cashew | Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse

Met up with tanithryudo and stuffed ourselves at a Korean BBQ then watched Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse, which worked out despite the lack of planning, as we somehow managed to bumble our way to the cinema just in time to catch the showing despite not checking the showing timing or anything.

We rock.

Anyway, a review.

The Review:

So.

Spoilers

The movie doesn't actually end. Just as the plot finished building up the second act, the story cuts out to a "to be continued", which is less than satisfying.

Other than that, the movie was actually pretty good. It continues in the vein of the first movie, Into the Spiderverse, and continues to shift animation style to convey differing POVs. And since we actually traverse into other universes — in contrast to the first movie where the story takes place in a single universe — the shifting artstyle denotes when we're in a different universe, and I'm sure that if I watched more closely, I'd see the foreshadowing of the twist via animation style changes. Anyway, it feels fresh and the use of dialogue boxes in strategic moments really gave a feeling of watching a comic book panel come to life.

Of course, I'm appreciative of the push for using different art styles in 2D animation, as I felt the past two decades of chasing after 3D animation really hurt animation overall. Like, I get it, when you've got a shiny graphics card you have to justify that processing power, but I'm glad to see 2D get a renaissance in being treated as more than "kiddie" art and animation studios actually pushing the boundaries of what 2D can convey through abstraction. Plus, Gwen's action sequences are absolutely beautiful. I don't know how you can watch this without being in awe of the versatility of 2D animation.

The cherry on top is that the story is emotionally loaded and so well executed, it just makes the previous spoiler issue that much more painful when it hits. Painful in the sense of leaving the audience a with a bit of "WTF, are you seriously going to end it like this?! Noooooooooo." But not in a good way.

Anyway, overall, good experience. This is supposedly the longest animated movie in the history of animated movies, but I felt like they really could've pushed the boundary a little more and add an extra 30 minutes to avoid the problem mentioned in the spoiler. Nonetheless, I'm satisfied.

I could go into detail about the plot and stuff, but I feel like a) that's been done pretty thoroughly elsewhere and b) I think the story does stand well enough that discussing the plot isn't really all that interesting. More interesting is the concept the story brings up, via meta-commentary (which was also foreshadowed by a literal comment about how meta-commentary art is still art), about "canon events". So according to the news, TikTok's obsessed with the idea of canon events in RL, the idea that something bad was unavoidable to prevent the unraveling of the universe's very fabric, and I think TikTok has completely missed the point of the story. Because I'm fairly certain the actual message of the movie is to defy the canon event, to not accept something bad has to happen just because a bunch of people failed to avert the bad event in other universes. Don't accept that fate is pre-determined.

As Miles said, "Spiderman can save both, that's the point".

But then again, Gen Z missing the point of art seems to be a thing now. I despair for the younger generation. Maybe some Gen Z-ers are fighting the good fight to try to correct misconceptions, but I'm too jaded to bother getting into internet fights over media interpretations now. (Suddenly reminded of college days when tanithryudo and I would get into long forum discussions over interpretations of movies or anime or manga or whatever. Ah...youth. When I gave a damn about changing people's opinion and now I don't care anymore.)

Anyhoo, to conclude, would recommend except for that point mentioned in the spoiler tag.