Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse pushes animation limits

It's been almost five years since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the best superhero movie and maybe the greatest animated film ever.

In the time since then, it seems that every other studio is trying to play catch up. Into the Spider-Verse had a unique visual style, combining 2D and 3D animation, adding comic book flair and seemingly took so much joy in being an animated film and pushing the limits of what's possible.

Since then that style has been imitated and emulated in films like The Bad Guys, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot and even Disney seems to be Spider-Verse inspired with their film Wish coming out later this year.

With five years spent working on the sequel, the team behind Across the Spider-Verse have returned with a film which makes the original seem tame in comparison.

After becoming Spider-Man in the first film, Miles Morales has now been his universe's one and only Spider-Man for about a year and is much more comfortable in the role.

A new villain demanding to be his true nemesis named The Spot shows up with the power to create portals. As he grows more powerful he gains the ability to traverse dimensions, which means that its possible for Miles to see his multiversal counterparts from the first film.

I won't give away the actual main conflict of the film as its introduced fairly late in the film and will presumably carry over into the upcoming Beyond the Spider-Verse, but rest assured it results in a visual spectacle.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the longest animated film ever released by a Hollywood studio, but even with a 2 hour 20 minute runtime, it doesn't feel like enough. I could've easily sat there and watched a few more hours.

While the first film had Spider-People from different dimensions each with their own animation style (black and white for Spider-Noir, Looney Tunes inspired for Spider-Ham and anime for Peni Parker) in this film we get to see the dimensions themselves, each rendered in a different but equally awe-inspiring style of animation.

As for the story, this is very much part one of a two-part story.

Since Dune (Part One) was nominated for Best Picture it seems to have created a trend where movies can just end midway through their story and everyone seems to be fine with it.

Fast X did it a few weeks ago, ending in the middle of a scene. I'm sure Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One will do something similar and Across the Spider-Verse does continue that trend, but it's cliffhanger is less an arbitrary cut point and more feels like you've finished a season of a great TV show which sets up the next one.

When the film was over I was able to reflect that it seemed like not an awful lot happened, but while in the theatre I never once noticed the time going by.

A lot of time is spent on character moments. In a lesser film these could be seen as filler, but here not only are the characters all so fully realised but every single frame of this movie, even a conversation between two characters could be framed and displayed on your wall.

With the multiverse-based Everything Everywhere All at Once taking home Best Picture this year and Spider-Man: No Way Home becoming one of the highest grossing films of all time it would be easy to write this off as something you've seen before. But I promise you, you haven't.

I should be sick of multiverses by now. I should be sick of Spider-Man by now but when this is the quality of them, I hope they never end.