Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) (1 Viewer)

[Joe Wong]

Some other stray voltage on this film and Sony's plans:

1) I sort of see this as the opposite of Disney live-action films. Sony is all in to make a "live-action" Miles Morales movie. I'm thinking to myself: why? You've NAILED it with these beautiful, heartful, hysterical, steeped-in-comic-lore animated films. You can't even remotely approximate that with some actors and a focus-grouped script.

2) Making Gwen a co-lead was brilliant. Steinfeld is a great actress, so let her carry half the film. It also balances out the Miles side and creates a strong foundation to spin her off.

3) I didn't expect to care too much for Pavitr. I missed my "Into" spider-heroes, so adding a new one felt like insult to injury. I was wrong. He was outstanding, and that sequence was a very bright spot in a film full of highlights. Massive credit goes to Karan Soni, and his voiceover does the hard work of making me like and care for the character.

4) I expected to actively dislike Spider-Punk. Same whine as with Pavitr, plus I'm not a counter-culture guy (I'm a square), and it felt too on the nose and try hard at first blush. Not my thing at all. Feels like service, not storytelling - my biggest gripe with superhero films these days. Welp, I was wrong. He was integrated well, and he was vital to the story development. Another gem of a voice performance as well.

5) Renaissance Vulture was a love letter to both design and animation. What an amazing sequence.

6) As with the first film, I continue to believe that Spider-Man is the most malleable and approachable of the costumed superheroes. On paper, the powers don't make a ton of sense conceptually, but in motion (and especially in a visual medium like comics and video games and films) it feels better than flying or laserbeams or any of that. It's one of those concepts where everything works - grit, origin, rogues. It can be serious AND silly, can carry genuine weight and visual joy.

7) As with the first film, stepping outside of Peter Parker helps us appreciate the character even more, and Miles is plenty interesting on his own. So is Gwen.

8) I still think Raimi's Spider-Man 2 is the high water mark for comic films. If Beyond is as good as its predecessors, I think that'll be something really meaningful though.

9) I do hope we get more of the rogues gallery in the next film. The only other character remotely close to Spider in that department is Batman. And I think Spidey's is better.

10) I was worn out on multiverses almost immediately. They depress stakes, and create easy and pointless fan/casting/etc service. Credit to the writers here for making the multiverse work for them, narratively and thematically, instead of working for it. We still got plenty of fan-service, but that tended to be for jokes or throwaways - the concept still helped the stories effectively play out. They created stakes, instead of obviating them.

11) The film was still a lot to take in and process. Maybe a little too much of a good thing. I agree there is a bit of work for Peter and Gwen in the next film to smooth out some of these choices. I struggled with our heroes sitting there and watching their friend and teammate get thrown around and belittled. I get the greater good and all, but nah. That said, I have genuine faith in this team to make it work in the end.

12) The music (and songs) were outstanding...again. The animation was always inventive and intriguing. Every choice didn't work for me, but enough of them did to make this an incomparable feast. The voicework was second to none. This is pretty next level stuff, at a lot of levels. Pretty thrilling to see inventiveness and creativity on display so boldly, so assuredly. Movies are playing it safe more and more often, and this went the other way. Exhilarating.

Spoiler

1. Agreed. I wrote a longer review on Letterboxd where I mentioned the action scenes here would be almost impossible to replicate in live action, as they move so fast that even an all-CGI scene might find it hard to suspend disbelief. Animation allows that.

2. Yes! I loved the extra focus on Gwen. In some ways, her struggle is worse than Miles', since her actions indirectly led to the death of her Peter, and her father wants to arrest her for it, regardless. Amazing strength of mind for a person in her position.

3. Both Pavitr and Hobie make their mark with humour and camaraderie with Miles. I loved Pavitr's funny intro and his acknowledging Miles' role in saving his girlfriend's dad.

4. Hobie, with his anti-establishment quips ("metaphor for capitalism") had my older son howling with laughter. And I loved him silently showing Miles how to break the cage ("use your palms") he was in towards the end.

5. The opening 20 minute sequence alone could be the climactic event in many other films! Amazing, indeed.

...

10. Multiverse can be an awesome concept, as well as a curse, depending on how it's used. If it's to "resurrect" fan favourite characters, then that's weak. But its use here to show how our Miles lands in a different universe and puts him in an awful predicament, is a nice surprise.

...

12. Score and songs were outstanding. In terms of movies playing it safe, that's what the MCU has settled into lately outside of their Avengers films. They could certainly shake things up a bit to shock/surprise us by killing a main character in a non-Avengers film. But no, they can't quite go there yet.

 

[Wayne_j]

Anyone have problems with dialogue intelligibility? I didn't but I have seen reports elsewhere of this issue. I saw this movie twice, once in Regal RPX and one standard. Both theaters would have used the standard 5.1/7.1 mix.

