Untangling Across the Spider-Verse
In 2019 I poured out my love for Into the Spider-Verse into a medium article. It was a brief, 15 minute read that I remain pretty proud of because in 15 minutes I didn’t have the space to write anything too particular while still getting some fine details across. It didn’t feel too gushy for a movie I clearly gush over. Since that piece came out nine months after the movie came out, having it be any longer also felt a little senseless. The world had beaten me to saying all the things about Into the Spider-Verse that I wanted to say. The movie has remained a favorite of mine since then and still seems to shatter my emotions.
Meanwhile the sequel was a phenomenal experience that dominated theaters all summer in 2023. It also surpassed the box office revenues of the first film and is a big conversation piece in super-hero movie circles. This sequel has left me equally emotionally shattered and speechless. I saw it three times in theaters and countless times since then. With the first film my writing boiled the movie down to three things: The music dominating the experience for me, a meditation on our own cultural relationship to Spider-Man being reflected in the film, and this fantastic exploration of Miles’s desires for approval and the struggles to find it from his family members in the ways that he needs.
Now, years later, it’s time for me to sculpt words about Spider-Man again. Not because the world needs these opinions but because I need to find the way to express it. What I need to express is a lot of things. Emotions, opinions, experiences, it runs a gamut. I think it took me the entire experience of writing this essay to even understand why both of these movies have impacted me so much. But even when not exploring my emotions, Across the Spider-Verse is just too dang cool for me to have found a video that sums up all the little things I’d love to say about it. In the interest of trying to make sure the world I inhabit is better off, I’m putting a couple things up front.
- 100 or more animators on this movie quit. Animators are often some of the worst treated workers in the film industry without the same union protections that the rest of Hollywood sees. Much like the terribly maligned quality assurance aspect of the video game industry, animators deserve better. The animating division behind Marvel Studios went on strike and I can only hope that the people behind Across the Spider-Verse who still want to work with Sony Animated Pictures can do the same. Because the best thing about the third part in this Spider-Verse trilogy that can happen is that the movie releases, it’s amazing, and the crew go to the news outlets saying “It was so much better making this one.” Wouldn’t that be awesome? Instead I have to put this point in here so that I don’t gush about this movie for an hour straight and then feel bad because I only sang the praises of a film while ignoring the people it harmed in the process. I’d love to do a similar talk about the third movie and not need this paragraph in here. I think you would too.
- Spoilers. So. Many. Spoilers. The movie’s on Netflix, I’d encourage you to go watch on DVD because the visual quality of this film is immensely drowned out by streaming but I’d rather you see it on Netflix than not at all so just, go see it, be spoiled with a great time, come back to this after.
- Some of this stuff I heard from YouTube videos or memes and tumblr posts and all sorts of fans talking about the movie not long after it came out. I’ll include credit for perspectives I got from elsewhere where they come up.
