I just didn’t enjoy watching “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” Is something wrong with me?

Arnav Zek
2 min readSep 30, 2023

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Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

I had a lot of hope for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”, but I just didn’t have fun watching the movie (Maybe, something is wrong with me, I don’t know)

The story starts with the same old cliche: a brilliant scientist gone rogue. We’ve seen it again and again and again with characters like the Lizard, the Goblin, and Doctor Octopus — it’s the age-old “genius gone rogue” plotline.

Even if you ignore that, the villain ends up feeling shallow, this guy was a scientist and what does he decide to do when he finds out he can travel to other universes? “take revenge on Spiderman”. Really! At least pretend, you guys are trying.

Emotions run wild throughout the movie, almost everyone has emotional issues. Gwen Stacy has emotional issues, her dad has it, Miles has it, Miles’s parents have it, the villain has it, heck Spider-Man 2099 has it.

While adding depth and complexity can be a good thing, this film overdid it. The constant emotional rollercoaster, swinging from humor to drama and back to humor. I just felt disoriented and disconnected. Like, what am I supposed to feel?

As for the humor, it just didn’t work for me. The jokes felt forced and flat.

Now, turning to Mumbai’s portrayal, appreciating diversity can make the story more resonating but this film seemed to focus on exaggerating the negatives without exploring the rich diversity and beauty of India. Mumbattan is portrayed as a crowded city with cloth and wires hanging everywhere, celebrating traffic and disarray. India is a lot more than that, please don’t generalize us like that.

The central concept of “cannon events connecting the Spider-Verse” felt like a total BS. “If someone close to Spiderman does not die, the whole universe collapses” WTF!

I have to admit, the visuals in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” were impressive, even though there were times when the special effects felt distracting and overkill.

But here’s where the movie truly lost me: it completely missed those warm, heart-to-heart moments between Spider-Man and his parents. I mean, we didn’t witness a single genuine, heartfelt interaction between them. This made it really hard to connect with their relationship. So, when the conflicts hit, they felt flat, because you have nothing to compare that bad moment with.

There wasn’t even a single warm moment between Miles and Gwen, sitting depressed upside down doesn’t count as a heartfelt moment.

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