It completely killed any narrative cohesion or pay-off by just ending. I remember thinking "it's been a really long time... how are they going to wrap this up?"
Turns out the answer is "don't wrap it up". It truly makes me not recommend it - though I had other issues with it aside from just that absurd decision. Rewatch the first again, instead.
I agree the split in half angle was horribly handled but the movie wasn't totally ruined. ::: spoiler Narratively across the spider-verse was gwens story. It started with her and ended with her and miles was the backdrop for much of what happened spoiler ::: . I've seen the movie 3 times and I still love it. I don't think the take away is movies should be shorter because it had so much amazing visuals and story telling and really ramped up the expectations for the next one. The take away is don't lie to your audience pretending it's a single movie. Also don't lie and say the next one is coming out in 8 months, it's been 2 years lol. They were never gonna make that deadline.
Those movies were already too long, IMO. The shortest of the two is 114 minutes. My son really liked them, but we had to break up each movie into more than one session.
Oh I don't mind it as much; but, for an animated movie that's somewhat geared towards a wider age demographic range, it felt a bit too long for younger viewers.