Across the Spider-Verse is dense. So dense in fact that I’m going to do something different. Usually when I write about a piece of media I try to focus on one aspect at a time, focusing the summary and fun stuff first, the more nuanced stuff that has my criticisms second, and then maybe a peaceful place of affirmation third. I can’t do that here. There’s too much going on and it’s overwhelming sometimes. Instead, I will provide the numerous things I’m going to be talking about here in a brief list and then I will talk about those things in order of the movie: Start to finish. Talking about all the things separately several times over would just feel stilted and ignore the way this movie hits bit by bit. So here it is, the things I’ll be discussing, in alphabetical order:
Animation That Says It All
Breaking My Feels-Barrier
It’s Actually Gwen’s Movie
Miles’s Story
Mythos & Meta
Parallels, the Poetry that Rhymes
Parents & Teens
The Secret One
Score & Soundtrack
Act 1 —Earth-65 & Spider-Gwen
Parallels, the Poetry that Rhymes | Score & Soundtrack
I’m going to be giving this score and soundtrack praise a lot. Daniel Pemberton just knocks it out of the park in specific ways I love on the regular. But here in the intro, I can at least talk about some structure and theming and “sequel” stuff. Across the Spider-Verse is the “dark” sequel to the uplifting Miles Morales origin film. The approach in the music is the same for the opening credits shots while being different; we get hints of The Spot’s whining cry, Miguel O’Hara’s dystopian future, and then when it’s time to start showing anything visually, we get the rock-focused introduction from Gwen Stacy and The Mary Janes. Here’s a fun fact I don’t have too much time for: Many of the comic stills in this intro are quite literally lifted from the comic panels of Spider-Gwen #0: Most Wanted? The intro is similar to how Peter Parker introduced us to the idyllic Spider-Man in the first film, but this time the guitar and Gwen’s drum patterns that get more and more out of control scream that this is a story of how things got bad, how they fell apart, how it went all wrong. It’s a tragedy. I just love setups like this one and Daniel’s score helps set that tone a lot. Easter eggs are littered across this opening sequence that express new details we didn’t know before, speak to how canon events are being broken (or were maybe never really there to begin with) and the message at the end of the film will suggest how all of that is good. But make no mistake, this is Spider-Man’s “Empire Strikes Back” and the opening is sending a message of foreboding stakes through flashy sonic imagery, music and a hint of narration from Gwen. “I didn’t want to hurt him. But I did. And he’s not the only one.”
It’s Actually Gwen’s Movie | Parents & Teens | Mythos & Meta
We’re also going to see a lot of this one, but ATSV is every bit a movie about Gwen Stacy from Earth-65 (aka: Spider-Woman/Spider-Gwen) as it is about Miles Morales, maybe even more so. She’s the first character we get to spend time with in this movie and she’s the last character on screen at the end. She has an entire arc in this film and the writers start off trying to hone the edges of what was defined for her in the first film. In Into the Spider-Verse (hereafter called ITSV), it’s made vaguely clear that Gwen was best friends with Peter Parker in Earth-65 and fighting him as The Lizard resulted in Peter’s death. In that movie Peter visually looked like the same Peter framed across the whole movie from both Miles’s dimension and Peter B. Parker’s dimension, but this movie semi-retcons this to make Peter smaller, seemingly closer to Gwen’s age, and expand the complications of the whole situation (much like her original comic).
In short: Gwen is hounded by the chief of police for killing Peter Parker when in truth Spider-Woman of Earth-65 fought Peter Parker as The Lizard, who turned himself into The Lizard and attacked a school dance in an attempt to get back at a bully. Peter was clearly out of control at that point and fought Gwen in the process and got himself killed under the rubble resulting from the fight. It’s a yikes of a situation only given more “yikes” when Gwen finds out Peter knew about her secret identity all along, and then further complicated by the fact that Gwen’s dad is the cop who was on the scene shortly after the fight and found Spider-Woman (Gwen) mourning over Peter’s dead body. In classic Spider-Man fashion: Spider-Woman is publicly blamed for killing Peter Parker and Captain Stacy is now constantly hunting Spider-Gwen, his own daughter, but he doesn’t know it. Gwen now continues to live in Earth-65 wracked with guilt over Peter’s death, and frustrated by the fact that a new friend she made that can deeply relate to this whole mess lives in a completely different dimension. They’re both stuck, separated. He’s a Spider-Man, elsewhere. Understandably: Gwen is upset about, uhm, everything?
This situation for Gwen hits its natural inflection point that drives the entirety of the movie’s plot when Gwen gets in a fight with a villain from another dimension and her dad gets the drop on her as Spider-Woman. Unable to escape her dad’s gunpoint, she does the unthinkable thing as a Spider-Person and reveals her identity to him. Her dad does the next unthinkable thing.
He rejects her, aligning with his version of the truth instead of hers, and tries to place her under arrest.
