Review of the original: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." Like the last one, the real drivers here are writer-producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

Almost as good as the first one (something of a miracle, given how good the first one was), often just as hyperactive. Suffers slightly from go-big-or-go-home - although Lord and Miller are the two who could pull this off ... So they went with 10,000 versions of Spider-Man. Almost as good ... right up until the end where it became clear it wasn't going to end and they went with a classic (and no less annoying for it) comic book "To Be Continued."

Gwen Stacey (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) gets recruited by the multi-versal Spider Society, and chooses to visit her friend (from the previous movie, and still our main character) Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). Miles fights "The Spot," who can move through portals. The Spot is weak and goofy, but slips through Miles' hands and starts jumping universes to increase his own power so he can beat Miles/Spider-Man. Several of the Spider-Men chase him. Miguel (Spider-Man 2099, voiced by Oscar Isaac) - the leader of the Spider Society - explains "canon events" to Miles. How each of the Spider-people has important people in their lives that die, and how those events cannot be disrupted and must happen. Miles disrupts one of these events in another universe, which causes a tear in space-time ... or something like that. But far worse is that his own father is scheduled to die at the hands of Spot and he's not "allowed" to do anything about it.

Lord and Miller have decided that this movie is about story-telling and fate: it's not just a Spider-Man story about Miles Morales, it's also carrying a big discussion about how stories are constructed - one that both Miles and the audience have to navigate. This is talking about the whole multi-verse thing that Marvel's comic books built up over decades so they could repeatedly tell the same story with variations. It's trying to nail an over-arching structure onto it, and they leave us with the question "is Miles's fate sealed, or can he (and his Spider-friends) change it?"

It's better than it sounds, just as the last one sounded insane if you put it on paper but was great if you watched it. But even Lord and Miller can't make "To Be Continued" appealing.