Fischer: Great expectations

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

There are a lot of disappointing things in the world.

In today’s world of relentless fanfare and bombastic promotion, it’s a rare occasion when something actually lives up to its hype. I struggle to think of a television show or comic book or video game that ever fully delivers and then some. Even the things I unabashedly enjoy often come with conditions and caveats.

But sometimes things are just unconditionally great, which is why I’ll be seeing “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” at least once more in theaters in the next couple weeks.

Five years ago I figured that Sony’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” would be little more than an interesting curiosity. A fun, if forgettable, romp featuring some of the relatively new additions to the Spider-Man mythos.

I didn’t anticipate that the movie would end up being not only my favorite Spider-Man movie by a wide margin, but in general my favorite Spider-Man related project in at least a decade.

Everything from the breathtaking animation to the airtight script to the awe-inspiring soundtrack came together to put to shame every live-action adaptation Sony had ever produced.

So naturally there were high expectations for a sequel.

Sequels are risky business, especially when it comes to unexpectedly good projects that seemed to catch lightning in a bottle. How many times has Hollywood produced an unexpected hit, only to dilute it with every successive entry?

But sometimes, it turns out that a creative team didn’t just catch lightning in a bottle. Sometimes they’re just that good.

Thankfully, producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (along with the small legion of people it takes to put a movie like this together) have proven to be in the latter category.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is exactly as good as I hoped it would be, meeting or exceeding every expectation I’d built up over the last five years.

I loved everything I thought I would love in the movie and even loved the things I didn’t think I’d like at all. (I’ve never been a fan of Spider-Punk until this movie.)

My only complaint about the movie is that it ends on a cliffhanger and I have to wait until next year for the thrilling conclusion, which is in itself a great thing because there isn’t a second of this movie I would have sacrificed to fit its story into a single feature. When Lord and Miller realized they had too much movie on their hands for one project, Sony wisely wrote them a check and let them split it into two.

This means that there’s little doubt that next year’s “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse” will be of similar quality.

It’s a rare occasion that things turn out to be as good as you hope they will, which makes it all the more important to appreciate them when it happens.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and cannot wait to get this movie on Blu-ray and turn every single frame into a wallpaper for his computer.