The lasting legacy and origins of Spider-Man are a story about coming of age, about being a teenager, about adolescence and the changes that come about from it. Romance. Puberty. Emotions. All that jazz is dialed up to 11 by having the person experiencing these things be a teenager with superpowers. Another aspect of teenage fiction in general is identity, the idea of figuring out who you are in this world and who you want to be, coming to grips with who you are and trying to be accepted by the world around you for it, and y’know, contributing to the world, etc. Spider-Man’s mythos is that he has problems while developing that identity. In ITSV, Miles’s problems begin with taking up the mantle while not wanting to and losing his Uncle Aaron literally and metaphorically in the revelation that he’s a criminal, who is quickly gunned down at the moment he might turn things around.
In Across the Spider-Verse, Gwen, child to a single father with no siblings, lost her best friend to becoming a villain and watched him die in the process. She is now hunted by her own dad due to her secret identity. Gwen’s version of the mythos works like any other in script, but we’re implanted in it in an incredible way because visually and thematically it centers around identity challenged by those problems. Miles questions if he wants to be this. Gwen questions how to be this. Through an introductory sequence we repeatedly see Gwen’s reflection cast as Spider-Woman instead of Gwen or vice-versa, point being that Gwen is not just the one person but both identities. She remarks how this line of work is usually one where she works alone. This feels like a neat animation trick to quickly ensure you know who is who here but it takes on stronger meaning when Gwen approaches her home apartment from the fire escape. We’re shown Gwen from behind as she approaches a slightly open window, her dad cleaning and preparing for a day of work and Gwen observes her own reflection, showing back Spider-Woman instead of her human face. Gwen comes home every day worried that today is the day her dad has inspected the drum kit and happened to find her costume in there. She can’t be herself around her dad because she fears what will happen if he finds out: Judgment, arrest, abandonment. All things that also reject this identity of hers that she chooses to keep locked up. What other choice does she have?
Animation that says it all | Parents & Teens
Over the next set of frames, note how Gwen is staged in distance with her dad and the contrast in her blue shades that demonstrate her continuing sorrow over her situation regarding Peter, her dad, Miles, and everything. Even take note that these color shades are almost “bloomed away” when she and her dad briefly throw the arguments about Spider-Woman and Peter aside and hug. It’s a phenomenal sequence of shots that establish everything you need to know about her relationship with her dad without words (even though there are words). Gwen is distanced to avoid the debate over Spider-Woman as a hero or a villain. She’s isolated from her source of warmth in this world due to this position and generally overly sorrowful.
And I love that this movie plays with this concept three distinct times for her and her dad because, as I said earlier, this is actually Gwen’s movie.
Just about anyone who struggled through personal identity in the teenage years can relate to these concepts. And while I don’t have the authority to speak about Gwen as a trans icon to fans, the color scheming and “set design” put in place by no doubt the couple hundred people involved in everything Gwen-related seems to do enough speaking on behalf of the struggles many people no doubt go through in our own world when it comes to this particular identity. It’s not subtle. It’s clear in this film Gwen got adopted as a trans icon. Icons rarely get to choose who they represent in the fictional world and since Gwen is entirely fictional, she doesn’t. She just is at this point.
Emotionally the art does so much of the heavy lifting in Earth-65 and the weight is at its heaviest when she has to reveal who she is to her dad. While we see similar paint behavior earlier in the movie when she’s arguing with her dad in the bedroom, it’s so much more emphasized when she’s revealing her identity to him. The way colors start to look like paint rippling down walls and the way it starts splashing the backdrop behind Gwen as she reveals her identity to her dad, the color palettes behind her during the reveal match the colors of the trans flag. It’s so easy to comprehend feelings in this moment. And look, if you think all of this is dumb then go enjoy some other multi-verse movie, I guess? If you think some kids and teens don’t struggle with this stuff and go through the same emotions Gwen does in this sequence then you need to spend some more time listening to other people’s experiences, whether they be trans in particular or identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, there’s a clear cut attempt to empathize with a person who experiences this painful reality that Gwen does and the emotions of the sequence are gut wrenching while the visuals do so much heavy lifting to carry you into this moment further.
