MOVIE REVIEW: The Hero Versus a Thousand Faces

The following is a repost of my review of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), originally shared here on Letterboxd.

The Hero Versus a Thousand Faces

Multiverse stories are having a moment. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe de facto in their Multiversal Era, with their Sony partnership firmly entrenched in it, with DC in the process of breaking their own split-timeline ground, and with the Oscars officially going to films that openly operate on multiverse mechanics, the mere utterance of the word “multiverse” is already setting eyes rolling. It’s not going away. In an age of content creation when even the bastions of modern storytelling are re-booting, re-telling, re-hashing to an audience that is increasingly trope-savvy and oversaturated with media, self-reflexive universe cinema is a necessary byproduct.

How do creators entertain an audience that is constantly primed to say “I’ve seen this before?” These multiverse stories seem to think the answer lies in content that openly says, “We know you’ve seen this! Now watch something that acknowledges that in the text! Bet you’ve never seen that before!” Let’s get specific. How does a studio put a Spider-Man film up on the screen for an audience that has already seen Spider-Man before? The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) seemed to think the answer was to shoehorn in an unrelated scene in the film’s final minutes where Peter and Gwen’s Literature teacher does a lesson on the mono-myth, the hero of a thousand faces. “See what we did? We referenced the fact that this has been done before! Aren’t we innovative? Doesn’t that solve the issue that this hero had another face just five years ago?”

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse provides several answers to that internal audience question, “I’ve seen this before. Got anything new?” And all of those answers are better than the ones that have come before. While TASM was content alluding to the hero of a thousand faces in the text . . . SM:AtSV literally gives us the hero of a thousand faces. This series has always tread new ground by acknowledging that it’s not just a Spider-Man problem—it’s a Peter Parker problem. It’s not that we’ve seen Spider-Man three times before, it’s that we’ve seen Peter Parker three times before, when there are so many more Spider-People to draw from. Spider-Verse escapes into the multitude of Spideys, makes its home in that pluralistic space, dazzles audiences with that particular trick.

And yet . . . .

It has even more to offer this time than just different iterations of Spider-Man. In one fell swoop, the franchise gives us EVERY POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE SPIDER-MAN . . . and then binds them to the same canonical story arc anyways, in order to meta-comment on the power we have to break the narratives that others tell about us. This is advanced meta-multiversal levels of storytelling. And it does it better than anyone else, putting the self-aware mono-myth commentary itself in direct conflict with our hero’s own hero’s journey. It’s not just that this hero has a thousand different faces. It’s the hero VERSUS the thousand faces.

AND YET!

The multi-dimensional plot chess of this film is not enough; even that element had the potential to sour. The film does not rest on the laurels of its own brilliance. This film has more up its sleeve, more on its mind. In a world that has already seen everything, everywhere, all at once (something this film is in DIRECT communication with in more bagel-related ways than one), these plot gymnastics are not enough. These days, I.P. (with a capital I and a capital P) feels like a medium in and of itself—one that spans installments and is in direct conversation with audience expectations and awareness, one where multi-dimensional plot chess in the mind of the viewer is part of the experience. To ace this serve, SM:AtSV had to be more than good multiversal multimedia. It had to be good art.

And this is where the film achieves its true greatness. The film luxuriates in the ecstasy of its own imagery, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Enough has been said about the multiverse of art styles at work here, about the patchwork of animation media and frame rates that play into both the multiversal plot and the cultural pluralism of the film. And yet not enough can be said about the commitment to artistry that is woven into this film’s vision. It bucks tradition to build entire sequences around borderline pre-visualization still frames rendered in computer-generated watercolors that morph with every shot. Frames that look like the artwork you normally only see in the concept art phase of pre-production make it directly into the film, creating an experience that seems inconsistent and even unfinished by the standards of normal animation media but which revels in the artistic talent and vision of its artists no matter the cost. The creative impulse of the concept art phase now has a direct line into the film, instead of getting homogenized into the banal landscape of “everything else.”

For a film with a plot that is bursting beyond its own boundaries, the moments where the movie transcends are the moments when it slows down and anchors us to the beauty rooted in a single moment, to the artwork present in a single shot and the imagination of the image itself. The kinetic action and explosive storyline do not distract the film from the bravery it takes to slow the pace of an animated superhero film for children and simply enjoy visual play. There is a transcendent audacity to the commitment to Gwen’s watercolor conflicts with her father. There is a transcendent beauty to the image of Miles and Gwen sitting together under the clocktower and staring out together at the city skyline. You could eject all the multiversal spider-human gymnastics, and this film would claim its greatness in the artistic vision alone. 

It’s more than just the pacing of the editing or the pluralistic imperative of the art direction or the sweetness in the emotional beats. It’s the combined effect of all of it, the commitment as a production to make something that feels special. It’s a commitment to the singular vision of a project that dares to build a film around long cuts, patchwork visual styles, and sincere character moments. To quote Miles Morales, in an allusion to a famous lecture by Kurt Vonnegut about the shapes of hero journeys and how seldom people take the time to acknowledge the beauty and joy around them, “If this isn’t nice . . . what is?” His father, the soon-to-be Captain Morales, stands nearby, unaware that the hero under the mask is his own son. The heat of the sunny Manhattan sky shimmers off the glass ceiling of the building below.