Some cases where sound problems have been noticed, in both videos near the beginning of the video. Spoilers in the videos so don't watch if you haven't seen the film.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Anyone have problems with dialogue intelligibility? I didn't but I have seen reports elsewhere of this issue. I saw this movie twice, once in Regal RPX and one standard. Both theaters would have used the standard 5.1/7.1 mix.

Some cases where sound problems have been noticed, in both videos near the beginning of the video. Spoilers in the videos so don't watch if you haven't seen the film.

Yeah, I occasionally found it tough to understand some of the dialogue.

It was so bad at the start of the movie that I thought they'd reversed the channels and the front material was coming out of the surrounds.

But it cleared up pretty quickly. Happened occasionally after that but I chalk it up to a creative decision.

 

[Joe Wong]

Anyone have problems with dialogue intelligibility? I didn't but I have seen reports elsewhere of this issue. I saw this movie twice, once in Regal RPX and one standard. Both theaters would have used the standard 5.1/7.1 mix.

Some cases where sound problems have been noticed, in both videos near the beginning of the video. Spoilers in the videos so don't watch if you haven't seen the film.

Yep. I mentioned it my first post after seeing it last Thursday. I just thought it was my fault for having missed some dialogue, but it appears I was not alone.

It seems to be acknowledged by producer Phil Lord as well:

 

[Malcolm R]

Or they could just not bury the dialogue so low in the film's audio mix.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Or they could just not bury the dialogue so low in the film's audio mix.

I don't think it is that simple. Obviously the studio is providing the best equipment to make the mix and test it, and they might not have factored in how it will sound when in other situations.

I saw the film in Cinemark XD twice and didn't have any noticeable issues. But I saw it in the same auditorium both times, so I assume it was calibrated the same way both times.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Or they could just not bury the dialogue so low in the film's audio mix.

I really love it when discs include an alternate audio track mixed "for late night viewing", because it places the dialogue a lot more prominently in the mix.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I still don't think this counts as an official MCU film because it is not produced by Marvel Studios.

It's not, just like the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield movies aren't MCU films. The MCU is one universe among many in the multiverse, and the multiverse is vast and theoretically infinite. That's one of the upsides of a multiverse, when done right: You can have multiple sandboxes going at the same time, and each sandbox doesn't have to worry about what's going on in the other sandboxes unless a conscious effort is made to connect them.

That certainly works for this movie, but the reason I find this problematic as a storytelling choice is because the multiverse rules in this franchise are contradictory to the multiverse rules that have been established in Disney's MCU. So I find it messy to reconcile that.

The way I explain it to myself is that the MCU rules for the multiverse only apply when using Doctor Strange's type of magic. Even within this movie, the technology from Miles's Earth had different rules (glitching, cellular decay) the technology from Miguel's Earth (stable and reliable).

At the end of the day, Marvel will control what happens in its universes and Sony will control what happens in its universes. As long as they're on the same page at those (hopefully rare) moments when a Sony universe and a Marvel universe connect, I'm fine with that arrangement.

Also, note the "Part One" over the title at the end of this trailer. I'm not sure why they decided to drop this from the marketing, but it does make clear here that this was always intended as a two-parter. Personally, I like that the two films have separate titles instead of being Part One and Part Two. But I suppose Sony could have made it clearer in more recent marketing that this was the first half.

Originally, it was titled Across the Spider-Verse Part One and Across the Spider-Verse Part Two. When they renamed the third film to "Beyond the Spider-Verse", I figured it would be like Infinity War and Endgame: two complete self-contained stories that never the less have significant connective tissue and parallels. But this is more like Dune, where the first movie is one half of the story and the second movie is the other half of the story.

1) I sort of see this as the opposite of Disney live-action films. Sony is all in to make a "live-action" Miles Morales movie. I'm thinking to myself: why? You've NAILED it with these beautiful, heartful, hysterical, steeped-in-comic-lore animated films. You can't even remotely approximate that with some actors and a focus-grouped script.

I think they should wait until the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies are played out before doing a live-action Miles Morales movie. Even then, I hope it's very different from these movies because any live action movie that opens itself up to easy comparisons is going to be found wanting.

2) Making Gwen a co-lead was brilliant. Steinfeld is a great actress, so let her carry half the film. It also balances out the Miles side and creates a strong foundation to spin her off.

Yes, I think I'd like a live action Spider-Gwen movie before a live action Miles Morales Spider-Man movie. But I'm in no rush for either of them. In the mean time, this movie made me a lot more excited for the proposed female-centric animated Spider-Verse movie with the Gwen Stacy Spider-Woman, the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman, and Cindy Moon/Silk. Presumably Hailee Steinfeld and Issa Rae would be to voice the two Spider-Women. Perhaps Silk will debut in Beyond the Spider-Verse. Alternatively, if she's supposed to be the main character in the spinoff, they might want to hold off and let the filmmakers of that movie have free rein to interpret the character.

