Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse changed the modern animation industry to the point where, when looking at the whole thing historically, you could reasonably split the timeline into pre- and post-Spider-Verse. It represented an approach to animation where anything and everything was permitted and encouraged, leading to many others that would take cues from its eclectic and chaotic visual style (The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, Entergalactic, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, just to name a few), and for an IP with many different media iterations already, it still managed to stand as one of if not the best yet.
And with this sequel, the filmmakers somehow managed to outdo the original’s multiversal collage. Hell, with just how much is pulled together to make this film, it almost makes Into look like a mere sizzle reel. The only real way I can put into words just how ever-changing and anarchic the animation here is to imagine a painter in front of a Lazy Susan, with all manner of different tools and palettes arranged on it, and the painter stopping every few brushstrokes, spinning the Lazy Susan like they’re trying to get big bucks on Wheel Of Fortune, and then resuming with whatever happens to be in front of them when it stops. Doesn’t matter if it’s a paintbrush, a stylus, a lump of plasticine, or a chainsaw; use it!
Every frame, every background, every character design (both in the actual body proportions and the style in which they are shown) looks like they’re in a constant state of flux. Watercolours drip and run into cut-outs from an ‘80s underground fanzine, while buildings in the distance look like a 3D film when you’re not wearing the glasses, as an estimated 280 Spider-People swing and run and clammer their way across a screen segmented like comic book panels. This might be the most maximalist shit I have ever seen on the big screen, like if the most intense visual moments of Everything Everywhere All At Once made up the entirety of that film. I think I used my Merzbow comparison a bit too quickly; this is the real deal.
It's the kind of design aesthetic that, even at 140 minutes (setting a new record for the longest American animated feature), could have sufficed just on those visuals. Make the whole thing like Fantasia and we’d still be set; hell, the opening with Spider-Gwen smashing away at her drum kit legit looks just like something out of Fantasia. But there’s also the story to get into as well, of which there is also a lot to deal with.
The story of Miles Morales this time around starts out with him chasing down a supervillain named Spot (Jason Schwartzman), but true to its multidimensional framing, it eventually grows far bigger than that. So big that this film is unable to even contain it, going the Infinity War route and being a massive part 1 that will be continued with Beyond The Spider-Verse next year. I’ll be honest, I was dreading the moment that “To Be Continued” would show up on the screen, and I am getting a bit tired of this reluctance for films to work on their own.
But even with how much that little development irks me… the more I think back on it, the less it ultimately gets to me as a viewer. With just how big things get, adding more and more drama and character threads to the web, it would likely have to aim for ZSJL lengths to fit into a single sitting. Of course, with how well just the setup for all that is presented here, I wouldn’t even mind that.
Without getting too directly into spoilers, the film’s pacing and progression reminded me a lot of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2… namely, in just how bleak it feels. It’s that consistent sensation that things have already gone wrong and they can, and will, get worse the further along we go. There’s some real Steve Ditko energy to how each and every character on-screen (the major ones, at least) is tested and pushed to their breaking point.
To that end, the film even looks inward at that level of angst and tragedy… and examines how much of that applies to Spider-Man. No matter what different iteration or medium or continuity the character occupies, some things are always consistent. The death of Uncle Ben, for instance, or other love interests and/or relatives of said love interests dying, or just the regular face-heel-face turns of his comrades (Harry Osborn, Venom, etc.). Even with all that multiversal variety, they’re still just drawings of the same character, just in different styles.
As much as this acknowledges a massive problem with the shift towards ‘The Multiverse’ in modern superhero movies, and how much it offers the illusion of variety while still selling the same familiar stories, it gets particularly interesting when put in conjunction with Spider-Man specifically. When I looked at No Way Home, I mentioned how often the character gets rebooted and reset, both in films and in the comic books, but what I didn’t get into at the time is what that really entails for the character at the centre of those reboots and the audience. Because so many tragic events are considered integral to the character’s backstory and world-building, every one of those reboots, every one of those alternate versions, means that Spider-Man must experience those tragedies over and over and over again. And we keep experiencing them along with him.
Making changes to established characters, especially when it comes to superheroes, is a touchy subject within comic book fandoms, and Miles Morales himself has been at the centre of it since his creation over a decade ago. There’s a certain subset of the readership that views his character as, at best, an imitation of who they actually want to be reading about and, at worst, taking the place of a character who ‘deserves’ to be there instead. Some things have to stay the same, or else he isn’t even Spider-Man.
And Miles Morales, as a character in this film specifically, won’t accept that. The webslinger across all the different dimensions represents a kind of ultimate freedom, where the boundaries of gravity and what humans are ‘supposed’ to be capable of do not apply… and now you’re trying to insist that, even within that framework, there are still restrictions to the choices he can make? That there are things that must be accepted because that’s just the way things are meant to be? That tragedy has to occur or else this isn’t a Spider-Man story?
Maybe you’re just not thinking big enough.
It takes the self-actualisation arc of the first film and breaks it wide open, poking right at its own limitations in really delivering the notion that we are free to choose who we are, while also creating a glorious avatar of that freedom in the form of Miles Morales. Both the story and the presentation abjectly refuse to be pigeon-holed into a singular mode, creating this Expressionist maelstrom that shows animation in its purest form: A medium where anything is possible.
The main reason why the “To Be Continued” cliffhanger doesn’t really bother me is that… well, it’s a promise that I will get to see more of this in about a year’s time. How could I possibly be angry about that?
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