ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Review - Better Than The MCU?

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I can do both. Spider-Man, always. Not always. Hey, welcome back to Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Erie, and let's talk about Across the Spider-Verse.

I loved this movie so, so much. And even though, like, art is not a competition, I think it's the second best Marvel movie of this decade. In fact, I think this movie does a great job of highlighting and what's been bad about the MCU over the past few years, especially a movie like Multiverse of Madness, which I'm going to talk about a little bit later. And a little later, I'm also going to be joined

by Screencrush Editor-in-Chief and Spider-Man book author, Matt Singer, and Screencrush's Colton Ogburn, who, by the way, he has seen The Flash, and he's going to tell us how Spider-Verse and the Flash two multiverse movies compare to each other. But first, everybody, here's my take. So every time I watch the first Spider-Verse movie, I'm like still surprised at how awesome it is.

It is a movie that's easy to forget about. But for my money, it's still the best Spider-Man movie ever made. and the sequel doesn't fall far behind it. The visuals of this movie are so inventive. Like, it's very rare that you can sit in a movie, especially a superhero movie, and think, wow, I have never seen that on screen before. And yet, this movie's animation even surpasses the first movies.

Spider-Verse 1 was a comic book brought to life, using Ben Day Dodds, sound effects, comic panels. I mean, Ang Lee tried to use comic panels in the Hulk, but these movies actually make them work. But in Spider-Verse 2, they took the concept of the multiverse and used it to ask, like, what does each universe feel like? Every earth we visit has its own animation style that is unique to that world spider person. So for Gwen's world, they took the comic covers by her co-creator Robbie Rodriguez

and re-imagined them into a whole world of watercolors and pastels. The softer lines give the universe a more feminine feel, and I love how the visuals are always reflecting Gwen's emotions. The environment brightens or darkens depending on her mood. After all, this is her world. And just that sequence where the helicopter is going to crush her dad and she like focuses, hearing the drum beat in her mind, it is a great way to show the teen angst of a girl using drums to beat out her emotions, but then how she harnesses that emotion to focus

and save lives. Even the brief glimpse of Renaissance vulture made you want to visit his universe. And Spider-Man India is such a fun break from the other spider heroes that we've seen for years. We're used to seeing these people haunted by tragedy. I mean, they joke, but they're always masking a swirling pool of dark emotions. People say the Ramey films were camp, but there's a lot of crying in those movies. Whereas Spider-Man India hasn't had a tragedy. did he occur in his life yet, so he thinks that being Spider-Man is easy, and his sequence is a breath of fresh air in a pretty heavy movie, and the visuals in his world are stunning,

like every frame is showing off. So one thing that I noticed here is if you look close, oh my gosh, that's amazing. Oh, you smell something nice? Yeah, yeah, smells like Indian sandalwood, Indonesian nutmeg, and grapefruit. That's my cologne, Doug. It's called Sexual Secret Man by Michelle Germain. But this is such a fancy cologne. How could you ever afford it? Ah, it's easy. I subscribe to scentbird. They're the sponsor of this video. These bottles are super easy to use. You just twist, push, and really nice. So this is a great service for a guy like me because I have no idea what makes for a good cologne. And cologne is expensive, so I didn't want to drop a lot of money on a pricey bottle just to find out I didn't like it.

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It's crazy how there are so many spider people in this movie. But they all seem to have the same core, the essence of what it means to be a spider hero. They always get to the heart of Spider-Man's story, that he is a hero who can never have his cake and eat it too. Spider-Man or woman is always defined by this push and pull between what they want and sacrifice, a life of happiness or the life of a hero, like Peter 2 tried to make his money wrestling so his uncle gets shot. Peter 3 has to promise to stay away from Gwen, and Peter 1 has to give up being with his friends in order to keep them safe. And in this movie, Miles is struggling to balance his civilian life with the hero's life. He can't save New York and be a good son to his parents.

