'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' Review: Worlds Wide Web

June 1, 2023, 12:18 p.m. ET

Question: How many Spider-Men does it take to make a successful multiverse sequel?

I’m not certain, but it might be the countless number of Spideys that appear in the delightful “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

A follow-up to the appropriately lauded “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” this animated movie takes place a year after the Brooklyn teen and newly minted Spider-Man, Miles Morales (voiced again by Shameik Moore), was bitten by a radioactive spider. In “Into the Spider-Verse,” from 2018, Miles learned how to be his city’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man with the help of five other Spider-heroes — all different Spidey incarnations transported from their original universes after a super collider explosion tore through the multiverse. Now Miles is 15, and though he has a handle on his powers, he’s struggling to balance academics with his extracurricular hero work, on top of the usual adolescent woes.

As Miles’s parents get increasingly suspicious about their son’s double life, he has to fend off the pesky villain Spot (Jason Schwartzman, as the perfect goober), who powers up into a “transdimensional super-being” who poses a real threat to the multiverse.

In her separate universe Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), a.k.a. Spider-Woman, Miles’s pal and quasi-romantic interest from the first film, joins a task force of multiverse-jumping heroes called the Spider Society. They chase anomalies stuck in the wrong world in missions led by the brooding Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac). But once Gwen and Miles reunite, and Miles discovers the Spider Society, he finds out he might actually be the real threat to the Spider-Verse.

“Spider-Verse” achieves the challenging task of building a sequel that not only replicates the charms of the first film but also expands the multiverse concept, the main characters and the stakes, without overinflating the premise or shamelessly capitalizing on fan service. In other words, “Across the Spider-Verse” pulls off a “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the Tom Holland vehicle that also played with alternate versions of Spider-Man, better than “No Way Home” did. That includes its inclusion of clips and cameos from former animated and live-action Spider-Man media, which nicely cohere with the rest of the film.

The Spider Society, with its delightfully bizarre potpourri of spider-entities (i.e., a Spider-Cowboy, Spider-Cat, Spider-Baby and Spider-Dinosaur), offers many opportunities for the movie to show off a compelling blend of visual gags, palettes and animation styles. The eye-catching action sequences among the Spider-folk serve the delectable chaos of a meme (yes, that pointing meme) exploded in a big-screen format.

Each Spidey we encounter, even briefly, is fully realized, and a welcome addition to the story, even for those who might not pick up on the deep-cut references to the ’80s and ’90s comics. Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni), a.k.a. Spider-Man India, is designed with nods to contemporary Indian fashion. Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), a contrarian cool-guy rocker with combat boots, piercings and a devil-may-care attitude, is drawn in the wild 2-D-collage style of album covers, concert fliers and zines from the ’80s London punk scene. And the way they move — Pavitr’s fluid web-slinging, Spider-Punk’s stomps and thrashing and Gwen’s graceful acrobatics and en pointe landings — express as much about the characters as the buoyant dialogue and highly stylized character designs.

That’s not even counting the work of the impressive voice cast. Issa Rae brings an affable tough-love vibe to her pregnant, kinky-haired, motorcycle-riding Spider-Woman Jessica Drew. And Isaac, who brings as an exacting a performance as he did in the Disney+ series “Moon Knight,” is well-cast as the slightly unhinged and self-serious Spider-Man, à la the Dark Knight.

Steinfeld’s Gwen, a fan fave, thankfully gets more spotlight in this film, which delves deeper into her tragic back story and her feelings of displacement in her world, particularly in her own home. She gets a driving pop-punk theme — part of a killer soundtrack raging with rock, hip-hop and reggaeton — and a stunning color-streaked aesthetic, with soft pinks and lavenders and heavy brushstrokes, creating an almost immersive comic book experience.

The directing team, Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, builds a beautifully realistic, multicultural New York through details: a wheelchair basketball game in full swing on a nearby court, or a shelf of beef patties displayed in a Jamaican bodega.

Both “Spider-Verse” films, in what will be a trilogy, create dimension in these kinds of details, and I don’t just mean the animation. (Though, to be fair, the infinite reach of the city skyline, as viewed upside down from Gwen and Miles’s purview, is a satisfying visual callback to the first film and its own illustrative feat.) The dimension is in the thrust of the story itself.

This isn’t just another multiverse slogfest but a bildungsroman. Because what else is adolescence but a confrontation with the various possibilities in life, the infinite selves you can be? It’s about figuring out one’s identity — superhero or otherwise — and finding a place to belong. The fact that Miles and Gwen also shoot webs and swing around skyscrapers is incidental to their emotional arcs in the film.

“Spider-Verse” also asks intriguing questions about the limitations of the canon, and whether tragedy is a prerequisite for a Spider-Man origin story — the death of an Uncle Ben or Aunt May or Uncle Aaron. And whether trauma completely defines these heroes — and, if so, if they can find kinship in that.

The most disappointing part of “Spider-Verse” is the merciless cliffhanger of an ending, ushering the film into a tradition of two-parters with too much story and too little time to tell it. But “Across the Spider-Verse” is never dull, nor precious with its characters and comedy. Which I suppose just proves that when it comes to a Spidey census, two’s a team, three’s a party and hundreds is a multiverse crawling with opportunities.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseRated PG. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. In theaters.

Maya Phillips is a critic at large. She is the author of “NERD: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse” and the poetry collection “Erou.” @mayabphillips