Kemp Powers brings a writer’s attention to Black American lives to visually adventurous animation. We rate the work, though Across the Spider-Verse sometimes makes its characters compete with too many rules.
Fi1m perspective
Gwen Stacy turns up in Miles Morales’s bedroom in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), and the universes briefly seem less important than the people. We felt for Miles, who has been missing someone in a universe he cannot reach. Powers shares directing credit with Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson, so we should be careful about assigning each success to him alone. But the attention to a Black protagonist’s everyday concerns fits his work elsewhere.
His writing gives us a useful way into the directing. One Night in Miami (2013) began as a play imagining a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown; Powers adapted it for Regina King’s One Night in Miami... (2020). He moved into animated features as co-writer and co-director of Soul (2020), alongside Pete Docter. His attention to its barbershop is characteristic: he wants the spaces around a Black protagonist to feel particular and credible.
In Across the Spider-Verse, each world has its own painting style, and the pleasure is in seeing how far the three directors will let those pictures differ. The film is more beautiful than its predecessor, stranger and sometimes funnier. Powers also works closely with actors in recording sessions, and the voices matter amid all that visual activity. Shameik Moore’s Miles and Hailee Steinfeld’s Gwen have to remain recognisable people through all those changes.
The reservation is how much explaining comes with the spectacle. At 140 minutes, Across the Spider-Verse spends too long laying out rules, and the script by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham supplies only half a longer story. The directors share responsibility for the pace, even when the screenplay is somebody else’s. Start with Across the Spider-Verse, provided an unfinished story will not spoil the evening.
Biography
Kemp Powers is an American playwright, screenwriter and director. He wrote the 2013 play One Night in Miami, which he adapted for the 2020 film of the same name directed by Regina King. He co-wrote and co-directed Pixar's Soul (2020) with Pete Docter.
Powers co-directed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) alongside Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson. He has also written for the television series Star Trek: Discovery (2017). Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1973, he attended Howard University.
