Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Happy Juneteenth!  Here's a (sort of?) related movie.  It took a couple of weeks but I finally managed to see the newest installment of the best animated adaptation ever made.  I'm going to tell you upfront:  it ends on a cliffhanger in preparation for the 3rd in the series, which should be coming out next year.  I don't consider that a spoiler, but more in the nature of a content warning.  

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has been coping as well as he can with his double life as a high school student and superhero but he misses his multi-verse friends, especially Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfield).  He is elated when she returns to his Earth bearing a nifty new gadget that allows her to avoid the side effects of multi-dimensional travel as part of her new role in an elite task force of Spider-People.  But she's not here just for catching up.  Gwen is tracking an anomaly called the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a Spider-Man nemesis obsessed with garnering more power to avenge his bruised ego and destroyed life.  Desperate to prove himself worthy, Miles tags along uninvited to a crash course in unintended consequences and the tragedies that define heroes.

Also, there's a Spider-Cat and he is the best.  The. Best.

It's hard for a middle segment to hold its own and I think it was actually really smart to slap a "To Be Continued..." sticker on it.  It reinforces the episodic comic book nature, leads to a genuine sense of anticipation, and allows for the majority of the runtime to build without feeling like there are too many characters, too many villains, too many Easter eggs or cameos (there are two that are perfect), or too flimsy a plot.  The only thing that could sink it is if Beyond the Spider-Verse gets canned, a la Batgirl. 

Across the Spider-Verse is still only in theaters but should be coming to streaming around late July or early August.