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Scene from »Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse«: Equal over head

Photograph:

Everett Collection / IMAGO

If even the director of one of the most successful superhero films speaks of "superhero fatigue", then the crisis of one of the highest-grossing cinema genres of the last decade can no longer be denied. I think there's such a thing as superhero fatigue. I don't think it has anything to do with the superheroes themselves. It has to do with the type of stories that are being told and losing sight of the most important thing, which is character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because it's these incredible characters that we carry in our hearts. And if it's just a bunch of nonsense on screen, it gets really boring," James Gunn said in a recent interview.

The US filmmaker has made the third film in the »Guardians of the Galaxy« series for Marvel, the market leader in comic blockbusters, whose worldwide sales have just exceeded 700 million dollars. So where is the crisis?

Gunn justifies the success of his film with the fact that the stories of his galactic anti-hero troupe take place a little outside the big Marvel story universe, which makes it easier. However, after the big "Endgame" event of the "Avengers" series, one of the world's most successful films of all time, it is noticeable that Marvel is struggling to regain its footing with the current narratives of its films. Recent, rather unimpressed audience reactions to »Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania« seem to confirm this.

So is the glorious era of superheroes in cinema, which began in 2008 with Marvel's "Iron Man", coming to an end? Has what critics of the genre always claimed has happened, that the superhero films, which are increasingly overloaded in terms of content, are just spectacles without sense or reason?

Just at this moment of doubt, a film comes to the cinema that has what it takes to dispel all these fears: "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" shows in an impressive way how the medium of comics with all its visual peculiarities can be spectacularly transferred to the big screen - and at the same time tells the heartfelt story of two unhappily in love teenagers in front of a great spectacle backdrop.

The film revolves around Marvel comic book creatures, but was commissioned by Sony Pictures, the lucky guardians of the theatrical license for the famous teenager, who was endowed with the proportional powers and abilities of a spider by a laboratory accident. However, this teen is not called Peter Parker, but Miles Morales, is the son of an African-American and a Puerto Rican mother, does not live in Queens, but in Brooklyn – and comes from a different universe than the Spider-Man, created by author Stan Lee and illustrator Steve Ditko in 1962. At his side, as a colleague as well as a potential love affair, is Gwen Stacy alias Spider-Gwen, who is also a Spider-Woman with superpowers in her own reality. Can the two come together as lovers – or does the entire universe collapse because certain fates and events in the life of each hero figure have to remain constant? It's complicated.

»Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse« was a surprise success

But what »Across the Spider-Verse« succeeds in doing is not complicated at all: nothing less than the transfer of drawn comic panels into a gripping cinematic dynamic. The film is the continuation of the experiment launched in 2018 to tell »Spider-Man« stories from the alternative Miles Morales world on the screen in an alternative way – not, as is now customary, as a live-action adventure with real actors, but with the means of animated film that were believed to have been overcome. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse« made a virtue out of Sony's plight of not being able to get involved in Marvel's Cinematic Universe and created its own cosmos. The film was a surprise success, grossing nearly $90 million worldwide with a budget of $400 million and winning an Oscar for Best Animated Film.

In the second part, the two »Spider-Verse« cinema creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller go all out: Countless Spider characters from various media, eras and comic plots populate the fast-paced film. Comic book fans will encounter beloved characters such as Spider-Man 2099, who exists in a possible future. There are appearances by a black and very pregnant Spider-Woman, and a »Spider-Punk« with a hard Cockney accent plays with the Spider-Woman, as well as beach buggy-shaped Peter Parkedcar from Parallel Earth 53931. In its own, fascinatingly South Asian-influenced New York, Spider-Man India finally appears.

The special – and stunning: Each of the worlds over which the plot is distributed has its own aesthetics: Spider-Gwen's »Earth-65« is drawn in flowing watercolors, Miles' world is more contoured, but also darker, full of shades of his inner identity and role conflicts. Some characters, including the supervillain Vulture, who invades from another reality, or Peter Parker's clone »Scarlet Spider«, appear so hatched and raw, as if they had been cut straight out of comic books.

There's a lot, a lot to see in this storm of brightly colored images, crazy cameo appearances and spectacular action. Every second shot or scene you want to hang on the wall as a poster. »Across the Spider-Verse« is not only a triumph of animation over the limitations of the live-action adaptations of the comic medium, but also proof that superhero films can be pop art works of art.

The film, which at times seems overloaded, finds moments of calm and reality check again and again in the relationship between Miles and Gwen. In their respective everyday lives, both teenagers have to struggle with normal teenage hardships, conflicts with their parents or the almost unsolvable task of reconciling the superhero activity that comes with great responsibility with studying for school. Or with a love that is literally out of their world.

In a beautifully cheesy scene, these newfangled updates of Romeo and Juliet are stuck upside down on the balcony of a skyscraper – the pastel evening silhouette of Manhattan on the horizon. It is, of course, the repetition of an iconic Spider-Man motif: the headlong kiss portrayed in the first feature film of 2002 by Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. But here there is an otherwise so rare, equal coexistence of the sexes. Both characters are superheroes, both of their worlds are upside down. Gwen Stacy, often condemned to Damsel in Distress in the comics, is given just as much depth and agency as her male counterpart. This does not detract from the flirtation of the two, even if it does not come to a kiss.

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Empowering female Spider characters is a major concern for Amy Pascal. The former head of Sony Pictures once negotiated the licensing deal with Marvel and tracked down Sam Raimi's first "Spider-Man" trilogy. She is now an independent producer, but reserves the right to keep special Spider-Man projects in her hands, including the successful live-action adaptations with Tom Holland. In addition to the "Spider-Verse" animated saga, which will have a third part, she is currently also overseeing TV and film plans that revolve around feminine Spider supporting characters such as Silk, Silver Sable and Black Cat. You have to take them just as seriously as the other characters, breathe life into them and find out what makes them tick. And maybe not everyone has spent a lot of time doing that in the past, and I think we're doing that now," Pascal says in the Zoom interview.

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Producer Pascal: Above all, she wants to strengthen female comic heroines

Photo: Kayla Oaddams / WireImage / Getty Images

The 65-year-old does not necessarily describe herself as a comic lover, but as a "Spider-Man person". The Marvel hero is her favorite – and a character who can be used to tell universally valid stories: "I think what makes Spider-Man, no matter who is behind the mask, so different is that he's a normal person who has the same problems as us." He is "a kind of cross between Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Hamlet. And they're three really good characters," says the 65-year-old. Their dilemma is the dilemma of all of us, whether it's Gwen or Miles or Peter."

Pascal praises the passion with which her protégés Lord and Miller strive in their »Spider-Verse« to create great art that is at the same time aimed at a large audience and takes the genre back to its origins. Her new film is perhaps the ideal superhero comic book adaptation in the sense that "it really feels like a comic book come to life."

Pascal is relaxed about the supposedly rampant superhero fatigue: "It's funny, people have been saying this for about 15 years, and it doesn't seem that the audience feels the same tiredness. If the films are good, people will go too.« Her new, animated "Spider-Man" film is predicted to be at least 80 million dollars at the US box office alone – not quite as far away from the 118 million that James Gunn's third "Guardians" film made. The first "Spider-Verse" part once started with a more modest 35 million.

Gunn, the third big player in the comic blockbuster game alongside Pascal and Marvel's mastermind Kevin Feige, will probably take a very close look at the performance of "Across the Spider-Verse": He has just taken over the cinema division of Marvel's arch-competitor DC Comics and is working on reinventing the creatively slackened film universe of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

»Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse«: in cinemas from 1 June