The huge success of Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and the subsequent co-opting of alternative Spideys for the live-action Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) helped to ensure a sequel, though a follow-up was already tentatively in development before the first film had been released. In the years following the first film, the idea of a “multiverse,” the theory of multiple universes existing alongside each other that had long been popular in science fiction and particularly in comics, suddenly ignited the (admittedly limited) imagination of the Hollywood studios. The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), the non-comic based Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and DC Comics’ The Flash (2023) all played with the notion.

“Let’s do things differently,” says Gwen Stacy (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) at the very start of the film and sure enough, writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham and new directing trio Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson do at least attempt to ring a few changes. For a start, the first part of the film is largely about Gwen, her loneliness and her difficult relationship with her father, barely featuring Spider-Man or his teenage alter-ego Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) at all. She battles a version of the Vulture (Jorma Taccone) from an Italian Renaissance-themed universe and is aided by Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Issac) and the pregnant, motorcycle-riding Pam Greir-alike Jess Drew/Spider-Woman (Issa Rae) who use portal-generating watches to move around the multiverse. When her distraught father George realizes her secret identity and tries to arrest her, Miguel allows Gwen to join the Spider-Society, dedicated to patrolling the alternate worlds and fixing any damage done to the multiverse.

Meanwhile, On Earth-1610, Miles is having problems of his own. A new supervillain, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), was created following the explosion at the Alchemax collider in the first film and is travelling the multiverse looking for other colliders to boot his powers. When Gwen helps him out, he secretly follows her through a portal to Earth-50101, teaming up with local Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni), and Spider Punk Hobie Brown (Daniel Kaluuya), against the Spot, accidentally causing the destruction of Earth-50101 in the process. Miles is taken to see the humorless Moguel (“the only Spider-Man who isn’t funny – we’re meant to be funny”) at the huge Spider Society headquarters where hundreds of Spider-Men – including Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) and his infant daughter Mayday – from across the multiverse are based, learns an unpleasant truth about the origins of his own superpowers, is told that there are certain “canon events” that cannot be avoided, such as the deaths of a police captain close to every Spider-Man, and rushes home to try to save his policeman father, the Spider Society in hot pursuit. And all the while, The Spot is preparing a full on assault on the entire multiverse.

Across the Spider-Verse is not a film during which one can allow one’s attention to wander too far. There’s a huge amount going on and references, in-jokes and fan service abound, with supposedly no fewer than 280 different Spider-Men/Women/Horses/T-Rexs for the attentive to spot (judicious use of freeze frame reveal a good many gags that are otherwise hard to miss) and jokey, throwaway references to the MCU (“don’t even get me started on Doctor Strange and that little nerd back on Earth-199999”, bemoans Miguel). One might be able to detect some parallels with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ ground-breaking Watchmen – The Spot’s appearance is not that dissimilar to Rorschach’s and his creation echoes that of Dr Manhattan, there’s a very funny poke at the seemingly ever-present Spider-Men-pointing-at-each-other social media meme and a blink and you’ll miss it reference to anime classic Akira (1987). There are even moments here that seem quite daring for what is, essentially, a family film – when Renaissance Vulture arrives in Gwen’s world, he lands in a very briefly glimpsed Jeff Koon exhibition.

As with the first film, each of the alternate worlds is realized in its own distinctive art style, including one ripped straight from the collaged pages of late 1970s punk fanzines, the home of the soon-to-depart-but-we-hope-he’s-back-soon Spider Punk. At one point we even leave the animated realm behind altogether as The Spot briefly calls in on a live-action Mrs Chen (Peggy Lu) from the Venom films while Donald Glover, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are all briefly visible in archive footage from previous Spider-Man films. The action set-pieces are breathtaking, far more exciting even than those in those live-action films, with Gwen and Miles’ exhilarating web-slinging journey through New York a particular highlight.

Despite all the emphasis on the visuals and the set-pieces, the film never skimps on the character stuff. Gwen and Miles are a charming couple but who are mostly just good friends who miss each other terribly. The Morales family are similarly refreshingly no-dysfunctional, just an ordinary working-class family facing the usual working-class family problems (apart from their son being a secret superhero of course) and just for once, the ever-tedious absent/missing/doomed father business actually has a point here, serving a real plot development rather than being what feels like an act of exorcism for someone on the production crew.

Playful, funny, silly, wildly inventive and a comic fan’s wet dream, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) joins the ranks of Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Mad Max 2 (1981), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and precious few others as one of those sequels that’s actually the equal of – of not better than – the original. It was, at the time of its release, the longest studio animation ever at 140 minutes, though it rarely feels like it. It’s big, clever, complex stuff and far better than just about any live-action superhero film since The Avengers: Endgame (2019).

Another triumph, outperforming the increasingly stale live-action superhero films, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse It’s a retina-searing kaleidoscope of colour, wild action and dynamic visuals and was, deservedly, box office hit, its haul surpassing even that of Into the Spider-Verse to become Sony Pictures Animation’s highest-grossing film to date. A final caption reads “To be continued” and indeed the film was shot, like the Matrix and Back to the Future sequels, as the first instalment of a two-part follow-up with Beyond the Spider-Verse due to follow in the near future. It sets its successor a very high bar.