Marvel's animated epic is ideal for testing your Dolby Atmos system – but it's leaving Netflix this week
Catch it while you can!

Looking for a way to challenge your home cinema system, all while enjoying one of the most exciting superhero films to grace our screens in the past few years?
This could be the ideal watch for you. Marvel's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is still available to stream on Netflix. You'll have to be quick to catch it, though: it's leaving the streaming service at the end of this week.
If this animated hit has somehow passed you by, let me catch you up. The film takes place over a year after the events of the first instalment (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) where teenager Miles Morales develops spidey powers.
As he settles into his role as Spider-Man in his hometown Brooklyn, Miles discovers a whole group of Spidey-People led by Miguel O'Hara. But our protagonist is less welcome than he thinks and soon must try to carve his own path and change his destiny.
The sequel has been a huge success with critics and audiences alike. The movie boasts an impressive 95 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes for both the Tomatometer and Popcornmeter.
The Guardian's Wendy Ide also adds “there’s not a frame of this rich, kaleidoscopically detailed animation that isn’t dazzling.” If that's not high praise, I'm not sure what is.
But what makes it such a good test movie?
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First off, it's popping and punchy colours make it a heck of a good way to put an OLED TV through its paces. From the bright red of the Spider-Man suits to the rich black of the villainous Spot's transformed body, every frame offers a tapestry of wealth when it comes to picture.
Then there's the fine sound performance to consider. Take the scene where Miles is being pursued by a crazed Spider-Man 2099 (known to his friends as Miguel O'Hara) through Nueva York.
As Miles flees from Miguel, Daniel Pemberton's energetic score perfectly reflects the tension of the scene. Miles desperately clambers further away, moving from the top to the bottom of the frame in a moment. With Atmos, you can close your eyes and pinpoint where he is on the screen – all of which is emphasised by the fast-paced soundtrack.
This scene is so impressive in terms of the audio performance, in fact, that it is included in our guide to the best Dolby Atmos movie scenes to test your home cinema surround sound system.
It might be leaving Netflix, but once it's gone, there will still be plenty of ways to watch the superhero epic. It's available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.
As always, though, we recommend investing in the 4K Blu-ray edition of the film to get the best viewing experience possible at home. You can pick this up via the usual avenues, such as HMV and Amazon.
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Robyn Quick is a Staff Writer for What Hi Fi?. After graduating from Cardiff University with a postgraduate degree in magazine journalism, they have worked for a variety of film and culture publications. In their spare time, Robyn can be found playing board games too competitively, going on cinema trips and learning muay thai.
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