His greatest fear is that his parents will reject him if he tells them the truth. Actually, there's quite a lot of queer subtext in that, now that I think about it. So, when did you first know you were a... A mutant? And, by the way, everybody, I just want to thank you for watching and supporting our channel. We have this awesome new Doug As Spidey Pointing meme that is available at our merch store at shop0edition.com, where we have tons of other cool merch. Also, you can subscribe to us on TikTok or Insta,

where we have brand new videos that you can't see on YouTube, and we have a podcast that's currently uploaded. it on iTunes and Spotify and all the different things. So thanks again, back to what I was saying. So the movie takes this classic Spider-Man push and pull between private and public life, and they make it unique to Miles and his story. The MCU has mostly abandoned this idea of superheroes and secret identities, but this idea is central to Spider-Man's story.

In the comics, we've seen an era when Peter becomes Spider-Man full-time, and he quickly gets like very dark and very violent. See, this public and private half of Spider-Man balance each other out, and this movie perfectly nails this balance. Early in the film, it's an internal struggle, but later in the movie, it becomes a literal struggle. Miles has to let his father die to save the multiverse, to choose his duty as Spider-Man over his own family's life. Now, I don't think this movie is perfect, and I don't like it as much as the original. For starters, it's pretty darn long.

I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary build-up when he gets to Earth 42, when the computer screen here right before he leaves clearly says he's going to Earth 42. And as a huge fan of Spider-Man 2009, I wasn't thrilled with how he's used as just another villain in this movie. Miguel O'Hara's future is supposed to be cyberpunk dystopian, but this version lives in a society if me. Miguel in the comics is a loner who I doubt would ever lead a group of spider people, but like maybe I'm nitpicking here. I just want to see the version of Spider-Man 2009 that I love put on the big screen. But no matter what, you have to admit that this movie is so, so much better than any recent Marvel movie except for Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And I think that that all comes down to planning.

Our friend Adam Lance Garcia was on the show here and he said that he thought that Marvel learned the wrong lesson from Iron Man. Like with that movie, they rushed into production without a script. And it worked out fine through improvisation and making things up as they went along. And now they do the same thing, fixing things as they go. Scheduling these massive reshoots and squeezing visual effects artists until the result is like bland CGII that we saw in Quantum Mania. But this movie is so methodically planned out because it has to be. It's animation.

Compare this to another multiverse movie, Multiverse of Madness. Now, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a good Sam Ramey movie and a pretty good Marvel movie, but it kind of sucks as a multiverse movie. Heck, it's not even the best multiverse movie to come out last. year. That's everything everywhere all at once. So in Multiverse of Madness, we don't really get to see the multiverse. There's like one fun sequence where we fly by the multiverse like we're channel surfing, but those universes don't really matter. And in the 8-38, none of the Illuminati had like any personal connection to Stephen, apart from Baron Mordo. It even feels like they cut and pasted heroes depending on whatever actors were free. Because that's exactly what they did. Daniel Craig was supposed to play Balder the Brave, but he wasn't free. Elizabeth Olson wasn't even on set with John Cresensky. You don't know him at all? I don't think so. No, I've never met him. When you're changing so much of the movie on the fly,

it gets harder to make an emotional connection with the heroes. And look, I love Marvel, love the MCU, and I think that they've course corrected some of their problems. There are rumors that former Disney CEO Bob Chapic forced Marvel to create more and more series for Disney Plus, which seemed like a panic move after COVID shut down movie theaters for so long. And we can see this reflected in the quality of the product. Marvel's first wave of shows was a huge hit.

We have bangers like Wanda Vision, Loki, Falcon Winter Soldier, Hawkeye. You were there, you remember. The second wave was a bit mid with Moon Knight, Sheehawk, Ms. Marvel, and now the third wave of shows are getting like seriously halted or they're going to dump them all in one day. Like Echo is getting a one-day release. And Agatha Coven of Chaos, like, who even knows when that show's coming out? The point is that Marvel is starting to hit the brakes

and be a little bit more methodical and less reactive. Sony's Spider-Man Universe was always like the MCU's annoying kid brother. But these animated movies show a breadth of maturity and planning that Marvel really needs to bring back to their franchise. This movie, in Guardians 3, show the benefit of having a plan, a script, and focusing on your characters first and your saga second. So I'm going to talk about how this movie connects to Dr. Strange 2 in a later video. But that's just what I think. Now I'm joined by two of my favorite people. We have Screencrush Editor-in-Chief and Spider-Man author Matt Singer and Screencrushes Colton Ogberg.