3) I didn't expect to care too much for Pavitr. I missed my "Into" spider-heroes, so adding a new one felt like insult to injury. I was wrong. He was outstanding, and that sequence was a very bright spot in a film full of highlights. Massive credit goes to Karan Soni, and his voiceover does the hard work of making me like and care for the character.

He's just an incredibly likable performer. He wins the audience over in the Deadpool movies with relatively little screentime, too.

9) I do hope we get more of the rogues gallery in the next film.

I have mixed feelings on that point. I agree that Spidey has a great rogues gallery to explore, but I also feel like these movies are constantly on the precipice of feeling overstuffed as it is. The way this ends, we're already going into the third film with three antagonists: The Spot, Spider-Man 2099, and Earth-42 Miles. I don't know that throwing more bad guys into the mix will add enough to justify the screen time they would eat up.

They created stakes, instead of obviating them.

I agree with this completely. Even though we get a whole lot of universes with a whole lot of variations on the characters, the stakes in each one are life and death, and potentially existence ending.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Variety has a good interview with the directors. But it has major spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to know, don't click through.

For everyone else, I think this is a really good read.

Spoiler

Inside ‘Across the Spider-Verse’: Last Minute Live-Action Shoots, Major Rewrites and Setting Up the Final Film

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments and surprises throughout “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” now playing in theaters. For months, the directors of “Spider-Man: Across…

variety.com

 

[Jake Lipson]

Originally, it was titled Across the Spider-Verse Part One and Across the Spider-Verse Part Two. When they renamed the third film to "Beyond the Spider-Verse", I figured it would be like Infinity War and Endgame: two complete self-contained stories that never the less have significant connective tissue and parallels. B

I never made that inference whatsoever. I can understand why you would think that. But I just assumed they thought "Beyond the Spider-Verse" was a better title for the third movie in a franchise than "Part Two" would have been.

"Part One" and "Part Two" worked for something like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where it is all being adapted from a single source text. It would not have been appropriate to change the name of Deathly Hallows Part Two to Harry Potter and the Something Else because that's not what J.K. Rowling wrote. However, if it's not a situation like that, I much prefer for each film to have its own name.

The good news is that none of this will matter next year when the third film comes out. I understand the annoyance right now, although I don't agree with it. But we are already less than a year away from the scheduled debut of the third film. That is a relatively quick turnaround. Then, for the rest of time, these movies will exist alongside each other and can be viewed in close proximity to get the complete story. So this is really only a problem until the next one comes out.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I choose not to believe that the Venom and Morbius films are connected to the MCU.

I love the MCU and I'm not interested in the Venom films at all. I groaned when he appeared in the post-credits sequence of No Way Home. But as much as I'd like to ignore it, his presence there makes those movies, at the very least, "adjacent" to the MCU in the same way that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's films now are. I hope they don't, but Sony is probably going to cross them over further in the future. Michael Keaton being in Morbius as the same character from Homecoming is another dangling thread. Again, I'd prefer the MCU remain completely walled off from the Sony films. But that's not what they're doing.

Spoiler

The presence of the live-action footage in this film certainly suggests that Sony is trying to make this "adjacent' to their live-action films as well. I mean, why else use those clips of those actors?

I just hope that "Beyond the Spider-Verse" doesn't mean "beyond animation." I want to be clear that this is just theorizing and I have no idea what is going to happen in the next film. But if it somehow involves this version of Miles and Gwen stepping into the live-action world and leaving the animated world behind, I would be angry at that decision. Of course, Sony is welcome to make live-action films with any characters that they own. But if they're going to do a live-action film with Miles, I hope it introduces a new version of him with a new actor and differentiates itself from the style of these films. If the goal here Is to use these animated films merely as a stepping stone to live-action, that would be unsatisfying. I'm happy to continue seeing these films with Miles and Gwen as long as they keep making them this good. Transitioning them to live-action would lose a lot of what makes these films unique.

As has been noted, a version of Miles already exists in the primary MCU timeline. Donald Glover mentioned his nephew in Homecoming and we haven't met him yet. So they can pull that thread whenever they're ready.

Making Gwen a co-lead was brilliant. Steinfeld is a great actress, so let her carry half the film. It also balances out the Miles side and creates a strong foundation to spin her off.

I think this works because Gwen's stories and Miles' stories intersect so beautifully. They are essentially learning the opposite lessons in the film, which makes them such an interesting contrast. I agree that I loved seeing more of Gwen, but I think it worked because their two stories supported each other so well structurally.

I missed my "Into" spider-heroes, so adding a new one felt like insult to injury.

