Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
D: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K Thompson (2023).
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens with a gender switch on a classic Spider-Man trope. Gwen Stacy, (V. Hailee Steinfield) who fights crime as Spider-Woman while dodging the cops (including her police-captain father - v. Shea Wigham) who want her for the murder of her boyfriend Peter Parker (He became a super-villain and died fighting her as one does). On the night her father discovers her true identity things start to get weird. She encounters and then joins two alternate versions of Spidey: Miguel O’Hara (v. Jason Isaacs) and Jess Drew (v. Issa Rae) who lead a society of “variants” who patrol other dimensions and keep the many, many versions of the wall-crawler from going against “canon” and destroying their universes. Then after the opening credits the film blows up. In a good way.
When Gwen travels to the dimension of her old boyfriend Miles Morales (v. Shameik Moore) who we remember from the last Spider-Verse movie and they fight the dimension-hopping villain The Spot (v. Jason Schwartzman alternating psychosis and haplessness) the movie becomes a mash-up of Romeo and Juliet and Everything Everywhere All at Once as it’s creators blend a visual kaleidoscope of what seems like hundreds of animation styles (that amazingly don’t bump into each other) as well as a never-ending supply of Spidey-variants (Daniel Kaluuya as Spider-Punk and Karan Soni as an Indian Spider-Man stand out in the crowd) in a moving story about fate, free will, star-crossed lovers, power and responsibility (natch) that’ll touch your heart as your head spins. And then……..well if you can’t figure out what I’m not going to spoil, I’ll just say see this and I’ll see you in March.