft about sci-fi possibilities or
superheroes’ moral dilemmas. Sadly, meta-fictional concepts are not culturally
progressive story-telling, not when their collective impact on this century’s 'Golden Age of
Superhero Cinema' is mainly just obvious whimsy and weakly satirical humour.
Experimenting with animation techniques, although it's always fascinating to see,
can be awkward to watch if the writing team failed to establish any boundaries
or solid limitations on keenly creative artistry. So, Into The Spider-Verse felt like a breathless pursuit of the
unknown, with exhilarating daredevil thrills intact, but with both feet in the
clouds while its head slams into the pavement.
After the multi-verse development in live-action movie Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), this animated sequel, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023), has fresh inputs resulting in yet another hectic and dizzying spectacle that almost eclipses Marvel’s meta/ multi-verse spin-off stories in their animated series What If..?. Now, ‘Spider-Gwen’ meets Miguel (Oscar Isaac, of Marvel’s Moon Knight show), a time-travelling, humourless ninja-vampire spider-hunk from 2099, where he leads the Spider-Society protecting the canon events of a tangled timeline of multi-verse connections. Here's in-jokes about a Peter Parker, Spider-dad, whose Spider-baby feels like a Disney import. There’s also a Spider-Punk, of course, to play the anti-establishment rebel who’s like a bad influence upon sundry heroes. Miles (remember him?) breaks away from their conservative traditions but risks destroying the webs of coincidence that holds the sprawling ‘cosmos’ of arachnid-champions together. His loner efforts, under the mask, appear pointless while a faceless, pre-determined fate unfolds.
Mopey and slightly dopey soap-opera stuff about relationships always slows the pace to a crawl, even when climbing walls. For live-action movies, good actors might bring a sense of emotional depth or dramatic subtleties to some of those pivotal scenes of motivational appeal, but cartoonish characters generally fail, except in the rare animated productions that strive for genuine photo-realism (like Zemeckis’ Beowulf, Spielberg’s Tintin, or any of Final Fantasy franchised movies).
Blu-ray
extras:
- Commentary track
- Featurettes include:
- Creating the Ultimate Spider-Man movie
- “I’mma Do My Own Thing” Inter-dimensional Destiny
- Raising A Hero
- Across The Worlds: Designing New Dimensions
- Designing Spiders and Spots
- Across The Comics-verse
- Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Cast
- Obscure Spiders and Easter Eggs
- Scratches, Score, and the Music of the Multi-verse
- Escape From Spider-Society
- Deleted scenes
- Music videos
