I can't remember who let the jinn out of the bottle for the first time with this multiverse extravaganza, but it's definitely the biggest cinematic trait of late. Everything Everywhere All at Once quite capitalised on it last Oscars season, so it's no surprise that the latest Spider-Man animated feature, which used the same tricks first, but maybe in a slightly more shambolic manner, is upping the ante.
What used to be more of an acid trip back in 2018, is now a coherently crazy experience amplified 1000 times. Bearing traces of heavy influence from cyberpunk anime genre, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one hell of a never ending whirlwind of flickering coloured specks and hard beats. Multiply it by a variety of cultural references, a dozen different graphic styles and several languages changing fluidly into one another - and you'll end up with an absolute bomb that will blow your mind, in all ways good and bad.
Visually, this film is a masterpiece. At least in the "we've never seen anything like it" sense. Yep, it's innovative, and probably not as vertigo-inducing as the first part, despite a sickening amount of action. It still doesn't make it easy to follow what's going on, but somehow the film retains your engagement, so you just go with the flow. And that's probably the biggest achievement for something that's quite chaotic and sensory overstimulating.
Still, it feels like by overloading our senses with anime-like extremes, Spider-Man bypasses our prefrontal cortex and goes directly to "the TikTok brain" that's easily captivated by shiny moving things. So we end up having zero complaints eating subpar dialogues, classic cheap tricks like driving tension by artificially induced miscommunication, or single-agenda characters that follow their prescribed paths without deviation natural to real human beings.
I can't deny that it felt good watching this film. But I am left with a tingling concern that it wasn't due to the complexity of emotions or a wide gamut of thoughts that it made us experience, but simply because our brains produced lots of happy chemicals in response to this sensory DDoS attack. Which, technically, is an achievement akin to the discovery of LSD, profound in its influence on the world. But, as with any real world drug, it makes you wonder: can feelings alone be trusted when evaluating the whole experience?
Modern problems require modern solutions. Whether we like it or not, films like this one open a portal to a new era of cinema. Let's see what awaits on the other side.
What used to be more of an acid trip back in 2018, is now a coherently crazy experience amplified 1000 times. Bearing traces of heavy influence from cyberpunk anime genre, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one hell of a never ending whirlwind of flickering coloured specks and hard beats. Multiply it by a variety of cultural references, a dozen different graphic styles and several languages changing fluidly into one another - and you'll end up with an absolute bomb that will blow your mind, in all ways good and bad.
Visually, this film is a masterpiece. At least in the "we've never seen anything like it" sense. Yep, it's innovative, and probably not as vertigo-inducing as the first part, despite a sickening amount of action. It still doesn't make it easy to follow what's going on, but somehow the film retains your engagement, so you just go with the flow. And that's probably the biggest achievement for something that's quite chaotic and sensory overstimulating.
Still, it feels like by overloading our senses with anime-like extremes, Spider-Man bypasses our prefrontal cortex and goes directly to "the TikTok brain" that's easily captivated by shiny moving things. So we end up having zero complaints eating subpar dialogues, classic cheap tricks like driving tension by artificially induced miscommunication, or single-agenda characters that follow their prescribed paths without deviation natural to real human beings.
I can't deny that it felt good watching this film. But I am left with a tingling concern that it wasn't due to the complexity of emotions or a wide gamut of thoughts that it made us experience, but simply because our brains produced lots of happy chemicals in response to this sensory DDoS attack. Which, technically, is an achievement akin to the discovery of LSD, profound in its influence on the world. But, as with any real world drug, it makes you wonder: can feelings alone be trusted when evaluating the whole experience?
Modern problems require modern solutions. Whether we like it or not, films like this one open a portal to a new era of cinema. Let's see what awaits on the other side.