The latest "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" is an audio-visual assault on the senses, and I mean that in the best way possible. There's always something going on, filling in every corner of the frame with dazzling imagery and every layer of the sound design with background noise, music, sound effects, and dialogue.

There's very little dead space in this movie, and some have walked away saying that maybe the creative team should have spent a little more time tweaking the sound mix because some of the dialogue was getting drowned out by all the other stuff going on, especially during the prologue, which focuses on Gwen's Ghost Spider and lets us know how she got mixed up with a certain group.

The reports started small, with tweets from fans asking if it was just their theater or if others also had some difficulty hearing what was said. It has since grown, however, to many others voicing the same problem — so many, in fact, that producer Phil Lord has taken to Twitter to answer questions about it.

Is It A Problem With The Mix Or The Presentation? That Is The Question.

Phil Lord does acknowledge that "we did favor the music to get your heart racing" while mixing, but is adamant that if the projectionists are playing the movie with the correct levels, the music shouldn't be getting in the way of the dialogue.

The creative team behind the movie must have been worried about the projectionists screwing this part up because they even made stickers that politely request theater staff play the movie at "7," the preferred volume for this one. Aka, crank that sucker up, boys!

This reminds me of Ben Pearson's deep dive into why major Hollywood movies were having sound issues. Christopher Nolan is famous for his movies being hard to hear. My guess is that what's going on with "Across the Spider-Verse" is that it's such a complicated mix that they fine-tuned it to perfection … but in a perfect setting: a professionally calibrated mixing studio. You can't count on theaters even turning the volume to the correct levels, let alone having all their speakers optimized for this mix.

I didn't have much problem hearing the dialogue in my local Dolby Atmos theater, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue elsewhere. It'd be wonderful if all movie theaters put presentation first and foremost (bright screens, perfect sound), but that's not the world we live in, much to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's dismay.

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