Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Review

The sequel's real achievement is that each universe is drawn in a different medium and the film cuts between them without ever losing legibility. Gwen's Earth is watercolour that shifts hue with her mood, Mumbattan is dense line work, Hobie is a collage of misaligned printing that changes frame rate whenever he moves. None of this is decoration, since the whole plot turns on Miles being a visible anomaly, and the animation makes that literal in every shared frame.

The canon event device is the smartest idea any of these films have had, converting the multiverse from a nostalgia engine into a fatalism the hero has to refuse, and the chase through Miguel's headquarters is staged with more spatial imagination than most live action manages. Shameik Moore and Hailee Steinfeld do genuinely good work, and the parent scenes carry more weight than the villain material. Then it stops. Not on a cliffhanger but mid-scene, because the third act is a separate film, and no amount of ambition excuses charging full price for an unfinished shape.