First of all, let’s get one thing out of the best way: “Multiverse of Madness” will not be a foul film. It’s a movie that received Sam Raimi again within the director’s chair and allowed him to put his personal stamp on an MCU film, delivering some implausible sensible results and a few superior moments (just like the character Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch, performing some cool Sadako strikes). When it got here to the precise multiversal stuff, nevertheless, the movie disenchanted.
Indeed, the precise design of the multiverse is simply boring in “Multiverse of Madness,” with the viewers getting little greater than a fast montage that is not even half as visually attention-grabbing as, say, the “Rick and Morty” montage of ordering pizza in numerous universes. Sure, we received to see alternate variations of sure heroes, (only a handful), however in any other case the MCU’s alternate realities tended to look primarily (and disappointingly) the identical.
But “Across the Spider-Verse” is totally different. Not solely does the film give us an analogous montage (even making animation work together with live-action in probably the most visually beautiful and seamless manner since “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”), it really provides every universe time to breathe and for the viewers to get engaged with the variations between them past only a reference to pizza balls, à la “Multiverse of Madness.” Even the best way the worlds work — when it comes to lighting, coloration, and even texture — differs from one universe to a different and is an enormous a part of the film’s visuals. It makes every actuality really feel like a really alien world to these not from there.