In addition, this is the scene where everything unfolds. It’s the part where Across the Spider-Verse (hereafter called “ATSV”) defines itself as Gwen’s movie. In a moment of extreme vulnerability, Gwen professes that need from her dad to “not be a cop for a moment and just listen.” And he doesn’t. It may not be for the entirety of her speech, but he eventually falters from his pain of realizing she’s been hiding herself from him, and leans back on feeling threatened by his daughter, he chooses not to believe her.
So she runs away.
Act 2 — Guess Who’s Back
Score & Soundtrack | Parallels
Daniel Pemberton’s score on ATSV is undoubtedly one of the strongest things about the movie. I said it at the start of Act 1, I’m saying it again for Act 2. When a sequel is made to a movie that had a “cinematic musical moment” the way ITSV did with its blending of What’s Up Danger and the other motifs all at once during the movie’s high point, it would probably be easy for any composer to say “I need to top that moment”. There’s even parts of this screenplay that might offer up that opportunity. Instead, Danny P. seemingly said “Eh, how about I just make a freaking good score instead?” and we’re going to see a lot of that throughout but not quite yet. Instead act 2 starts off strong with the booming (pun intended again) Miles Morales version of the Spider-Man introduction I wasn’t anticipating but so excited to hear after Gwen’s opening act wrapped. Much like the end of this movie, it’s a moment where you feel “all in” for what this experience suggests. It’s interesting that Gwen starts the movie off saying we’re going to do things so different this time but so reliably are structures and formats from the first movie brought up again and again in terms of music and visual montage. “Numerous logo realities”, “It’s time for Spider-Man title cards montage”, and even more are repeated in this film but differently. When Miles first confronts The Spot during the start of this act we get Miles’s Spider-Man theme as he does the breakdown of where he is as a person instead of the previous Spider-Man’s perfect “‘the only’ Spider-Man ” that we got last time. In ways this film is canonizing the first film’s style and approach. But before all of that I want to draw attention to the soundtrack.
Not the score that’s so amazingly composed by Daniel, but instead this selection of music that’s published outside the score to implement into this film by Metro Boomin’. Because there’s some specific focuses going on here and I don’t know if it’s Daniel’s choice or the director’s choice but I can’t help but talk about it. In both films whenever we inhabit Miles’s world for a time like we do here in act 2, we are inundated with diegetic music and non-score pieces. Our act kicks off with Rakim’s “Guess Who’s Back”, a pull not featured on any of the soundtracks that fantastically sets the tone for Miles’s love for New York and an excitement that we’re back in Miles’s shoes. Whenever we’re in Earth-1610 in both films we regularly get diegetic music at a pace we don’t experience anywhere else. In ITSV it made sense, we’re on Earth-1610 for the duration of the film. But this happens again in ATSV and the diegetic music mostly stops whenever we leave Earth-1610’s presence. The times it is diegetic in this film mostly resonate when we are exploring a character’s emotional state to set the backdrop of the film. Music is important to Miles, just like Gwen, and the movie uses that to ground us in Mile’s life. Once the action picks up this is mostly abandoned in exchange for a score with soundtrack pulls that fit scenes as expertly as before. I bring this up now and can point out the entirety of the sequence where Miles leaves his school campus to go visit Aaron and go spray painting in the first movie (a scene hip hop fans adored for the actual scratching and live mixing of three to four different popular songs used in maybe a forty-five second sequence of shots); but more of these songs will show their faces further in this act. There I won’t be quite as detailed as I am being now, but it’s worth also noting at this juncture just how many songs are used from this film’s soundtrack for these diegetic moments for the audience and Miles. I think it demonstrates just how strong the soundtrack is this time around. I loved it.