And Colton has actually seen The Flash and has some interesting things to say comparing the Flash to Across the Spider-verse. But Matt, I want to start with you. So you're somebody who, when it comes to Spider-Man, I just greatly respect your opinion. You've written two books on Spider-Man, counting the tiny one, and you're just somebody who I feel like really knows this character, not just what the character has done, but what makes the character tick. So I want to hear from you about your thoughts on this movie, comparison to the first one, and most of all, like, did it work as a Spider-Man film?

Oh, it certainly works. I mean, the only thing I think you can really knock the movie for is, you know, it is half a movie. It's half a story, and, you know, it does feel that way. And there is a couple of scenes that I feel like, you know, maybe they could have trimmed down a little bit. I mean, I don't think it's possible to have made this plus the next movie into a single movie without it being, I don't know, a four-hour epic, which I would have absolutely watched and

probably enjoyed if they had done that. So, I mean, you know, it's sort of a, you know, it's like a catch-22. Like, I don't know what they could have necessarily done to alleviate that. It does feel, you know, like it's sort of half of a story. But I felt like it was an incredibly compelling and successful and beautiful and imaginative and creative half of a story. And I had a great time watching it. I've seen it twice. I took my daughter to see it this weekend because she really likes the first movie. She enjoyed it too. She's a little confused about that last act. There was a lot of like, you know, like, you know, trying to explain physics to a seven-year-old and multiple times. dimensions that got a little thorny but but she really liked it and uh she hasn't stopped playing

with her and my spider-man toys uh since the movie ended so i would call it a big success overall and and just for the the parents watching your daughter is seven now i have two daughters this one is seven you know so she's a little older yeah and i i it's i think it might i'm not sure if it's rated pg or pg 13 but yeah she handled it fine it really you know it's definitely Definitely, like, the multiversal aspect is something that I don't think little kids can fully wrap their heads around without some sort of grown up there explaining it, but it's not really like a scary movie or anything like that. It's definitely. Well, a lot of adults can't even handle. No, a lot of adults can't handle the multiversal aspect. Like, it's getting confusing for everybody at this point. So I don't blame. You know, hopefully your daughter just enjoyed it for the story and not necessarily needing to understand particle physics and dark matter to get through it. Colton, how about you? What did you think of the movie? Well, speaking of Spider-Man toys, I actually picked up all the across the Spider-verse action figures that I'd show that on.

I have some back. There's some back there. I don't know if people can see them. Nice. I think I might have the movie on the shelf here somewhere, actually. I picked that out somewhere up there. I feel conflicted. I really enjoyed the movie, and I'd say more so I respected this movie. movie. It did things that I never thought I'd see happen in a comic book movie, and I feel like I'm saying that a lot lately with all the different multiverse films and shows that are coming out. But even in a world where we have films like Spider-Man No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness, even in a world where those films exist, I was still surprised by how bold and how big this film was. Even in some areas that were personally a turnoff for me, like the Roger Rabbit stuff, that was kind of a turnoff for me. Roger Rabbit stuff? Yeah, like the live action, you know, characters in the animated world.

I won't get into that. I worry about the implications of what that means. So what happens when a live action character meets a cartoon? How do you interpret that? I like the idea of if Miles were to ever meet Tom Holland, they wouldn't be aware that they look different. Kind of how Star Wars does it with, you never hear Obi-1 say. oh, I was a cartoon the same as your father.

You know, you don't hear that kind of thing. Yeah, well, hold on. You've dipped your toe into this, and now I have to feel like I have to kind of like take a side journey here and let's work out the universe logic here. So in what if, right, we see these characters who I'm pretty sure

aren't purely animated universe characters. But in Multiverse of Madness, they do pass through a universe where everything is animated. Also, in Spider-Verse, We see Gwen in her universe looks very different from how she does in Miles universe. She's painted like those Robbie Rodriguez covers that I talked about earlier. Whereas when she goes to Miles, she's sort of like rendered in that world style, like Ben Day dot style. So I think that it's not that everybody is either an animated character or live action character or whatever,

that they're just shown in different ways when they're in different universe. So if Tom Holland went to Miles' universe, he would be animated and like you said, wouldn't notice the difference. But the reason Donald Glover looks regular and the reason why the movie, movie flashbacks are still there is because, like, Donald Glover is encased in a, like, a cell that keeps him inside of, like, his own confined universe. There, how's that for a justification? Does that work? That's a very good justification. I still don't like it, though. But, yeah, if you had to explain it away, yeah, yeah, that works. Yeah, well, not to be contrarian. I mean, it's a really good movie. I hate to be the guy that's like, it was all right.

