Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse is no doubt one of the most popular movies that has come out so far this year with a grossing of a stunning $690 million, only losing to Fast X at $704 million, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 at $845 million, Oppenheimer at $942 million, The Super Mario Bros. Movie at $1.3 billion, and finally, Barbie at $1.4 billion. It was only beaten by five movies this year thus far. Even despite box office prices Spiderverse actually beats Barbie, the highest 2023 box office, in terms of rotten tomatoes, with Spiderverse at a 94% audience score and Barbie at 83%, leaving a whole 10% in terms of the average audience rating.
The Plot
Across the Spider-verse is a visually astonishing movie centered around Miles Morales, voiced by the talented Shameik Moore, after he gets accidentally brought to The Spider Society, a group of interdimensional spider people, and learns that canon events exist. To put it in Spiderman 2099’s own words “Chapters that are a part of every spider’s story every time… Canon Events are the connections that bind our lives together. And those connections can be broken.”. Canon events are quite literally “how the story’s supposed to go.” and when the canon is broken it starts to tear that universe apart. While there Miles learns his dad dying at the hands of the last villain he fought is one of his canon events.
The plot is objectively good. It holds up pretty well in most areas, however, it has a few issues with canon events but those will fix themselves in the sequel. The plot is realistic with what would happen next without making it seem too jarring. None of the characters did anything too out of the ordinary to progress the plot
The Dialogue
Across the Spider-Verse movie is written by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham. All of these men have done a great job on this movie and many previous movies. Phil Lord and Cristopher Millar have notably written the legendary masterpiece being: The Lego Movie. David Callaham also has a few notable movies he’s worked on specifically in the superhero industry, with him working on Shang-Chi, Ant-Man, and surprisingly, Wonder Woman 1984.
Outside of the visuals, the dialogue would have to be the best part. Specifically, the interactions between Miles and his parents will stand out. Miles’ conversation as his family goes over his plans for his future, his interactions with his father during and after fighting the spot for the first time, and his beautiful conversation with his mother shortly before he leaves his universe. It all seems like it would be a conversation between a child and his parents, it flows naturally and doesn’t take you out of it even when something cheesy is said.
The Art
Across the Spider-verse has a very skilled team of animators and though the list is too long to name them all they deserve so much credit for making this movie what it is. It would be great to list their names and individual achievements like what was done for the writers but just the names would be more words than this review’s word goal on its own, please check as many of them out as you have the time to, they are all very impressive people.
As much as this would be nice as entirely a piece on the movie itself, going on without maintaining the allegations would be wrong. A lot of damning evidence has come out about the environment surrounding this movie, and how the artists were treated for example alleged 7-day weeks with over 11 hours a day(according to employee), and this should be kept in mind before giving Sony and those in charge too much credit for creating this movie.
There isn’t a single valid debate over the art being bad. The art is devastatingly and remarkably beautiful enough to both inspire artists and make them quit because they will never be better than this movie. All joking aside there isn’t much else to be said that hasn’t been said by everyone who has seen this movie.
Rating
Overall 5/5 stars, for the movie itself, the dialogue was good, the plot was good and the art was perfect. I have no complaints about the movie itself.