Following up an Academy Award-winning movie that scored almost unanimous critical acclaim and gained a reputation as one of the best superhero stories ever made is a tall order if ever there was one, but the two-part Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is shaping up to be just as great as its predecessor, if not better.
The opening installment was as ambitious as it was entertaining, but sequels are obligated to raise the stakes on almost every level, and a key part of that is going to be the visuals. Into the Spider-Verse boasted plenty of eye-popping animation and sumptuous set pieces, but producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller revealed to Collider that they’re raising the bar significantly.
“It is, as Phil said, a very ambitious sequel because we didn’t want to just sort of do the same thing again. And so the idea that we’d be going to different dimensions really opened up an opportunity artistically to have each world have its own art style, and to be able to push the folks at ImageWorks to develop a way to have each dimension feel like it was drawn by a different artist’s hand.”
So far, the only multiversal web-slingers to have been officially added to the cast are Oscar Isaac’s Spider-Man 2099 and Issa Rae’s Jessica Drew, although some eagle-eyed fans did spot an Easter Egg teasing a potential appearance for Spider-Man India Pavitr Prabhakar.
We’ve got no idea just how many worlds Across the Spider-Verse is going to visit, but with two feature films to luxuriate in, we can guarantee that it’ll be many. The hotly-anticipated comic book adaptation exploding onto the big screen in October this year, and Part 2 is arriving in 2023.