I went to see Across the Spider-Verse last weekend. It was my third time seeing a movie in the theaters since the pandemic started. Last one was earlier this year, a couple months ago really, to see the Dungeons & Dragons movie, and then before that it was when a friend’s family rented out an entire theater for her birthday to see the latest Spider-Man movie (No Way Home). I really haven’t gone to the movies much, given that Covid-19 is still a problem (one that seems to be getting worse again, given how many people seem to be getting Covid from going to conventions) and I don’t really want to sit crammed into close proximity with a bunch of unmasked people who might be carrying it and still going out because it’s “just allergies” or “just a cold” or whatever bullshit people use to rationalize this kind of behavior. Still, I’m an avid Spider-Man fan and Into the Spider-Verse was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, so I wanted to make sure I caught the sequel while it was still in theaters.

I am glad I went. It was an absolute treat, visually speaking, and while it will definitely look great on my TV at home, eventually, it was nice to be able to take it all in on the big screen. It definitely helped that I went all-in on the movie experience, with a giant soda and bucket of popcorn, since I hadn’t done that since before the pandemic. Only reason I did it this time was because I was one of eight people in the theater. There was a couple sitting a few rows lower down and then a family sitting far to my left, so I felt comfortable taking off my mask to snack. It was risky, of course, but Covid safety these days is all about determining what is an acceptable level of risk and what is not. Since I had pushed myself to go see the movie the weekend that Barbie and Oppenheimer came out despite being incredibly busy, I wanted to give myself the whole experience, and add to my increasingly old collection of movie theater cups, since I was already pretty exhausted and knew I’d be even more tired after that evening, when I ran my first tabletop game in months.

As much as I enjoyed my movie-going experience, I find it difficult to grapple with the movie itself. It is literally half of a story, after all. Unlike the first movie, Across the Spider-Verse ends with the entire plot left unresolved, almost no questions answered, and an assemblage of heroes who are clearly about to go tackle the actual problem. It was frustrating, to put it simply. They spend the entire movie setting things up and tackling emotional beats as they come, but most of it feels hollow because they’re all setting up for a narrative moment that never comes. Or, at least, never comes in this film. They’re supposedly trying to release the second-half of this story sometime in 2024, but that sounds awful considering that it was four and a half years between the release of Into the Spider-Verse and the release of Across the Spider-Verse. Sure, they probably have less to do for this movie, to get the sequel finished, since they already did so much work for Across the Spider-Verse, but the reports of how rough work conditions were for the staff making the movie has me worried that it will only be worse for the finale.

I’m absolutely going to see the finale when it comes out (though probably near the end of its theatrical run like I did with Across the Spider-Verse to reduce my risk of catching Covid), but I feel like they might have been able to tell the story in less time. I mean, the movie is already over two hours long. I really feel like they could have condensed it a little bit and gotten the whole thing done in one go, but instead chose to let it run long because they know the audience will watch two movies. This isn’t the first time a movie has been extended for absolutely no good reason beyond trying to fit in some ridiculous, over-the-top fight scenes (I’m looking at you, The Hobbit). Sure, the movie was interesting and engaging enough that I barely noticed the time passing, but it was still so long. Just because time passes quickly doesn’t mean the time left less of a mark on me as it passed. I was mentally out of it for an hour or two after it, because I’d been so engrossed for so long it.

All that said, it was still a good movie. While the pacing wasn’t as tight as it could have been, it still made good use of the time it spent. Sure, it could have been shorter, but they made a good case for every minute of the movie and I don’t really hate that it was as long as it was. I dislike that it wasn’t a self-contained story, but loved the story it was telling. It took the themes of the plot from the first movie and moved forward with them, moving away from the Spider-Man classics of responsibility and owning your power (albeit in a VERY different manner given that it’s Miles Morales under the mask rather than Peter Parker) to what it means to be your own person in a crowd of people and the ways that other people might try to force someone to not live up to their true potential. While there were small payoffs of those themes in the movie I saw, the true test of them won’t arrive until the final film, so I’ve got no idea if they were set up well or if they’re going to crumble because the finale is going to need to set them up again since it’ll have been a year or more since Across the Spider-Verse came out.

Visually, though, it was absolutely stunning. So much gets communicated by the images on screen as we move through universes, as the beats of emotional or story arcs rise and fall, as we are introduced to characters. It is a visual masterpiece for sure, communicating so much that couldn’t have been included in the dialog without turning this whole thing into a sodden, bogged-down monstrosity of a film. It is the kind of film that will reward as much attention as you give the visual details. Things flash on screen and disappear, the subtle differences in backgrounds offer hints, and even the colors chosen for particular scenes speak volumes. So much is shown first by the visuals and then communicated later once the story needs it to be known, but most of it requires some amount of greater understand to catch it (such as the potential meanings behind various color combinations, an attention to the details of the lore developed by the movie, and so on) so it feels like you’ve learned a secret when you catch some of the more subtle hints.

I’m definitely going to buy it on Blu-ray when it comes out, but I’m probably going to wait to watch it again until the sequel is in theaters so I don’t have to deal with the frustrations of an unfinished story for very long. I mean, a lot of stories are set up so that there’s more story to tell in the next segment of the overall narrative, but most of them tell an entire, self-contained story within each segment rather than set up a plot and then cut things short before it can pay off on the setup. It’s annoying and becoming more common these days as movies get longer and longer. Even the animated features, once the strongholds of what was considered a good movie length, are starting to bloat. Now that most media knows it will primarily be consumed through a streaming service, it feels like it has completely abandoned thoughts of good pacing or feature length. You can always just pause a movie at home, so why try to keep things tight? And if everyone loved Avengers Whatever and the Case of the Three Hour Runtime, surely everyone must be willing to sit through three hours of anything! Personally, though, I’m tired of long movies. I’m tired of sitting in a movie theater for so long that I genuinely need the caffeine and sugar of a soda so I don’t fall asleep from a lack of movement.

Anyway. The movie was good. It just frustrated me by touching on a lot of points that I find frustrating about movies as a whole these days. After all, it’s not like I haven’t gone out to the movies because I was scared of getting Covid. I have to go into an office where I’m one of two people who wears a mask and everywhere I go I’m pretty much the only one trying to stay safe anymore, so why would the movies be a higher risk than literally being in my office with air flowing into it from a ton of other people’s offices? I just haven’t really felt like subjecting myself to any of the massive, hours-long monstrosities that have come out in recent years. They’re just too long. I’d rather wait until I’m at home on my couch if I’m going to spend three hours on a movie, but I’ve also literally never done that. Didn’t even buy the Avengers movies because I know I’m never going to watch them at home. That’s just too much time for a movie that isn’t absolutely incredible.