When I caught wind that some moviegoers couldn’t hear the important dialogue in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, I kept my ears open during my viewing experience to see if I’d catch any issues myself. Here’s what happened.
First of all, I saw the film on a Tuesday after its opening weekend (bargain night). For that reason, it could very well be that my theater and others have mostly corrected whatever issues were going on. For the most part, I didn’t experience any glaring issues, gratefully, although there were arguably some character-specific exceptions.
Going into Spider-Verse, I was even informed by my own brother that when he saw the film over the weekend he also couldn’t hear certain parts of the dialogue that imparted certain plot points and so he felt lost in the movie.
I saw the film at a different theater, on a different day, in a different state, so by no means is this a scientific account. But for my part, I could easily hear the introductory monologue by Hailee Steinfeld’s Gwen Stacy, for instance. This specific intro scene was called out to illustrate the “widespread problem” of the audio issues. Per Collider, people could not hear her monologue underneath her drumming. For me, that was not a problem, I heard that part perfectly fine. However, there were some minor issues here and there with certain characters.
On Friday, Spider-Verse producer Phil Lord acknowledged that he heard of people not being able to hear certain bits of dialogue. In a Twitter post, Lord said the issue likely stemmed from projectionists not playing the film at the intended volume for the mix.
Lord apparently also made stickers for the projectionists with a friendly reminder to turn up the volume to 7 or even 7.5.
Character-specific audio issues
In terms of not being able to understand the dialogue, or it sounding incomprehensible, I will say I could not keep up with everything Daniel Kaluuya’s Spider-Punk was saying in the movie. However, the character speaks with a thick cockney accent and uses the relevant slang, so maybe it is solely due a lack of familiarity that I couldn’t understand it. However, it also sounded rather mumbly.
Another complaint I’ve heard people say is that the characters’ mouth movements don’t always match up with the dialogue being spoken. I thought I almost saw this happen, from time to time, with Oscar Isaac’s Miguel O’Hara. However, if the dialogue was out of sync, it was very subtle. It could be that Miguel only looked out of sync, however, due to scenes cutting to him when he is in the middle of dialogue, for instance.
In neither case did these issues hinder my enjoyment of Spider-Verse one bit. In fact, I tend to believe that when it comes to Spider-Punk and Miguel, any audio idiosyncrasies could simply be artistic choices on the part of the filmmakers. Maybe Spider-Punk only speaking in a mumbly cockney accent only adds to his anarchistic nature. Maybe Miguel’s lip movements not looking match-perfect with the dialogue is some kind of metaphor for him having different values and motivations from Shameik Moore’s Miles Morales.
I think back to the first film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and remember how I only found out later that Miles’ frame rate was slower than that of Jake Johnson’s Peter B. Parker. A novice observer could have chalked this up to be some kind of mistake on the part of the filmmakers, but it was actually intentional. Slower frame rates in cartoons are considered to be a bit simpler, signifying Miles’ lack of experience in comparison to his mentor. Subtle manipulations such as this would not be out of line for the follow-up film, so I’ve taken my experience as being one the filmmakers intended for me to see. By the way, I saw the film at a Cinemark theater in Oregon, so take that as you will.
However, the entire experience of trying to hear the same audio issues that others have mentioned, and seeing how Lord addressed it on Twitter, has led me to believe this was a genuine issue for many. Luckily, and perhaps because I saw the movie after its opening weekend already came and went, I did not share this experience. So clearly, it’s not a universal problem.
It’s unclear whether the audio problems have been largely stamped out at theaters or whether I was just lucky. But regardless, the viewing experience for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was wildly entertaining for me, overall.