One of the year’s most eagerly awaited titles is ready to swing into theaters this week, as Sony Pictures Animation and Marvel present the animated expanse of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Friday, June 2. The sequel to SPA’s groundbreaking Best Animated Feature Oscar winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse continues the adventures of Miles Morales, as Gwen Stacy brings him into the multiverse to meet a conclave of diverse Spideys — and choose his destiny.
Sporting an extremely healthy 94% on Rotten Tomatoes (from 86 critic reviews) as of Wednesday afternoon, and an 86 on Metacritic (33 critic reviews), this dimension-hopping adventure looks ripe to deliver on the years of buzzy fan anticipation.
As could be expected from the early artwork and trailer footage, reviewers rave about the film’s visuals, which find space for an array of aesthetic and design influences within the established comic-book-inspired look. These early audiences also applaud the growing bond between Miles and Gwen and our friendly neighborhood hero’s own journey of identity, even if some of these elements are sometimes overwhelmed by the sesquillion-Spideys action. The overall verdict: An utterly worthy successor to the 2018 hit.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson from a screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller and David Callaham (based on the Marvel comic books). The cast features returning stars Shameik Moore (Miles), Hailee Steinfield (Gwen) and Jake Johnson (Peter Parker), as well as new cast Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Karan Soni and Jason Schwartzman.
Here’s what the critics are saying:
“The film retains its signature tone — moving between humor and sentimentalism with a light touch — but there’s a greater effort now to connect Miles’ origin story to broader lessons about superhero canons. That doesn’t always land as gracefully, and parts of Across the Spider-Verse feel weighed down by this need to belabor a well-established point. Still those moments can be forgiven as the story unfurls, revealing that Miles, with his new challenges, remains a hero worth rooting for.”
— Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter
“The film makes you feel like you’re dropping through the floors of a modern art museum on acid, yet there’s a thrilling moment-to-moment logic to it all. The madly eclectic images express something — an eyeball-tickling explosion of quantum physics, or a subliminal nod to some comic-book style from decades ago that’s so retro it’s new, not to mention bedazzling. This feels like it could have been the first movie designed to earn a thumbs up from Andy Warhol and Stephen Hawking.”
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“This second instalment features a plethora of Spideys and the result is as crazily frantic and eyeball-frazzling as ever, but with something exhausting about it now. Its funny jokes — including a gag about the ‘Spider-Men pointing at each other’ meme — and poignant touches get obscured in the endless maelstrom. But there’s no doubting the full-tilt energy, the pure blizzard of narrative data and the twists and turns that it would be unsporting to reveal …
“Viewers have been invited to identify with Spider-Man since the first adaptations of the comic book in the ’60s, and are now given a choice of how to identify. It’s dynamic and intriguing, though the detail and the emotion can get lost in the splurge.”
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“If the first film showed what superhero movies could be, Across the Spider-Verse goes even further: It shows what they should be. In a genre built on the literally super and special, these films are unafraid to stand out and do something truly different, something that pushes the limits, to show the genuine range available to this subset of stories and feel damn good in the process (and look, dare we say, even better).
“Much of that is surely due to their distinct animation style, which in its second iteration, looks even more stunning, more tactile, more real in its distinct unreality, because all that jaw-dropping animation is truly in service to the story and its emotions.”
— Kate Erbland, IndieWire
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse surges with visual inventiveness and vibrance in an undeniably strong evolution of the style established in Into the Spider-Verse. Miles and Gwen’s search for their place in the multiverse is relentless and exciting, almost to a fault, and though the plot is often an afterthought to the pure chaos of creation on display, strong performances and character arcs that feel true to the heroes we met last time help ensure that Across the Spider-Verse is a more-than-worthy follow-up to an all-time classic.”
— Tom Jorgensen, IGN
“Despite that bloated running time [2h 20m], Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse really should be seen with a crowd, on the largest possible screen, with popcorn and jumbo-sized drink in hand. This is the very definition of a summer escapist blockbuster, featuring an awesome variety of visual designs and hues, from screen-popping CGI to rough-edged, hand-drawn frames to split screens to a few perfectly timed live-action cameos to some deliberately murky backgrounds, as if we’re looking at a 3-D movie without the glasses on. There are so many clever comic-book style title cards and quick-cut Easter Eggs, superfans watching this when it comes to home video will be pausing every 30 seconds and pointing at the screen like DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
— Richard Roper, Chicago Sun-Times