I don't know. It was a good movie. I saw a lot of reviews, you know, before it came out. People were acting like, you know, it was the second coming type of movie. And then when I saw it, I was like, yeah, it's good. But to kind of echo what Matt said, it's long. It's really long. I also, when thinking about, okay, well, what could they have cut? I was also kind of met with the, well, I don't know what they could have cut. I mean, it seemed, while it was a long movie, it felt also like a tight movie. Like they took out all the facts. So if you were to ask me, well, what specifically should they have taken out? I don't have an answer. It just felt a little long. It felt a little drawn out. And yeah, it's very much so a part one. It's an incomplete story.

So that kind of bothered me a little bit. And one of the things I love about Spider-Man, not just Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man stories, the story of Peter Parker, and I didn't write the book on Spider-Man like Matt, so he would know better than me. Spider-Man, from Amazing to Spectacular by Matt Singer, available on Amazon and at bookstores today. Thank you. Yes, your residual check is in the mail, Ryan. Thank you very much. But the story of Peter Parker and Spider-Man is really at its core. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on around him. He's fighting scientists that have turned into lizards and have giant mechanical arms.

But at the core of the story, it's about Peter Parker and his struggles and trying to balance his life and stuff. like that. And I feel like across the Spider-Verse did that with Miles. It's a big multiversal movie, but it focused on just the personal struggles of Miles, trying to feel accepted and find his place in the world. I loved all that, but I feel like they didn't balance it well. I feel like the sheer scale of this movie and the multiverse and all the spider people, I feel like it may have overshadowed Miles' story a little bit. And granted, I've only seen the movie one time. I'd like to see it again before I have like a definitive, like, opinion on that. But as of right now, that's how I feel. I think that the issue is, uh, that Colton is talking about is that

it really like, I don't think it, it, it, it, um, is imbalanced so much as it is sort of like compartmentalized. You know, they really spend a lot of time on Miles and his parents and Gwen and her father and all those relationships you know it's like almost i would guess i didn't time it but it's like it feels like it's almost like an hour of the movie is about that but then once they sort of go to mumbatten and then uh spider man 2099's uh new wave of york i mean they're just not in that part of the movie they literally they're physically not like available and they don't really cut back to them and what they're doing so i think that's sort of the issue that you're talking about. It's like

I think that there's a lot of character stuff in the movie. Like if you are a reader who reads Spider-Man 4, Peter and Miles and Gwen, as much as you're reading for cool action, like, I think the movie has a lot of both. It's just,

it's like a lot of the character stuff is front-loaded, and then a lot of the action is more towards the back half. I think is, I think that's very fair to say, even if you enjoy the movie, I don't I find it hard to, like, argue with that aspect. I would agree, because come the end of the film

when Gwen goes back home or, you know, and Miles has his situation with his parents, it feels like all of that was so long ago at the beginning of the film is kind of how I felt on that. You know, Colton earlier was talking about the essence of Peter Parker, things like that. Matt, one thing I thought this movie did great is, and I had to be careful with my wording in the scripts I've written,

is it wasn't just about Peter Parker. It was about Glenn and Miles, like her first line says, let's do things differently this time. One thing I love, though, is that it took these different characters, but kept the core of what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man. You know, earlier I talked about the duality, having your cake, eating it too. How do you think the movie did as far as bringing that aspect of, like, the Spider-Manness, or like what defines the character into these other characters, and did it make us care as much about Miles and Glenn as we typically do about Peter Parker? Well, that's, you know, that's an interesting question because I feel like I haven't fully even wrapped my head around that aspect of the movie after two viewings. That was really something that really jumped out at me the first time.

