Movie Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Moving Pictures By Mo Burford
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Something my partner and I talk about a lot is that movies can be almost anything (and animated movies can actually be anything), and yet so often they feel surprisingly uncreative and artificially constricted: bland backdrops, uninventive fight scenes, crummy CGI, rote plots. In short, a lot of current movies seem to suffer from a surfeit of blandness.
All of that, thankfully, does not even remotely apply to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the follow-up to 2019’s Spider-Man: Enter the, and the second film in a planned trilogy. In Across the Spider-Verse we follow in almost equal measure Miles Morales (Spider-Man) and Gwen Stacy (Spider-Woman) as they try to navigate being teenagers, superheroes and interdimensional travelers. Their relationship is the thread that binds this narrative together, despite the wild and disparate places it goes. It’s a lot.
And that goes double for the film as a whole: it’s a lot. But at the same time, it’s a blast. While I could speak at length about the relationships that form the emotional core of the movie or the way it deftly navigates extremely complicated worlds and multiple narratives across multiple dimensions, I instead want to talk about its mind-blowing animation and creativity
I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the visual experience of watching this movie is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Every frame is bursting with visual design and artistic choices that not only reinforce the scene itself but also entertain and amaze the viewer. We see characters from different dimensions and each character has its own visual design and style that stays with them even when they enter a different dimension. In the dimension, Gwen Stacy is from the backgrounds actually have much less definition and instead, we see brush strokes and impressionistic use of color; in one conversation we even see completely abstract shapes and colors behind the characters that masterfully pair with the emotion of the scene.
Much like its animation, all the elements of the movie are handled at a head-on rush that often feels as if it’s about to go off the rails, and then it does, but you find it takes you someplace you couldn’t have guessed you’d find yourself and it’s an utter joy to be there. For much of what I loved visually about the film, I find myself at a loss of words to even describe. Instead, I’d advise you to go watch this movie as soon as possible.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
★★★★1/2
(four and a half stars)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now playing at Columbia Cinema and Hood River Cinema.
Questions, comments, movie suggestions? Email Mo at movingpicturesccc@gmail.com
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