Leaving aside a daring ending that is generating quite opposite reactions, there is no doubt that ‘Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse’ is one of the hits of the year. Commercially and also from critics, she has sung loudly the virtues of a visual and meta-referential prodigy that could even captivate the industry and be placed in the award race beyond the niche of the animation category.
Of course, much of the discussion centers on his aesthetic findings, mixing animation styles with more daring and masterful technique than in the previous multiversal arachnid movie. It’s certainly a delight to behold, even if the film decides to go at a hell of a relentless pace, and completely shapes the personality and charisma of the different Spider-Mans we see appearing. It even allows you to delve into them. Although that great rhythm is also achieved thanks to the music that accompanies the images.
Hip hop, electronica, punk: everything at once everywhere
Leaving aside the selection of songs curated and produced by the DJ metro boominwhich also reflects a certain tonal variety but is more oriented towards hip hop and the like that a young man like Miles Morales would listen to, the sound part offers an experience as challenging as it is exhilarating. The composer is key there Daniel PembertonBritish who started making noise in Hollywood via Guy Ritchie’s films and already did work on the soundtrack of the first film.
‘Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse’ opens up the focus and the variety of characters that we find with respect to ‘Spider-Man: A New Universe’ a little more and it is reflected in the music. While the first one was also electrifying and eclectic, it was dominated by a hip hop with a lot of scratching and electronic production to get fully into the perspective of Morales, the main Spider-Man. In the sequel, Pemberton spent two years researching and doing trials and errors to shape the sounds of each arachnid character.
To do this, the British uses his classical training and his taste for experimenting with sounds from electronics, rock and other genres, giving him a wide sound palette with which to play. the theme of Gwen Stacythe main Spider-Woman, is a great example of the extensive search process and the variety of sounds that can be intertwinedwith a mixture of synthwave and pop punk seasoned with a little more teenage angst nerve that are played with the grace and agility typical of the almost ballet dancer style that the character has fighting.
‘Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse’: finding cohesion in the clash
The rest of the characters also have explorations of different sounds that are produced in such a way that they are coherent and integrable in the general sound. The electronic variety is fundamental, both for the antagonist Miguel O’Hara (or Spider-Man 2099), with distorted techno to give an abrasive and futuristic sensation, or also for Pavitr Prabhakar (the Indian Spider-Man), where he takes advantage of influences from musicians like Charanjit Singh, who in the eighties experimented with synthesizer music and Indian folklore. Even with Spider-Punk Hobie Brown, he uses effects on ultra-processed guitars and drums so the genre jump isn’t overly shocking.
But the biggest challenge is not to go exploring the personality of each character through different sounds, but to make them collide in an exciting way and not too chaotic that it is distracting. The opening fight sequence in the Guggenheim is a great example where the film reaches audiovisual ecstasywith the different styles of animation and music genres dialoguing with each other to give an exciting action scene like never before.
In that scene we see the impressionistic and colorful tone of Gwen Stacy’s world colliding with the multiversal cyberpunk and Vulture renaissance of Spider-Man 2099. Pemberton explained to Screenrant how in that scene moved away from traditional orchestral compositioninstead pulling for “trying to create a sort of own orchestra out of all these disparate sounds that have strong and weak points.” Thus the pop but also rock synthesizers of Spider-Gwen, so delicate and even dreamlike, follow one another with the most muscular sounds and with operatic voices to convey the distortion of these interdimensional invaders.
This results in a fabulous sequence that manages to be cohesive, but still feels restless and full of life. The soundtrack of ‘Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse’ is the expected continuation of the disruption that the ‘Matrix’ or ‘Matrix Reloaded’ caused at the time Don Davis, which crossed the traditional orchestra with the most dynamic electronics and nu-metal muscle. in the absence of having some propellerheads to discover thanks to the music of these films, Pemberton makes the Spider-verse films another great focus of expression and unlimited creativity.
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