Roughly one year after the events of Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales finds himself struggling both with looking ahead in his future and with missing the only people that truly understood him, Gwen Stacy and Peter B. Parker, while not being able to tell his parents that he’s Spider-Man. However, Gwen eventually joins a multiverse group led by Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099) and goes back to Miles’ universe. Miles, without her knowledge, decides to follow her back to her group and learns more about himself and his origins, all while more chaos ensues, caused by the Spot.

What definitely makes Across the Spider-Verse stand out from Into the Spider-Verse is its animation, which I know might sound weird because they both use the same type of animation for the most part. However, Across uses a lot more color and vibrance, while also playing with different artstyles, but at the same time remaining true to the overall “Spider-Verse look.” What makes this so special, though, is how the animation really tells the story and evokes emotion this time. The first film looked mostly the same all throughout, while this second one changes things for a few scenes, and whenever it does, you know it means something. It all exists to serve the story, and I would say that’s the area where this film ultimately surpasses the first one.

Just like the original movie, the themes here are also great. This time, they are a lot deeper, with the main theme being identity and purpose. From the beginning, Miles struggles with looking forward to his past; he knows what he wants to do, but doesn’t have the seriousness about it that one would think someone would for it. Eventually, in the story, he learns more about his origins as Spider-Man and begins to struggle even more with his identity, for reasons I won’t get into to avoid spoilers. It’s somewhat hard to elaborate on the themes of the movie without explicitly saying what happens in the story, but they definitely go into some pretty deep, personal, and emotional territory.

The soundtrack is also just as great as ever, even if it is more sparingly used when it comes to the actual songs. On the other hand, though, the original score composed for this film is pretty remarkable. It’s very high energy and fun with its pacing, which perfectly correlates with the rest of the movie, even though there is definitely a different side to that where I have some problems (not with the score, but the pacing), which I’ll get into later. This is definitely another film soundtrack to add to your gym playlist, that’s for sure.

Across the Spider-Verse is also a huge example of fan service done right. Throughout the film, you can expect multiple different references to both the comics and the movies, but what makes them work and age so much better than a lot of other movies that do the same is that they all serve the story. This story is almost like the pinnacle event Spider-Man movie, even more than No Way Home, I would say, where a lot of the lore that we’ve come to know from different Spider-Man stories all comes together for one film.

Now, I absolutely loved this movie when I first saw it in theaters. I think the pacing was just perfect for what kind of movies I was into at the time, and the thing that I specifically remember the most about it was how fast it flew by. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this movie twice in the last year, the first rewatch since theaters, being the first of those two, and it just hasn’t hit the same for me. I still very much enjoy Across the Spider-Verse, don’t get me wrong, but I find that its chaotic type of storytelling doesn’t really work for me all that much, and the reason I say “for me” is because I know that for the vast majority of people, it does. The best moments, in my opinion, are the slow, character-driven parts, but after the setup of the movie, they are so few and far between that it’s really hard to fully connect with everything that is going on. It rarely slows down, and when it does, it still feels hectic and overwhelming in my opinion, to the point where I would even say it’s quite exhausting. Another thing to add to that is that, while there are a multitude of characters here, only three of them actually feel all that important to the story, being Miles, Gwen, and Miguel.

The other big problem I have with it is that it really only feels like half of a story, which, even when I really loved this movie the first time I saw it, I had that problem with. This is clearly only one part of a big two-movie story, and unfortunately, it doesn’t really satisfy being that. A big example that I’ll pull up of one big story spread across multiple films, or stories for that matter, done right, would have to be The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, this trilogy is kind of meant to be just one story, but each individual part of it has complete character arcs, and a complete story for that matter. I don’t find this to be the case with Across the Spider-Verse. The only character who really gets a complete arc here is Gwen, while Miles’ arc feels completely unfinished, as does the story, and where the story eventually goes and ends kind of leaves me frustrated, again, even the first time I saw the film and loved it.

Don’t get me wrong, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a very well-produced, high-quality animated film with very good themes and part of a great story, but I do find it to be quite overrated. Its excellent themes almost get lost for me in the hectic and overwhelming energy of it all. It’s even more unfortunate that we’ve had to wait so long to finally get the completion of this story.