At The Movies: A Spidey for everyone in souped-up Spider-Verse sequel

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (PG)

140 minutes, opens on Thursday, 3 stars

The story:

In 2018’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse,

Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) is bitten by a radioactive spider and reluctantly takes over as Spider-Man from Peter Parker (Chris Pine). He also learns there are parallel universes, each with its own version of the web-slinger. And this sequel spotlights a staggering number of them, including the pregnant Spider-Woman known as Jessica Drew (Issa Rae); Bollywood-fabulous Spider-Man India, Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni); and the humourless Irish-Latino Spider-Man, Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac). Together, they work to protect the multiverse, but clash with Miles over how to deal with a new supervillain.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse waltzed off with the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2019, and if there had been a prize for sheer, breathless inventiveness, it would have snagged that as well.

A superhero origin story and coming-of-age yarn, it cleverly elaborated on the idea of a multiverse to explore ideas around identity and acceptance.

And it beautifully animated the kaleidoscope of worlds using an unprecedented mash-up of computer-aided and hand-drawn techniques.

This sequel does the same, but cranks it up by orders of magnitude.

Spider-Man’s unique selling point has always been that he is an everyman, and the Spider-Verse films wisely hew to that, contrasting Miles’ formidable powers with his teenage insecurity and parental angst.

He also fumbles his duties as New York’s favourite socially approved vigilante, including when The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a new villain, appears on the scene.

Enter Miles’ crush, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), another teen hero with daddy issues.

She introduces him to an interdimensional clique of Spider-People who work together to guard the multiverse.

Their biggest worry are baddies, such as The Spot, who mess with fundamental or “canon” events, which they see as potentially world-ending – a wink to how some fans view deviations from the comics.

But apart from this passive-aggressive swipe, there is no question screenwriters Phil Lord and Chris Miller know which side their bread is buttered on.

And even more than the first, this film is high-class fan service, stuffed to the gills with Easter eggs and nods to the comics and previous movies.

The multiverse is the ideal playground for this as well as an even bigger showcase of diversity.

Miles, who first appeared in Marvel’s comics in 2011, is half-black and half-Puerto Rican – a nice change of pace from all the white Peter Parkers who have squeezed into the webby suit over the years.

But this movie dreams up even more iterations, making the point that culture and biology do not define a superhero.

At the same time, it is laden with cliches, many of them rather lazy, as in its depiction of the Indian and the British Spider-Men.

That said, many viewers will probably enjoy these and they are a necessary evil, perhaps, when trying to cram so many archetypes into one story.

Visual cliches abound as well, and the film-makers have managed to squeeze in even more animation styles and references than in the first movie.

Some of it is delightful, but there is so much going on in certain scenes, the eye does not know where to land.

Reprieve from this ocular assault comes when the narrative slows down to focus on Miles’ struggles with his parents, self-worth and feelings for Gwen.

Earnest and heartfelt, it gives the audience much-needed breathing room.

But not a ton, and as entertaining a spectacle as this is, the story would have benefited from a little restraint.

Hot take: There is a Spidey for everyone in this visual extravaganza, a feast of characters and animation styles that will delight some fans and exhaust others.