And then when I went back and saw it again this weekend with my daughter and I wasn't explaining things to her like, okay, the moments where I wasn't doing that, this is the stuff that I was really trying to explain to myself. all of the stuff involving the canon and the fact that, you know, they don't call it fixing the timeline, there's no sacred timeline, there's no, no, we have to protect history, or it's all the canon. These are canon events. This is the way the story is supposed to be told. And so there's this whole meta aspect to the movie. And maybe I'm not quite answering your question exactly how you asked it, But this is what I was really thinking about, right? Is the idea that, you know, we had Peter Parker, who, you know, we all love. And for 50 years or whatever, you know, he was essentially the only Spider-Man. And his stories were told in a very specific way. And there was, I mean, there was something beautiful and perfect about them. That's why they were told so many times.

Like, they worked so perfectly. But that we have all these other Spider-Men. now, and their stories may not necessarily need or want to be told in that specific way. And that's sort of like what we're watching unfold in that second half of the movie, where you have Spider-Man 299. And maybe this would almost work better if, uh, instead of Spider-Man 299, like it was a different Peter Parker, like an older Peter Parker or something. Maybe would make this make more sense. I'm literally thinking about this as I'm saying it.

I hadn't even considered this before. I actually agree, by the way. I think that would have been. Just the idea that like, he is like the protector of the canon. And we tell these stories the way that they're supposed to be told, you know, and that the idea that every Spider-Man has

to have an ASM-90, the death of George Stacey, the death of Captain Stacey. It happens because it has to happen, and it's always happened. Well, you know, and that's a great comic book and it's been used in really interesting ways throughout history. But, you know, the idea of Miles like struggling against that and wanting to do his own thing, literally, I'm going to do it my own way and sort of the meta aspect of that. I find

really, really interesting and sort of an interesting twist on the original movie where, you know, the first Spiderverse was so much about, you know, this, this character who thinks he's a discovering that he's not alone, that there are the, that like people who feel like outsiders, in fact, that there's this community of outsiders. Well, here, it's like, even amongst the community of outsiders, this character is still an outsider. And, uh, you know, and even when you think you've found your people, you may not belong. You may disagree. You may not see eye to eye. So all of these ideas, I think, are super interesting. Um, I, I, I sort of, want to wait and see how they're resolved in the next movie. Because there's a lot of ways it could

go. There's a lot of we could sort of talk about like what could happen next. And some of those things could affect the sort of the message and the meaning of all of that, right? What Spider-Man 2099 does. I mean, I don't think we all, I think we all imagine eventually he's going to change his mind, right? Probably. And that will have an effect on what all of this means. But for for now, it's like a super interesting thing to think about. It's like how this movie thinks about Spider-Man stories and broader stories in general and franchises, telling a franchise story over decades, telling Marvel stories over that time, telling any story, telling making a sequel, how you make a sequel.

Like all of that is super interesting to me. And it's like all reflected and all that stuff with the canon and Spider-Man 299 and sort of my favorite part of the movie to think about, basically. And along with the subtext there is that it's a multi-racial spider man of color and a spider woman and then finding their own place where they don't have to necessarily follow the norms that have been set in place before. That's a brilliant observation. Colton, I want to get kind of your thoughts on something Matt briefly touched on there, which is like the canon and things like that.

And how when you look at this movie, I feel like this movie in a little over two hours, did the multiverse better than the MCU has in four or five movies and TV shows as far as explaining it? I think this movie did a much better job of being like, yeah, here's absolute points in time, here's branching timelines, here's the multiverse, and kind of presented the whole thing in one package, whereas like for somebody following the MCU, even somebody following it closely, you would have to watch Loki and Multiverse of Madness and all these other things to like get the gist of this. So do you think this movie showed like a way forward for how the multiverse story should be told in a franchise? The thing about this movie is that it's a sequel to a multiverse movie. These movies have always been about the multiverse.

I mean, it's not, with the MCU, it's a relatively new thing that has an audience, and then you're bringing this new, I had to say gimmick, but this new thing in that people aren't familiar with. The Spider-Verse movies have always been about the multiverse. And yeah, I think in the first film, they did a really good job at just saying, here's the general idea. There are other worlds out there with other spider people. And they explained it really simply, but also detailed.

