Opinion How ‘Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse’ saved the superhero

It encapsulates what a film should look like in 2023 but also feels like you’re watching something futuristic. But at its core, it's a story well-told

June 7, 2023 05:53 PM IST First published on: Jun 7, 2023 at 05:53 PM IST

Half a decade ago, when Sony’s feature-length animated take on Spider-Man titled Into the Spider-Verse came to theatres, the cinematic landscape was different. Superhero films were enjoying unprecedented success and smashing box office records. Perhaps they hit their peak the following year with the release of the superhero team-up film Avengers: Endgame, which briefly became the highest-grossing film of all time. But then we all witnessed an apocalyptic event in our very real world. The Covid-19 pandemic hit, and something shifted in our relationship with superhero cinema.

In the post-pandemic world, superheroes on screen have been having a bit of a wobbly time. The heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its direct rival, DC, don’t muster up quite the same enthusiasm in audiences as they did till a couple of years ago. Forget superhero fatigue, audiences have been experiencing “multiverse fatigue”. The idea of characters traversing from our universe to alternate dimensions was stuff only hardcore science nerds knew about. But thanks to films like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Everything, Everywhere All at Once, and indeed the aforementioned Into the Spider-Verse, the idea has devolved into a trope. Most superhero movies have used it to bring back actors who played a certain character years ago for nostalgia bait and to create studio synergy.

So, is the superhero boom over? Have we finally hit the saturation point? As I sat in the movie theatre watching Across the Spider-Verse (ATSV henceforth), the sequel to Into the Spider-Verse, I realised that wasn’t the case. If anything, this film gave me hope for the future of not just superhero cinema but cinema in general.

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And the key component of this was animation. For a myriad of reasons, live-action films have gotten less interesting over the last decade. A dullness seems to have pervaded genre filmmaking. Purely at a visual and cinematic level, films from the ’90s seem to have held their own better than those that came out merely a few years ago. Clunky CGI and wafer-thin plotlines have only made things worse.

That’s why something like ATSV stands out. It encapsulates what a film should look like in 2023 but also feels like you’re watching something futuristic — it takes detours to pay homage to the cinematic languages of the past. Various animation styles, genres and artistry blend seamlessly into one another in the same sequence and at times, even in the same frame. This is a film that knows that the human eye now has been exposed to a plethora of art forms and resolutions — from video games and graphic novels to watercolour paintings to 3D avatars and emojis.

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But all that visual and technical wizardry would not have made sense if the core of the story did not resonate. ATSV asks whether being a hero is only the domain of a select few. When the writer-artist pair of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created Spider-Man in the 1960s, one of the reasons they gave him a mask that covered his entire face was so that kids of every race and ethnicity could see themselves in him. That thought is taken to the next level in ATSV. There is a running theme of “belonging” throughout the film. Five years ago, when audiences saw a half-Hispanic, half-African-American Spider-Man in the form of Miles Morales, there was a section that scoffed at it, claiming he wasn’t the “real” Spider-Man. Well, this time, the writers upped the ante a few notches by depicting spider-folk of various nationalities (shout out to Indian Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar), genders, colours, times and even species.

The story also questions the idea that sacrifice has to be the focal point of a hero’s journey. A determined Miles Morales wants to pave a way where he gets to do things his own way. Being a hero for Miles is about making the best of what life has given you.

A common criticism of the expansive shared superhero universes has been that the stories have gotten so vast and interconnected that there’s barely space for a well-told story on a human level. But as I got out of the multiplex after watching ATSV, I was reassured that underneath all the layers, if the basics of superhero storytelling are kept intact, then they rise to the surface and display why the genre has endured for decades. Regardless of whether the character behind the mask is Hispanic, Indian, or a spunky girl trying to start a band.

The writer is a standup comedian and podcaster