Further demonstrating the strength of the soundtrack woven into the film score is Metro Boomin’s actual work. In the first film soundtrack pieces were scattered all throughout the film but Danny and company also relied on more pulls from outside sources for that diegetic music. This time though Metro’s original soundtrack is relied on again and again, it feels so much more in line with the film’s moments while still demonstrating the musical interests Miles might have in this phase of his life. “Take it to the Top” is used while Miles runs to his meeting with his parents and the school counselor. “Silk & Cologne” sets the vibes at Jeff Morales’s promotion party. And don’t get me started on the one-two punch of “I Can’t Stop” and “Hummingbird” moments later.
Miles’s Story | Parallels | Mythos and Meta
Since the movie spent 20 minutes setting up Gwen’s arc that’s so critical to this story, it gets right to the action setting up Miles’s villain and story at play too. It’s been a year, we get to catch up to Miles’s life simultaneous to his first fight with The Spot where he disregards The Spot’s importance while also trying to balance a personal meeting with his parents. We get to see Miles’s current struggles with debating telling his parents about being Spider-Man, we also get glimpses of how he’s developed his powers further to defeat villains, tried to modernize the Spider-Man presence with social media (YouTube, pictures) fused with his art style (regularly tagging villains he defeats the same way he did with Kingpin at the end of ITSV). These struggles are so forefront to what he’s dealing with that The Spot is just this nuisance to tie up and leave in place so he can go deal with the other things going on in his life right now. Sidebar: I love how there’s still some natural elements of teens being a little careless with things here. Gwen leaves her drum kit open when she leaves the apartment with a confidence that she’ll be back to close it before her dad finds it. Miles tries to juggle both stopping a villain that seems to want to talk to him while also semi-blowing-off his parents, thinking a little commitment to both is fine.
At the meeting with his parents and throughout the introduction we quickly comprehend just how much the events of becoming Spider-Man in ITSV influenced who he’s becoming. This plays more into the Spider-Man mythos and how to develop it for Miles. In the early comics Peter Parker was mostly wrapped up with being concerned for his aged Aunt May and some girl troubles every now and then. I’d call that a reductionist perspective for sure, and I will correct that perspective later, but Peter’s episodic problems in comics were still every day problems people deal with all the time (money shortages, responsibilities, etc.). But for Miles, he’s regularly concerned with the events surrounding the loss of his uncle, hiding who he is from parents that genuinely care for him, and what he’s going to do with his future. At the meeting with the counselor it’s clear he has fully embraced studying science not because he’s a nerd (the way Peter Parker was stereotyped) but because it’s the way to connect with others who understand what it’s like being Spider-Man, by traveling to other dimensions and meeting them again. This is a more reliable modern translation of creating connections and friendships the way many teens wind up doing in the omnipresence of the internet. While not universal, the experience of a teenager veering off into a community that parents don’t know about or don’t want their child to associate with is undeniably common. Wheras Peter Parker defined the power and responsibility dynamic, Miles is defined in part by the individuality dynamic for Spider-Man. He has his own way of doing things (as do all the Spider-Peeps) but the movie draws particular attention to these desires Miles carries with him daily. He wants to be with his friends again so much so that he’ll go into an entire field of science to make it happen (credit to that one tumblr post). He wants to tell his parents about being Spider-Man so they’d understand his struggles and the reasons he’s late or messing up in front of them, but he’ll get into an argument with an attitude before he can let that truth come out for fear of rejection. His dad is a cop and has repeatedly spoken out against vigilantes. We’ve been here before.
This central conflict for Miles is established and how he plans to resolve it is presented right as he walks into the counselor’s office. The counselor is remarking “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” and Miles walks in and proclaims casually: “Unless you bake two cakes.” This multi-tasking or accomplishing multiple things through the means of an inventive “why didn’t we just think of that” solution is maybe the second most important thing in the movie next to this being Gwen’s movie. I have to give credit to CinemaWins for pointing this out and then continuing to bring it up across their video. It’s a perspective I hadn’t considered before and I’m going to be bringing it up later. In this opening sequence for Miles involving The Spot and then his family, we’re establishing Miles’s own duality. He’s trying to be Spider-Man and Miles. His roomie Ganke suggests he’s being stretched a little thin, trying too hard to do everything. The counselor doesn’t really know who Miles is at all. He’s missing classes and got a lower grade on a language he’s seemingly fluent in. Later Jeff will remark to Rio “It’s like we got a whole other kid now” in regards to Miles’s changes and growth in his teenage years. Jeff even expresses some of this struggle to Miles as Spider-Man after a second fight with The Spot. “You think you’re getting pretty good at being a parent. You think you got it licked. And then they go and grow up.” We’ll talk about this duality element later with all other Spider-Characters when we get into the canon events as well as with Earth-42 Miles. Just remember: “Unless you bake two cakes.”
