Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Across the Spider-Verse is the most technically ambitious animated film ever made. That is not hyperbole. Director Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, working with a Sony Animation team that spent years developing new visual systems, have created something that defies the normal vocabulary of film criticism. There are sequences in this movie where six different animation styles are running simultaneously in a single frame: Spider-Punk rendered in collage-cut anarchist zine art, Miles Morales in expressive watercolor, Miguel O'Hara in sleek future-noir, Pavitr Prabhakar in Bollywood-influenced Rajasthani miniature painting. It is genuinely unlike anything that has existed before. If you care about the art of animation, Across the Spider-Verse is a landmark.

The emotional story is also genuinely good. Miles Morales is 15 months past the events of Into the Spider-Verse. He is Spider-Man in his universe, but he cannot tell his parents. His father Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) is about to be promoted to captain. His mother Rio (Luna Lauren Velez) prays for him. Neither knows what he is. Miles is carrying this secret because he loves them and believes they would be frightened by the truth, and the film pays serious attention to the cost of that choice. The sequence where Jefferson leaves Miles a voicemail about how proud he is, not knowing his son is in another dimension facing death, is one of the most quietly devastating things in any animated film of this decade.

Gwen Stacy gets her own origin story in the opening act. Her father, Captain Stacy, believed she was responsible for the death of her universe's Peter Parker. He hunted her. She had to leave her home universe entirely. Her storyline is about being misunderstood by the father who loves her, and it is genuinely affecting. Hailee Steinfeld voices her with a carefully controlled sadness that makes the character feel real rather than symbolic.

The plot mechanics involve Miles being recruited by the Spider-Society, a multiverse-spanning organization led by Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099, voiced by Oscar Isaac) that monitors and preserves canon events across universes. Canon events are fixed points in the multiverse: a police captain always dies, certain tragedies are baked in. Miguel's argument is that if canon events are changed, universes collapse. Miles's argument is that he will not accept a predetermined fate for people he loves.

This is philosophically interesting material. The film presents both sides with more fairness than you might expect: Miguel is not wrong that changing canon events has catastrophic consequences. He has watched universes die. His certainty is earned through genuine loss. Miles is not wrong that accepting predetermined tragedy without resistance is its own kind of moral failure. The argument between them is genuinely the film's intellectual core.

Here is where we have to be honest with our audience.

The film embeds its progressive worldview at the structural level, not as a surface decoration. The Spider-Society as an institution that enforces fixed outcomes against individual will is explicitly framed as the oppressive antagonist. Spider-Punk is designed as the film's coolest character and exists primarily to articulate anarchist anti-institutional politics. Hobie Brown lives to say 'the system is the villain,' and the film endorses him. This is not subtle. It is the film's ideology made flesh in a leather jacket covered in safety pins.

Gwen Stacy's bedroom has a transgender pride flag on the wall. The film does not address this in dialogue. It is simply there. The production team confirmed it was intentional, with the specific context of Gwen's father struggling to understand his child being made parallel to the experience of parents of trans children. You can agree or disagree with that choice. It is there, and parents should know.

Miles Morales's defiance of authority, both his parents and the Spider-Society, is framed as heroic throughout. The film does not interrogate the cost of lying to his parents beyond the emotional texture of the voicemail scene. His deception is excused by his good intentions. This is a common progressive story structure: individual instinct overrides institutional rule because the individual is right. It is not a traditional moral framework.

All of that said: the domestic scenes between Miles and his parents are the most genuinely traditional content in the film. Jefferson Davis is written and voiced as a loving, present, protective father. His relationship with his son is central. His pride in Miles is real. The film's treatment of the father-son relationship is substantially more traditional than most of what Marvel Studios has produced in the last five years. Jefferson is not a problem to be solved. He is a man whose love is the film's emotional foundation.

The animation is the story, though. What Sony has built here has to be seen to be understood. The Mumbattan sequence, where Miles and Pavitr Prabhakar move through an Indian city rendered in an animation style that blends multiple South Asian visual traditions, is one of the most beautiful things in modern cinema. The Spider-Society headquarters sequence, with thousands of Spider-People animated in dozens of different styles simultaneously, is the kind of filmmaking achievement that happens once a decade. Whatever you think of the film's ideology, the craft is undeniable.

Box office: $690.5M worldwide on a $100M budget. Critics: 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audience: 94%. It earned every cent of that and most of that praise.

RT Critics: 96%. RT Audience: 94%. IMDB: 8.6. Box Office: $690.5M worldwide. One of the highest-grossing animated films ever made. Critical near-consensus that it is among the best animated films of the decade.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Anti-Institutional Authority Framing	4	High	High	5.04
Anarchist Character as Coolest Hero	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Progressive Identity Symbolism	3	High	Low	1.05
Defiance of Parents Framed as Heroic	2	High	Moderate	1.4
Multiverse as Diversity/Representation Metaphor	2	Moderate	Moderate	2
Villain as System Not Person	1	Moderate	Moderate	1
TOTAL WOKE				12.6

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Loving and Present Black Father	4	High	High	5.04
Nuclear Family as Emotional Foundation	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Mother's Faith and Prayer	2	High	Low	0.7
Son's Protective Love for Father	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Villain Driven by Real Grief	2	High	Low	0.7
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				10.6

Score Margin: -2 WOKE