The Big Picture · Review · Discussion

‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ Is Here to Save Us

June 2, 2023/ 68 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Charles Holmes

Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins bring in Charles Holmes of The Midnight Boys to talk through Across the Spider-Verse: the animation, the multiversal canon plot, and that cliffhanger ending.

12 films across 2 segments.

AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.

Across the Spider-Versefive stars, Sean's first in three years

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse poster

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023

Directed by Joachim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson (three directors this time, versus Bob Persichetti/Peter Ramsey/Rodney Rothman on the first film), scripted by Lord & Miller with Dave Callahan. Every universe gets its own animation style: Gwen's world in watercolor/impressionist brushstrokes, a Bill Sienkiewicz-inspired look elsewhere. Charles reads it as a love letter to the non-house-style Marvel/DC artists. Jason Schwartzman voices the Spot, a D-list Marvel villain since the 1980s; Oscar Isaac plays Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099, enforcing "canon events" against Miles; Hailee Steinfeld's Gwen Stacy gets far more space than in the first film. Runs 2 hours 20 minutes and ends on a hard cliffhanger (originally titled Part One) ahead of Beyond the Spider-Verse, dated for March 2024. Charles's one real reservation: unlike the tightly self-contained first film, this one starts to feel like "the machine," leaning on legacy-actor cameos (Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire, Donald Glover's Aaron Davis) the way No Way Home did.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse poster

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2018

The 2018 predecessor, a movie Sean calls a masterpiece and once swapped to Amanda. Its tight, self-contained structure (beginning, middle, end) is the yardstick Charles uses for his one complaint about the sequel's cliffhanger.

Spider-Man: No Way Home 2021

The film Sean says "walked so this movie could run," training audiences to accept multiple Spider-Men onscreen at once. He liked it; the legacy-cameo playbook here reminds Charles of it a little too much.

Comparisons and reference points

Avatar: The Way of Water 2022

Charles's touchstone for a movie that makes you wait years to show what it built, though he thinks it leans on archetypes too heavily where Across the Spider-Verse uses them as "a trampoline."

The Shape of Water 2017

Charles's other reference for a film that announces the scope of its craft in its first five minutes.

Tár 2022

Amanda's prior benchmark for five-star filmmaking this year; Sean argues the two movies have real overlap.

Licorice Pizza 2021

Grouped with Tár as one of the small handful of recent films the hosts have given five stars.

Avengers: Endgame 2019

Cited for a chaotic final 45 minutes. The live-action MCU color palette, Amanda says, looks flat next to this movie's animation.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania poster

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023

A passing reference alongside the MCU's live-action house style.

Dune 2021

The inverse cliffhanger experience: Sean didn't know going in that Dune was only Part One, whereas he knew this film was building toward Beyond the Spider-Verse.

Titan A.E. 2000

Charles's example of the mid-budget animated movie pitched at 12- and 13-year-olds, a lane he says has largely disappeared.

Shrek 2001

Another example of that same vanished for-everyone animated lane.

Also mentioned raised along the way

In passing Barbie Oppenheimer Past Lives Marriage Story The Little Mermaid Fast X The Super Mario Bros. Movie Elemental Back to the Future The Matrix The Empire Strikes Back Spaceballs Star Wars

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

Shows The Midnight Boys

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