Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
When Sony Pictures Animation released Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018, it landed with the force of something genuinely new. The film collapsed the boundary between comic-book page and cinema screen in a way that felt less like a technical trick and more like a philosophical statement about what animation could be. Five years later, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse arrived carrying the weight of that legacy, plus the enormous expectations of a fanbase that had spent half a decade treating its predecessor as something close to sacred. The sequel picks up with Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) reconnecting with Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) before being pulled headlong into a multiverse-spanning conflict that brings him face to face with the Spider Society, a vast coalition of Spider-People from across dimensions. If the first film asked what a superhero could look like, this one asks something thornier: what happens when the heroes themselves disagree on what heroism actually requires?
The production is, by any reasonable measure, a monumental undertaking. The directing duties were split across three filmmakers, Kemp Powers (who co-wrote and directed One Night in Miami), Justin K. Thompson (production designer on the original film, stepping up here), and Joaquim Dos Santos (a veteran of animated television, including Avatar: The Last Airbender). Each Spider-world in the film was given its own distinct visual grammar, with separate teams developing bespoke animation styles, from the watercolour-washed streets of Gwen's dimension to the Bollywood-inflected palette of Mumbai. The budget, while never officially confirmed, was clearly substantial, and it shows in every frame. Sony and the Lord Miller production banner (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, producers of the original) gave the creative team an unusual degree of latitude, which is both the film's greatest strength and, depending on your perspective, the source of some of its structural headaches. The source material here is original rather than adapted from a specific comic run, though it draws freely on decades of Spider-Man mythology, including the concept of "canon events" that will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time with the comics.
The voice cast is well-matched to the material. Shameik Moore, who has previous form with coming-of-age stories set against the textures of Black American youth (fans of Dope (2015) will already know his range), brings a likeable, grounded quality to Miles that stops the film from disappearing entirely into spectacle. Hailee Steinfeld gives Gwen a melancholy edge that the script earns honestly. Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Vélez, as Miles's parents, do a great deal with relatively limited screen time, and Jake Johnson returns as the rumpled, world-weary Peter B. Parker with the easy comfort of someone slipping back into a well-worn jacket. New additions include Oscar Isaac as the steely Miguel O'Hara, and Daniel Kaluuya voicing the collage-animated Hobie Brown, a character whose visual design alone is worth the price of admission. It is, on paper, an embarrassment of riches, comparable in its ambition to something like Akira (1988) in the way it pushes the formal possibilities of animation hard against a story about identity and consequence.
Seeing Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse sitting at a higher rating than its predecessor (Into the Spider-verse) on Letterboxd left me genuinely baffled.
After the first film completely rewired my brain on what superhero animation could achieve, I went into this 2023 sequel with sky-high expectations. But despite the deafening critical acclaim, I found myself not liking it anywhere near as much. It’s a picture that is undeniably ambitious, yet it frequently feels like it’s buckling under the sheer weight of its own sprawling, multiverse-spanning ambition.
That isn't to say it’s a bad film. Far from it. The visuals are, again, absolutely top-notch. If anything, the animation team has managed to surpass the already staggering heights of the original, delivering a beautiful, kaleidoscopic visual feast that constantly keeps your eyes glued to the screen. The introduction of the various Spider-variants is also a cracking highlight. I genuinely loved the vibrant energy of Pavitr Prabhakar, the Indian Spider-Man, and fair play to Daniel Kaluuya as the anarchic, collage-animated Hobie Brown, aka Spider-Punk. I’ll admit, I initially disliked Hobie’s deliberately detached, scene-chewing delivery, but the character absolutely grew on me as the runtime progressed.
However, the picture starts to fray significantly when it comes to its actual narrative mechanics. The central villain, The Spot, voiced by Jason Schwartzman, simply doesn't feel particularly fleshed out. His motives are murky, and the actual threat he poses to our heroes never quite lands with the necessary dramatic weight. This is compounded by a pacing issue that drags the film down; there is a remarkably long, slow, and drawn-out middle section in this already hefty runtime that tests your patience. You find yourself waiting for the plot to kick back into gear, only to be met with more exposition.
Then we arrive at the finale, which is, frankly, a massive misstep. I still cannot believe the sheer audacity of leaving the story on an unresolved "to be continued" cliffhanger, a frustration only compounded by the subsequent development hell that has plagued the promised sequel. It feels less like a bold artistic choice and more like a corporate mandate.
Directors Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers, and Joaquim Dos Santos clearly had a massive canvas to play with, and while there is still a tremendous amount to like about the sheer visual spectacle and character work on display, the structural cracks are impossible to ignore. It should have been an absolute slam dunk, but instead, it’s a brilliant, beautiful film that is just a bit off.
So where does that leave Across the Spider-Verse in the broader conversation? It sits in that interesting, slightly uncomfortable space occupied by films that are clearly the work of genuine creative passion but that carry their ambitions a little too visibly. For animation enthusiasts and comic-book fans it remains essential viewing, and the craft on display puts most of its peers, including the otherwise enjoyable Transformers One (2024), at a polite distance. Whether the long-delayed third instalment will tie everything together and reframe this film as a bold middle chapter or leave it stranded as a polished but frustrating near-miss is a question that remains, for now, unanswered. Sometimes the biggest swing in the room still clips the ceiling on the way down.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-07-27
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus · fuboTV · HBO Max Amazon Channel · FXNow
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
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