Amuse Productions

Photo Courtesy: Variety

Over the past few days I’ve been racking up ideas on what exactly to write about, and well today a huge flood of inspiration and that was all thanks to one of the best films I have genuinely ever seen, and probably the best animated film that I’ve ever seen as well. (With all due respect to Puss in Boots 2: The Last Wish). Spiderman: Across The Spider-Verse, which I will respectfully address as ATSV, is a beautiful display of what a group of people can do when given full creative freedom while all being in sync as to what the end goal would be. This film is perfection. That may be a stretch and to a regular person it may seem like a laughable statement considering it’s an animated film, but well I’d still stand firm regardless and explain exactly why this film deserves all the praise and then some it’s getting.

Animated films have become over the year something more of a “kid” thing. Ever since the birth of cartoons, they’ve been seen as something to distract the kids as the parents can do something in the meantime, however, Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks broke that mold and made animated films a stable in our childhoods and lives in general. Disney had more simple premise in their early animated films, but had such a charm anyone can like them, while Pixar had emotion brought into play and now families can altogether go to the movies and enjoy a film together without it feeling like it may be too childish. Dreamworks brought a perfect mix of both and well it’s always important to know your audience, and kids can’t simply go buy a movie theater ticket by themselves, of course parents will go in to buy the ticket, but how do you also pull in the adult/parent to bring in a story they can also enjoy? That question is being answered more recently and amazingly than ever. Such though provoking animated films are rare but a plenty, for example, Puss in Boots 2: The Last Wish (2022), Soul (2020), Coco (2017), and even going further in Up (2009), Kung Fu Panda (2008), and The Incredibles (2005). These films are for families, and films like ATSV are for storytelling excellence.

Photo Courtesy: Gizmodo

I could write a 10 page essay as to why this film is absolutely amazing but I will keep it short and to the point, while also not trying to spoil anything for anyone. Everything about this movie is great, from the grander schemes to the minute details. The colors mesh so well together with all walks of life displaying them, the subtlety of the difference in art style depending on the universe we’re looking into as well as mood being displayed, the jokes that evoke physical comedy hit right on the mark and never feel fully awkward, as well as how incredibly the art styles mesh together into one, have I mentioned how incredible the art style is? Story wise we get a much deeper dive in Gwen Stacy and her story of complications and distrust, which funny enough is flipped on its head as we progress through the film, while with Miles Morales, the first film was about him accepting and becoming spiderman as well as gaining and feeling the adversity and responsibilities that lie with it, “with great power, comes great responsibility”, etc. This film is about Miles being confident and accepting his place in the multiverse as a spiderman and in his own world as a fearless person, this journey comes with great difficulty through many avenues of his past being thrown his way, but also the hurdles of him having to have some more than hard pills to swallow throughout the undertaking of spiderman. Every character feels important, and every main character feels even more important. We are introduced to the “Villain” of this film in Spiderman-2099 or Miguel O’Hara (Fun Fact: the first Mexican-Irish superhero). Miguel’s struggle is with his emotional battle of control and secrecy, Miguel’s ultimate goal, in this film at least, is to maintain order in each multiverse and play as almost a guardian for all spidermans and their stories. Every story has its linear ability, and every story must be maintained that way, and well Miguel feels the consequences first hand more than everyone if this is broken, which makes Miguel relatable but also strong, we understand why he’s so controlling. Even if we may not agree with some of his methods, as he says in the film, “I don’t always like what I have to do, but I know I have to do it”, those words are someone who is not noble, but traumatized, he is good at his core, yet his soul is simply broken.

Photo Courtesy: Polygon

March of next year cannot come any faster as we will see Miles Morales return in Spiderman: Beyond the Spider-Verse, what we assume will be the culmination of one of the best stories that has ever been told not only in the medium of animated movies, but what I truly believe to be one of the stories ever told in film history, again we are all reminded why despite all of the larger than life superheroes we see in live-action films and comics, we are sometimes in awe and fully charmed by a down to Earth story about a superhero that is supposed to be strictly for his city, but symbolically is for all of us to know that we can all make a difference, or so Spiderman reminds us.