I mean, you understood it. Even if you're not like a nerd like us, you can understand what's going on. And yeah, I think that across the Spider-Verse did do a good job at just saying, here's the deal. Yeah, you have your big explainer scene, and I really liked. Like Matt said, this is a very meta-movie. It's extremely meta. And it's even meta at the part where Miguel is like, do the thing, what thing? You know, the explainer thing.

And it's like, oh, yeah, okay, we're about to get the part of the movie where they explain everything that's going on to Miles, but really to us. So, yeah, I think they're handling the multiverse. Well, multiverse in general, though, it's beginning to be a little much. And that's a conversation for another time. But, yes, in a world where everything is multiverse now, MCU's multiverse, DC is doing multiverse, Sony's doing multiverse with their Marvel stuff, I'd say Sony is doing perhaps the best job. Sony animated, because we can't forgive what happened at the end of Morbius. Yes, that's true. That was the worst.

Look, we can nitpick the MC all you want. Like, well, is it clear, what's the sacred timeline if there's more than one timeline? But what they did at the end of Morbius was unforgivable. You're exactly right, and I actually have written in my notes, I wanted to say, you can tell that Sony animation and Sony pictures. They are two different studios, essentially, and you can tell very much so. So just to bring that back around, do you feel like this movie's doing it better than the MCU, like in a cleaner way, or are you kind of happy where the MCD is at? Both. I think Spider

across the Spider-Verse perhaps did do it better in terms of in a quick fashion and just explaining it all in a short span of time in one scene I think they did that better

but I'm happy with how the MCU has done it. Yeah it's a little confusing probably you know you have to see Loki oh did you see the post-credit scene of Quantummania oh well did you see multiverse of madness oh well how does that work in in-game. Yeah, that's all a little much. But with the MCU, I think sometimes when we say, you know, we talk about how, oh, is it too much that you have to see this show or that movie?

That's really what the MCU has always been, to be fair. Like, they do culmination films. That's their big thing is culmination films of all their other movies. So I don't think it's too much for the MCU to ask, hey, watch our shows, watch our movies. Maybe they don't need to put out so much. we've talked about that before. But yeah, I think it's done it better, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the MCU is doing it wrong or bad or anything like that.

Matt, same question to you. When you stack this multiverse of, and I think it's the same multiverse, they're still connected. So I guess when you stack like the way these multiverses are portrayed, do you think that Spiderverse showed like a way forward that's a little cleaner than the MCU?

Yeah, I mean, I guess it is. But I mean, they also just have the advantage of, you know, they don't really have to connect to anything else, right? They, I mean, they can, you know, and they, obviously, there's references in this one to the Andrew Garfield movies, the Toby McGuire movies, and to Venom, and I guess, therefore, by extension, Morbius in some sort of circuitous way, but they're not, but, but, you know, they don't have to worry about what's going on over here and what's going on over there. they can sort of take what they want

and focus on that and they don't really have to sweat the other stuff. So they just seem to have a lot more room to kind of play with it and be sort of like playful about well here's a Spider-Man who's a cowboy and his Spider-Man who's a horse like and here's a Spider-Man

who's the Spider-Mobile if the Spider-Mobile was sentient. Like that's the sort of stuff that's kind of fun in any multiverse story is the kind of that sort of stuff that could never happen within sort of the main continuity. And the thing is with, you know, with the MCU is, yeah, they can kind of do that with like the what-if series.

I guess that's maybe the closest they get to that. But because they're, they've turned like the main MCU and the main storyline into the multiverse. They kind of, that can, that they really have to keep that sort of, yeah, that's only, that's got to be sort of very brief, very minor while they're telling this grand, epic, you know, story. And here, I guess they do at times, you know, all of, you know, Miguel, again, talking about the canon and it could be a canon killer, we could lose the canon and the whole story. They find a way to, even with those enormous stakes, they find a way to kind of keep it as a very sort of focused story and it's about Miles and what he is going to do and his

decisions and um and they also find room to have it be at times a very sort of fun and silly um movie and embrace that side of what you can do with a multiverse you know with ben riley you know the way they treat ben riley is like so you know like it's hard to imagine uh you know like if the mc you wanted you know like if they wanted to make like a clone movie with tom holland you couldn't have that be that character, right? It just wouldn't work. Because it would undermine the entire story, exactly. Right, but as the comic relief in this bigger story, it works perfectly. Now, one interesting thing I think I would use to make this comparison is this movie, to me,

