“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” proves that the overused Marvel IP still has life left in it, even if it's the fourth cinematic franchise to feature the famed character. Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino Brooklyn Spidey who led the previous film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” returns in another universe-hopping extravaganza where he encounters several other versions of his heroic namesake. This time his adventure questions his place in the canon of his superhero identity.

Though Miles (voiced by Shameik Moore) headlines the picture, the movie begins in a parallel world where Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) is the wall-crawling hero, mourning the death of her childhood friend Peter Parker. Her police officer father, George Stacy (Shea Whigham), blames the murder on the mysterious Spider-Gwen without knowing her secret identity and vows to hunt down the vigilante. It’s from here we are reintroduced to the Spider-Verse, where Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) has assembled a team of other Spider folk from various parallel realities to fix reality glitches and other time-space paradoxes that affect their outcomes. This team includes — but is not limited to — Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), the pregnant biker Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), English anarchist, Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), and Peter Parker's sad-boy clone, Scarlet Spider (Andy Samberg).

Their mission brings them back to Miles’ reality on the verge of his college admission. The conflicted Morales hopes that Gwen returned to rekindle their friendship and bring him into the fold of her new team, but we learn darker truths about Miles' reality as the heroes swing from buildings to stop a portal-controlling villain called The Spot (Jason Schwartzman).

2018’s “Into the Spider-Verse” seemed modern and explosive in its ambitious mixing of animation styles, but it’s utterly moderate compared to the visual heights of this sequel. The animators explore the freedom to try any aesthetic choice as a reasonable approach to a visual solution. Everything is mixed and remixed from scene to scene. From commercial graphic art, graffiti street stenciling, expressive watercolor backgrounds, cell-shaded digital motion and anime-like action sequences, every idea is on the table. And yet, directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, along with the mega talents of their animation departments and art directors, hold the project together with a cohesive post-modern logic.

The story moves around quickly and there’s a lot to pay attention to from scene to scene. New characters are constantly introduced, and the script holds its reveals close to the chest, first acclimating you to the unconventional animation and then surprising you with the plot concerns.

This is an exercise for the senses and if you spend too much time trying to figure out the world-building or the technical aspects of filmmaking, you may leave without much emotional pay-off. Instead, if you pace yourself and allow the experience to take you for a ride, the story beats hit with sufficient impact.

Since the film’s previous installment, every other piece of superhero media tries to capture the thrill of a multiverse plot. But what made that movie work, and what will ultimately advance this sequel light years ahead of its tired imitators, is the convergence of a fractured reality plot with an equally playful use of imagery that underlines the anything-is-possible themes. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” not only manages to engage as a superhero science fiction blockbuster, but it tries to move the medium of the moving picture forward. This marriage between form and function is too often overlooked or taken for granted in our current action movie zeitgeist.

Grade: A