Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson

 

The sequel to the 2018 Spriderman: Into the Spiderverse was a long time coming and at 2 hours, a long time to watch as well. While it did better at the box-office than the first film I think this one has at least one major flaw I cannot overlook. 

To start with, I LOVED the first movie. It was breath fresh air in it pacing, style and animation. The story was gripping and managed to be exciting and heart wrenching at times. I thought it might be good, but it was great. The second film is lesser as one might expect but it still has eye popping animation and good character development, for the most part, of the main actors and uses the multiverse concept in interesting ways to move the story along and to add some unexpected twists. I can’t say the movie was boring in any way or cut corners animation wise or went in a direction that took away from the overall quality of the production. So what is the problem?

The problem starts with the villain who is barely there and milk toast. I am not sure if we are supposed to care about him at all, the personal life of Miles Morales was fantastic and keeps getting interrupted by a bad guy I have investment in. A bigger issue was the ending…or lack of an ending might be a better way to put it. There isn’t an ending! There is a sequel tease that makes no sense. If a they cut out some of the overlong senses at the multiverse HQ they could have wrapped this up in a few minutes and not made the movie any longer. The 3rd film was already has supposed to have been released by now but there is no sign of it as of this writing. In my opinion it ruins the movie, which I was liking the ride if was taking me on until it suddenly ended seemingly within minutes of a resolution. It felt like a cheat and a cheap ploy instead of a cliffhanger for the next instalment.