In 2018, writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman gave us a delirious and utterly unexpected new web-spin on the infinite self-replication of Marvel Comics IP and its most reliable hero, Spider-Man. Instead of yet another MCU live action version, directed and produced in that hard, depthless CGI light, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a brilliantly inventive animated fantasia about the Spidey mythology, riffing on movies and comic books. The Spider-Verse was a cosmos in which different Spider-folk existed in parallel: a multiverse at least as interesting as that of Dr Strange, and more interesting than the solemn awards-prestige of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Everyone who saw it wondered how this kaleidoscopic new take could be applied elsewhere: James Bond: Across the James-Bond-Verse, or Bilbo Baggins: Beyond the Bilbo-Baggins-Verse.
Now we have a sequel subtitled Across the Spider-Verse – could it be that they wanted a certain Beatles track and Apple wouldn’t let them? – with a threequel (Beyond the Spider-Verse) in the pipeline. 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.
