Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse might have followed the masterpiece that came before it with a mediocre stride. It might have done all the wrong things, been too hesitant or too bold, and failed to generate the same sort of hype as 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse. But somehow — against all odds — directors Joaquim Dos Santos and Kemp Powers have pulled off the unlikely and turned this follow-up into another hit.
At least that’s what the critics are telling us, with Across the Spider-Verse earning an acclaimed 94% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. What’s more, the sequel has also grown daring in the runtime it boasts. While the first film closed around the 2-hour mark — not unheard of but still unconventional for an animated feature — this one goes past that and clocks it at a whopping 140 minutes.
How did the powers that be acquiesce to this? Well, as Powers explains it to Collider, the trick is to make sure that the viewers remain engaged, regardless of how long the movie is.
“Obviously, you’re always gonna get encouraged to trim and tighten, and make it as tight as humanly possible, which no one wants to do that more than us, but at the end of the day, it’s, ‘Is the audience engaged?’ We don’t think that there’s any fat in this film, to be honest. We started screening it for test audiences and we figured out the final things that we cut, and we finally screened a version that the audience not only enjoyed, but they didn’t feel like it was running too long.”
In an age where campaigns for director’s cuts run rampant on social media, I don’t think most people would mind a longer version of the film if it meant getting more fleshed-out characters and storylines. What some shareholders and industry moguls base their assumptions on involves movies that wouldn’t have a fighting chance either way, and Across the Spider-Verse has just proven that it is no such flick.
The sequel is making its worldwide theatrical premiere in two days.