Spoiler

I was happy to see that Gwen reached out to Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir in the end and will be happy to have them back in the third film. However, I think leaving them out made it more meaningful when she did that. If everyone was already together again in this film, the "getting the band back together" ending wouldn't have landed quite as strongly as it did this way. I think it was also smart to realize that they couldn't accommodate all of the original characters in this film and hope their return means they're going to get something substantial in the next chapter.

On a related note, I wondered if we are going to see Earth-42's version of Kingpin in the third film. Because Spider-Man doesn't exist there, then Miles never assisted in his capture as was the case in the first film. Because Aaron was working for the Kingpin when he was the Prowler in "our" Miles' universe, it would make sense if Earth-42's Miles also has some kind of relationship to their Kingpin. I'm not sure if we need any more new antagonists in the third film; I liked the fact that they used The Spot specifically because he had never been used before, and they really built him up into a credible threat throughout the course of the movie. But seeing Earth-42's Kingpin would make sense within what they've already set up there. This would be especially valuable if the third film deals with the consequences of Earth-42 not having a Spider-Person of its own.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

That first quote isn’t mine, my friend. I don’t care about the corporate sandboxes one whit.

 

[Joe Wong]

A couple of thoughts...

Spoiler

1. During the Spider-HQ chase on the train to the moon... when Miguel brings out his claws, Miles says something like:

"Claws huh? Are you sure you're a Spider-man?"

It could be just a throwaway line, but I'm thinking this could have something to do with the Prowler? At the end, just before Earth-42 Miles is revealed, they show the comic book, The Claws of the Prowler. I'm thinking there was some intention, narrative-wise, behind Miles saying that line on the train.

2. When Captain Stacy says he quit his job towards the end, I think Gwen realizes a weight has been lifted. That is, if canon says a "captain" figure close to the spider-person is going to die, then Gwen's dad is now not that person. She had been resigned to that fate. I don't know the exact rules of this canon stuff, of course, but that could be a possibility. The other possibility is that she's just relieved he won't be able to arrest her anymore.

 

[Sean Bryan]

A couple of thoughts...

Spoiler

1. During the Spider-HQ chase on the train to the moon... when Miguel brings out his claws, Miles says something like:

"Claws huh? Are you sure you're a Spider-man?"

It could be just a throwaway line, but I'm thinking this could have something to do with the Prowler? At the end, just before Earth-42 Miles is revealed, they show the comic book, The Claws of the Prowler. I'm thinking there was some intention, narrative-wise, behind Miles saying that line on the train.

2. When Captain Stacy says he quit his job towards the end, I think Gwen realizes a weight has been lifted. That is, if canon says a "captain" figure close to the spider-person is going to die, then Gwen's dad is now not that person. She had been resigned to that fate. I don't know the exact rules of this canon stuff, of course, but that could be a possibility. The other possibility is that she's just relieved he won't be able to arrest her anymore.

Your “1.” has nothing to do with the prowler. It’s just a reference to some of Miguel’s more unique characteristics.

Is Spider-Verse 2's Miguel O'Hara a Vampire? Spider-Man 2099's Powers Explained

Gwen referred to Miguel O'Hara as a

thedirect.com

 

[TonyD]

In my imax seat.
Very excited.

 

[Joe Wong]

Your “1.” has nothing to do with the prowler. It’s just a reference to some of Miguel’s more unique characteristics.

Is Spider-Verse 2's Miguel O'Hara a Vampire? Spider-Man 2099's Powers Explained

Gwen referred to Miguel O'Hara as a

thedirect.com

Thanks!

Spoiler

Not saying he's the prowler per se, but maybe some plot connection to be revealed in Beyond. But happy to be wrong.

 

[Jake Lipson]

That first quote isn’t mine, my friend. I don’t care about the corporate sandboxes one whit.

Apologies. I must have somehow mixed up the quotes when quoting from multiple different messages at once.

 

[jayembee]

That first quote isn’t mine, my friend. I don’t care about the corporate sandboxes one whit.

Hey, feel lucky that your name is remembered. I was reduced to a "someone". (No offense taken, Jake.)

 

[Chuck Mayer]

It's no big deal I hadn't even seen Morbius and have been vocal (whiny) about the MCU of late, so I wanted to stay consistent.

Secondly, I COMPLETELY agree with on your final spoiler comment. Saving those folks for the final shot paid off, and allowed the focus to be on new characters and extra time with Gwen and Miles. Again, what I got was better than what I wanted, because the storytellers are better than me. I also don't want to go beyond animation. It would be a step down.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I was reduced to a "someone".

Only because I didn't want to read back through the whole thread to find the message with the original quote and had no idea whose post I would be looking for.

Now that you've claimed it I'm happy to credit you again.

Fixed.