is like Loki Episode 5, where Loki goes to, forget what they call it up, like that Netherworld, where he meets all the variants of himself. But in meeting all the variants of himself, he is shown who he is, the various paths he could have gone down, which is really the core of any multiverse story, which is, Oh, is there a universe where I would have done this? And this would have been different. Like, it's a wonderful life, you know? So I think Loki Episode 5, for me, was a lot more like this particular movie,

whereas multiverse of madness hits a little bit more like Spider-Man No Way Home. And that, like, it's awesome. It's a lot of fun seeing Dr. Octopus and Green Goblin and all these things against Tom Holland. But it's not like those villains meant anything to that version of Peter Parker. Whereas had this been of Peter Parker that had been around for years, who was haunted by the failures of these, if that would have meant something to him, then him trying to fix them would have been like a great resolution. Like that should have been movie number six of Tom Holland's story. But it was still awesome and fun.

And I think with the MCU we're going to get to a point where Secret Wars, we may end up with a movie that is awesome and fun. And we're going to have James Marsden and Hugh Jackman and all the different Peters Parker and all these people. But if the character isn't there, if we don't really, if it's not fulfilling for the characters to see all these different variants, then it may ring a little bit hollow. Colton, today, actually, the Flash review embargo has lifted. And you have seen The Flash. You saw it at CinemaCon.

I know some of the effects weren't finished, and you still haven't seen that mystery post-credit scene. How would you stack the Flash up against this Multiverse movie? You know, one month, two different comic book multiverse movies. Who wins? Well, it's no secret that I loved the, Flash. I talk about it all the time. I really, really loved that movie. And to compare the two, while Spiderverse went big and Flash on the other hand, while it went big as well, it still

felt more intimate. It felt like an early 2000s comic book movie. It's just the right length. It spends just the right amount of time on each character. It gives you like this perfect balance of all the different emotions that you would feel in this type of movie. And it's complete. Like we talked about, Across the Spider-Verse is not really a complete story. It's kind of like an Empire Strikes Back. And while I am comparing Flash to Across the Spider-Verse here, I got to say, Flash feels a lot like a Spider-Man movie to me.

It feels specifically like a Sam Ramey Spider-Man movie. And really every hero story has that basic story of balancing your life, you know, your family and your loved ones and your significant other with, you know, the greater good and fighting bad guys and stuff. But I feel like even though every superhero movie kind of has that trope, Spider-Man has that specifically. Like, I feel like Spider-Man is just the perfect example of that kind of story. and I feel like Flash, when I watch Flash, it just feels like a Spider-Man story.

And when comparing across the Spider-Verse to Flash, I guess I could kind of say I feel like Flash did it better. And I know that's kind of weird to say talking about a DC movie and it's the character of the Flash, but I feel like it hit all the right beats of what I expect to see in a Spider-Man movie. So both of these films have stakes. both huge. They both talk about the multiverse and stuff like that. But instead of the multiverse feeling like a gimmick and having no consequences, across the Spiderverse tackles that well, but I feel like Flash tackle it even better. You feel the stakes even more so in the flash. And one of the key things I've heard compliments about on Across the Spider-Verse was, you know,

it outdoes the MCU with actually having stakes and consequences for the multiverse. Well, wait until you see Flash. It does it even better. All right, so we're going to leave it there. If you haven't read it yet, Matt Singer has got a great review of Spider-Verse on the Screencrush website. Also, don't forget, he is the author of Spider-Man from Amazing to Spectacular. Matt, where can the people find you? Well, lots of stuff about Spider-Verse.

Yeah, it's Screencrush.com, and you can follow me on Twitter at Matt Singer. And Colton Ogburn, where can the people find you? You can find me on Twitter at Colton Ogburn and videos here on Screencrush. And here's all my Spider-Verse action figures I want to show up. And Colton's also a great Twitter follow as well. So thanks again to Sent Bird for sponsoring our video. Check out the links below. And guys, we want to know what you think of all this.

Let me know your thoughts down in the comments or at me on Twitter. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe, smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie. I'm going to be. Thank you.