MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Overwhelmingly positive critics’ reviews and passionate fan recommendations have led to amazing box-office numbers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The sequel to 2018’s Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse pulled US$ 208.6 million in box office receipts on its first weekend of play, making it the number-one movie in the world.
Hailed as “the best Spider-Man film ever made” and “one of the best superhero movies of all time” Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse shows a 95% Certified Fresh rating and 96% audience score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
See what raving critics are saying
Owen Gleiberman from Variety wrote that “the images in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have an intoxicating unpredictability. The film makes you feel like you’re dropping through the floors of a modern art museum on acid, yet there’s a thrilling moment-to-moment logic to it all… This feels like it could have been the first movie designed to earn a thumbs up from Andy Warhol and Stephen Hawking.”
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Katie Walsh raved, “A breathlessly beautiful achievement not just in animation but also comic book movie storytelling, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is willing to shred the lore from top to bottom and weave it back together again in new, surprising and wildly entertaining ways. It’s simply spectacular.”
Local critics and fans are applauding, too.
Film critic Vives Anunciacion raved, “Once in a while, a film comes along and resets its genre. Call it the Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather Part 2 of the Spider-Verse. I call it amazing in any universe.”
Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Ramon De Veyra explained what makes Across the Spider-Verse work so well. “The story is intriguing, with the dialogue compelling and natural, peppered with great jokes and asides, delivered by great performers doing some of their best work,” he said. “It can be dense and then stop for a breathtaking vista that the characters admire in silence, giving the audience room to breathe, before ratcheting up the tension once again.”
ANCX’s resident reviewer Andrew Paredes declared, “If Into the Spider-Verse showed us what superhero movies could be, Across the Spider-Verse shows us what they should be. If the first movie debuted an animation style that unabashedly embraces its comic-book origins… this installment takes it even further pushing the limits of its animation into something even more stunning, something even more tactile, something that morphs moment by moment with the emotional beats of its storytelling… what you’re seeing is the future of superhero movies.”
The local geek community can’t contain their excitement, as well.
“You can’t miss it on the big screen because movie franchises like these only come once in a generation. DO NOT wait for it to stream. PLEASE GO SEE IT NOW because it’s absolutely AMAZING!” raved Jiggy Cruz of Geek Speak, who calls Across the Spider-Verse “a feast for the eyes every second.”
For Abby Maravilla, geek content creator Coach Abby on TikTok, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a feast for the eyes, the heart, and the soul, so don’t miss it.” Besides lauding the film’s animation, she gave high praise to the characterization. She added, “It’s a coming-of-age movie and a superhero movie, but what really surprised me was how well the characters are fleshed out and how relatable they all are. I definitely saw parts of myself in the different Spider-Persons there.”
FlipScience’s Mikael Francisco called the movie “a multiversal masterpiece of stylistic storytelling – the kind that only a character as powerful and meaningful as Spider-Man can carry… no matter what kind of Spider-Man fan you are, you will find something in this two-hour masterpiece that will make you say, ‘I am so glad I watched this movie.’”
In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man reunites with Gwen Stacy and they are catapulted across the Multiverse, where they encounter the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse’s very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most. Anyone can wear the mask – it’s how you wear it that makes you a hero. The next chapter of the Oscar-winning Spider-Verse saga is now showing in Philippine cinemas.
