Amazing, spectacular, sensational — these words don’t just define three of the monthly Spider-Man comic book titles Marvel once published for the web-slinging superhero. As far as the animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is concerned, they pull the double duty of expressing the elevated, breathless reaction one experiences at the end of the movie.

If its predecessor, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, was a breakthrough in imagination and craft, call Across the Spider-Verse mindboggling, envelope-pushing, benchmark-making superior. The skill and use of technology pushes the term ‘radical’ to its limits. In fact, every aspect of the film is upped in ante by a factor of 10.

Animation-wise, this is not an easy film to make. Its default, pen-sketched, half-toned, vibrantly-coloured, splash-paged CG-animated style is married with a plethora of techniques from live-action (probably the easiest to include) to hand-drawn, stop-motion, to what I can only define as continuously changing 2D collage of images that look like album covers on a moving character (this is the design of Spider-Punk, voiced by Daniel Kaluuya, a contrarian rocker Spider-Man, and one of the film’s coolest characters).

For all the rabbits that are pulled out of the hat by writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham and directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, the use of a mix of hyper-stylised designs never jars, let alone breaks, visual or narrative coherency.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, by design, is a work of art that comes with deep, resonant undertones

The story breathes when it needs to, and ramps up its intensity when the moment calls for it. It is impossible to dismiss the levelheadedness that is governing what could have been a supererogatory indulgence of bizarre, quirky flair of style over substance.

Seeing that the plot deals with the idea of multiverse — a now in-vogue plot device that has engulfed and incapacitated many a filmmakers’ vision (especially Marvel’s post Avengers: End Game) — the idea of parallel-dimension-hopping feels refreshingly fresh and unpolluted from cliches, even when cliches manifest themselves.

Since these Spider-Verse movies dabble in parallel dimensions featuring different iterations of the same characters, the seemingly rampant indulgence of fanservice feels more at home than the wink-nudge easter eggs used in other films.

Here, everything is legit, even the fanservice and the multiverse-hopping — perhaps more so than Spider-Man: No Way Home — not because it has a place in the story, but because it is the story.

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), now a year older, nursing his blossoming love for another dimension’s Spider-Woman, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), struggles with the destined circumstances bestowed on every Spider-Man iteration in history: the woes of adolescence, power and responsibility.

Balancing academics and maintaining secrecy of his superhero life from his parents (Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez), Miles battles a low-tier villain called The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) — a scientist who can open small rifts in space (he opens small ‘spots’ around objects and people, through which he can punch someone and steal ATMs).

What seems to be an easy-peasy takedown turns surprisingly alarming: the Spot gains powers no one expected (the reveal is a product of ingenious writing, by the way). A small action from Gwen dramatically shifts the story into an eye-opening direction.

Gwen, who has been enrolled in a Spider-Verse police force by the brooding Spider-Man 2099 Miguel O’ Hara (voiced by Oscar Issac), gets more screen time to flesh out her painful backstory.

In sync with her woes, Gwen’s world, though similar in rendering to Miles, is at once tangible and ethereal, with splashes of blue, lavenders and pinks that drip streaks of colour based on the mood of the emotion.

Spider-Verse, by design, is a work of art that comes with deep, resonant undertones.

The words parallel, dimension and infinite worlds, don’t just define the plot device of this story; their interpretations are literally embodied by choices these characters make or how they think. I mean, what is adolescence but a search for different possibilities of what one can be?

This bit plays out in the unforeseen climax, when we realise that Across the Spider-Verse leads to a — gasp — sequel. Also, like all good stories, the end is triggered by a connecting ‘webbed’ event.

When Miles unknowingly saves a version of Captain Stacy in Mumbattan — a mix of Mumbai and Manhattan, with its own Spider-Man (he is called Pavitr Prabhakar, voiced by Karan Soni) — he, and the story at large, question the unyielding nature of predestined fates and ‘canon’ events (ie. things that need to happen).

Spider-Man needed a tragedy to become a hero, and now that he has knowledge of what needs to pass, can he stand by and let something happen that goes against his principle of having great power and being responsible for it?

While the trope and the tagline is old and iterated ad-infinitum, Across the Spider-Verse’s makers prove that there is still bright, vivid life yet in the old adage — and that the adventure can still be amazing, spectacular and sensational in the same breath.

Clocking in at two hours and 20 minutes (which you don’t feel at all), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is released by Sony Pictures and carries a U (Universal) certificate in Pakistan

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 18th, 2023