Let’s move on to parallels. These are some quickies but I feel like they stand out so much in the first half of act 2 the more I think about them. In Miles’s argument with his dad on the rooftop party, he practically cries out to his dad, “Just listen to me!” Jeff berates Miles while he’s trying to explain his behavior lately. Gwen goes through a similar “I need you to listen to me” moment when she unmasks in front of her dad and reveals her secret identity. Both events end in the characters distancing themselves from their parents, but to different effects. With Gwen she was going to be arrested so she runs way. With Miles, he shuts down, accepting the two-month grounding punishment handed to him. Not that the punishment matters much as Miles considers it over in his bedroom, “Two months. Psh. I’m Spider-Man, I’m not grounded.” Separately in The Spot’s development, we learn more about his past as a scientist at Alchemax that stole the spider that bit Miles from Earth-42. In these visions we get a brief glimpse of a photo that suggests he knew Olivia Octavius directly (who gets hit by a truck near the end of the first movie), though to what effect it’s not completely clear. He has a photo of the two of them together. When The Spot kicks himself into his own inter-dimensional travel state, he recognizes his ability to traverse dimensions in the multi-verse. Upon returning to Earth-1610 he remarks “The Power of the Multi-Verse in the Palm of My Hand”. I felt this interestingly tried to echo the film version of Doc Ock in Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 wherein Octavius experienced a personal tragedy at a technological disaster involving technology of his own making (wife dead) and wants to tap into the power from that event even more (“power of the sun in the palm of my hand”). The Spot may not have been the husband of this universe’s Doc Ock (who had a relationship with this universe’s Aunt May at one point), but he did suffer this massive technological failure and wants to reach into that technology more to unleash his capabilities. I just found it an interesting parallel.
Act 2.5 — “Miles, You Got a Minute?”
Gwen’s Story | Music & Score | Animation That Says It All
Gwen is lying to Miles. It’s something I have to remind myself on rewatches because the chemistry between these two characters, even though animated and voiced, is so enjoyable despite there being some clear differences in their upbringing. Fans liked to point out how Gwen rudely sits on the bed with her shoes on, immediately is poking around in Miles’s privacy by looking at his drawings and removes a collectible toy from its box. With some subtle differences in character and the big reveals later in the movie, part of me wonders if the two of them won’t pursue this unspoken thing after the events of this film and instead just remain friends by the end of the trilogy. Separately it comes off as just this funny thing that happens where teens are oblivious to their surroundings or awkward because they’ve got a crush.
But Gwen is also avoiding answers. At first the confusion of how she’s visiting is brushed aside, reasonably so because Gwen’s used to hopping dimensions and she’s not (per Miguel’s rules) supposed to be here. Miles asks how she’s been and she also brushes that aside the way most people in general greeting exchanges do (“I’m fine, look at you!”). Everything here is technically okay but Gwen has to avoid any attention to the two reasons she’s here: 1) she’s run away from her problems at home by joining a Spider-Society that rejects Miles for his “anomaly-status” and 2) she’s actually here to catch The Spot and not supposed to see Miles at all. It’s the animation and voices that spells it all out so well here and in the proceeding sequences. She truly starts deviating from the conversation after initial exchanges. Miles finally gets to ask, “So what are you doing here? I mean, I thought I’d never see you again.” Gwen has no answer, sits on the edge of the window, and simply asks, “Wanna get out of here?” She’s still running away, turning Miles away from his questions with the enticing safety in their own friendship; Gwen’s running from having to tell Miles something he deserves to hear about his past and powers because she’s believing some lies we’ll get into later. But also because Gwen is still trying to just be with someone who gets her. For now, Gwen’s misdirection works and she’s able to go have some fun with Miles swinging across New York.
