NOW IN THEATERS! Let me just say that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse would be a great film if it weren’t so damn long. That said, it’s pretty good. Taking place a few years after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is now a senior in high school, and his future is a bit daunting… mainly because he’s never around…because of all that crime fighting. His parents, Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) and Rio (Luna Lauren Velez) are having a hard time letting their little genius go, and also that Miles is hiding a huge Spidey-secret from them.
Meanwhile, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is causing havoc committing petty crimes through his dimensional portal powers given to him during the collider explosion in the first film. The Spot is stopped thanks to the help of Spider-Gwen Hailee Steinfeld, who can visit Miles’ dimension thanks to a technologically-advanced “watch” given to her by Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac).
Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
“…an elite team of Spider-persons scour the Multiverse to plug up holes formed by dimensional jumping.”
It appears that because of the events in the first Spider-Man movie, an elite team of Spider-persons scour the Multiverse to plug up holes formed by dimensional jumping. The team is led by Spider-Man 2099, Jessica Drew (Issa Rae), Gwen, Spider-Man India (Karan Soni), and Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya). Miles wants to be part of the team to prove himself to his parents, but there’s no more room on the team. It’s a ruse as Miles follows Gwen to the sanctuary of Spidey 2099 and all the Spider-people…like every single Spidey. From here, Miles is shunned by all the Spideys because he’s on the verge of collapsing the entire Multiverse and must be stopped.
There’s a lot more to this story, and I don’t have the word count or time to go through it all. Suffice it to say, this story is dense and features all the 30-second backstories from one Spidey after the other. I’m OK with dense, but there are storylines surrounding Miles and his parents that desperately needed to be tightened up specifically the entire cake incident.
