Royal Festival Hall, 30 June 2024

Miles Morales faces more problems as Spider-Man.

I’ve written about Spider-Man before. In summary I think the two Spider-verse movies are not only the best Spider-Man movies but the two best superhero movies ever made. There’s a bunch of reasons for my thoughts here, not least that the story, the animation and the design decisions are extraordinary, brave and fresh but also because the music for both films is fantastic.

So, when I saw that there was a showing of the movie featuring a live orchestra and DJ I was all in. The thing about live music though is that it can go two ways – it can drown out the film, crashing over the top of it. It can miss the point of the film and it can also just not be that good.

Fortunately, this event had none of these worries. The audience was hyped, we were given permission at the start to shout and cheer and applaud. And, dear reader, we did.

This is no objective review – my experience of the live accompaniment of Across the Spider-verse was simply too joyous for this.

Daniel Pemberton was on stage alongside the conductor but was actually part of the orchestra and when that first drum solo by Gwen Stacey starts I knew we were in good hands because it was played live with all the vigour and emotion that is in the movie.

Not every single piece of music in the film is played but that’s not important because most of the time I’d be watching and then scan the musicians to find they were actually playing and it was so note perfect, so in the room, that I hadn’t noticed they were the soundtrack and there wasn’t some additional score being piped in.

There is nothing quite like seeing a movie with a live orchestra and DJ, especially for a film that mixes the urban and the orchestral so seamlessly. The audience were definitely shouting and cheering and, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller in the room I had to think they were enjoying seeing the reception their film got in such a setting because it was joyfully raucous. It can’t be very often that as a creator you get to see how an audience really feels.

So, yes, there’s a short tour of this event across the UK. I can only suggest you find any remaining dates before it heads off to the rest of the world because it is one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in a long time.

I’m now just waiting for Beyond the Spiderverse so I can do this all over again.

Rating? 10 drum solos out of 10.

Stewart Hotston