It is very gratifying for me to see all the praise for this movie, some of it feeling overdue from the somehow-underappreciated Into the Spiderverse. And, to be sure, the praise is earned: this is "what if the first movie, but more" in the best way possible.

I thought the former, though, was a better movie, mostly because it was fresh, and it set a very high bar that simply meeting does not surpass. So many of perfect moments of this movie (Spider-car! Beautiful camera work! Needle drop moments!) feel like retreads of the original, which is not bad (they were lovely then, and lovely now) so much as they lose some points of originality.

(And, I know this is how "second movies in a trilogy" work, but this movie's cliffhanger ending is deeply unsatisfying. At least the next one is coming out in less than a year!)

★★★★