I was a big fan of the first film and really wanted to catch this in the cinemas but was just too busy at the time. In the end, catching this on Netflix might have been wiser after all as this film is just too long and keeping up with its frenetic pace with so many characters and the dynamic changes of art style is quite exhausting. It does look great but it’s too overwhelming even for me. I was let down too by stale story beats like playing up Miles Morales being too busy as Spider-Man to attend to his real life or being forced to sacrifice the few to save the many. That said, it does have some decent character building moments as well so the verdict is kind of mixed. It definitely isn’t as good as the first film to me but I’ll still be looking out for the last part of what now looks like a trilogy.

More than a year after the events of the first film, Miles Morales is having difficulty juggling his roles as Spider-Man and his studies and misses Gwen Stacy. One day, he encounters a new villain the Spot who has the power to create portals but treats the fight as something of a joke. The Spot claims that his condition was caused by Miles when he destroyed Alchemax’s collider and later learns to use his portals to cross between universes. Meanwhile in her own universe, Gwen encounters a version of the Vulture who has accidentally crossed universes. Miguel O’Hara and Jess Drew arrive to apprehend this Vulture and recruit her into the Spider-Society. Based in O’Hara’s own 2099 universe, the organization is composed of many different versions of Spider-Men and Women who are meant to deal with multiversal threats. Gwen arrives in Miles’ universe and meets up with him but is actually supposed to track The Spot. Miles secretly follows Gwen into a universe inhabited by Pavitr Prabhakar, an Indian Spider-Man. They learn that the Spot is travelling between universes to collect the energy from each world’s collider.

Are you already tired of multiverse shenanigans? This is what it looks like when it’s turned up to eleven with no restraints whatsoever. On one level, it is admittedly a thrill to see animated versions of all these obscure characters but wow, this is really too much. Like before, they liberally switch between art styles to illustrate the different versions. The result is incredibly dynamic and kinetic but also very confusing. With so much action going on, the emotional impact of any given moment actually becomes more muted. I do like how it plays with the visual language. With the Spider-People all having the ability to walk or even sit on walls and ceilings, they can casually position themselves any way they want, leading to some crazy perspectives. At the same time, their powers, poses and general appearance are too similar so it mostly looks like too much of the same thing. None of the fights feel like there are any serious stakes involved and there is way too much chatty banter. I get why they’re trying up the comedic value of the Spot despite him ostensibly being the villain while making sure that O’Hara who is supposed to be the leader of their side is the one character who doesn’t crack a joke. But it’s still blunt storytelling and I’m not a fan of any of the Spider-Society stuff at all.

That said, there are some great character development moments that I like. Questioning Miles’ eligibility as Spider-Man hit harder than I expected as of course most of them are variations of Peter Parker or his close friends and associates. It’s also eerie to see the tragic deaths in the lives of each version of the character and explicitly treat it as a defining point of what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man. Even so, it strains my sense of disbelief that any version of the iconic hero would be okay with any form of the greater good argument to justify sacrificing the few. The character should be too fundamentally decent to agree to this kind of dispassionate min-max analysis. Towards the end, the examination of an alternative path that Miles could have taken looks promising and is enough on its own to make me want to watch what would presumably be the final part of the trilogy.

The first film was amazing, being such a breath of fresh air and so full of energy. This one however ramps things up too much, is too long and the short cameos of so many of the Spider-People only diminishes the impact of each of them. I also don’t think there’s a single good fight scene in here. It’s all just crazy web-slinging and running and leaping around with collateral damage that is never addressed. I suppose it’s still good enough to recommend and I do want to watch the rest of it, but I can’t summon the same kind of joyous enthusiasm for it that I had for the first film.