Here I want to call attention to a string of musical choices and compositions that just carry you across this mini-act in the film. “Hummingbird” provides that darker undercurrent of Miles’s emotional isolation as part of his initial reaction to the fight he has with his dad. For now, he can’t explain his double life and withdraws as a result. The score piece “Miles Sketchbook” during Gwen’s arrival brings back that familiar whistle motif dealing with the strangeness of Miles’s sudden adolescence that started when he got bit. Then “Mona Lisa” is so perfectly in the moment to the time Miles and Gwen spend having fun as themselves for just an hour. It’s bumpy, acoustic, it features just the right balance for that evening out during a New York spring. “Another Dimension” carries that happy vibe from Mona Lisa straight into the neon-tinged comic-colors of the upside down view of Miles’s New York skyline. It’s slowing down for a heavier heart to heart talk about all the things for a little bit. Daniel takes over the music afterwards in “Under the Clocktower” for a beautiful piece further underlining the romantic tensions here and how they’re not quite ready to share more than what’s been shared. The way the music strings you from Hummingbird to Under the Clocktower is the sort of thing that I can’t wrap my brain around but love. Things by the end move as slow as when we started on Hummingbird but we’re transported to a whole other place.
And we’re back here at the reality that this is Gwen’s story. Maybe if Gwen was a little more open things would move faster between her and Miles but the last time she was utterly truly vulnerable, her dad tried to arrest her. Gwen is informed by her experience of being rejected by her dad so much that the only solution she has found to this problem is still the run-away, avoiding what took place before and hoping to find entire solace within the Spider-Society. The dialog between Miles and Gwen makes it clear she caught Miles up on what happened to her recently and Gwen confirms she can’t really go back because the problem seems impossible to solve to her. Miles mentions he’s been considering doing the same as she did, revealing who he is to his parents. But Gwen, still without an answer as to how to solve this for herself, projects, and tells Miles he shouldn’t.
This is right when Gwen goes under the clocktower and it creates distance between them briefly and we get to visually see that distance created. Miles is uncertain about what she warned about. The conversation then goes on to how some conversations are probably only for between Spider-People, Miles following what Gwen’s laying down for him. But here’s the thing: Gwen’s wrong. Jeff’s speech at the party while Miles is absent only reinforces that Jeff and Rio would ultimately support Miles at the end of the day, even if they have difficulty doing it. But this is Gwen’s story, about how she messed everything up, and so this is the second action Gwen has taken to hurt Miles without realizing it. The first step was not telling him about Miguel’s rules about Miles, the second step was telling Miles not to tell his parents. I’m saving a nugget here for Act 4. Just remember “Authority Figure”. But Gwen being misguided here is part of the big picture is all I’m getting at.
The rest of the clocktower sequence is everything we love about this movie. Miles, Gwen, a beautiful landscape perceived in a unique way. The brief mention of “Gwen-canon” and Miles’s own response to it (“there’s a first time for everything, right?”) is another example of our beloved two-cakes-theory at work, even if I haven’t completely explained it yet. Miles is recognizing that in a multiverse, anything is possible, while the world continues to live by the constraints that things will always go a certain way.
Mythos & Meta
To get a head start on the debate that takes place in Act 4: It should be noted that Gwen was sent here because of The Spot’s presence elsewhere in the Spider-Verse after he kicked himself into himself. Holes have been opening around the universe before The Spot uncovered this power and Miles hasn’t left the multiverse ever, so we already have evidence supporting that The Spot or something else is our troublemaker; the cause for all these problems that the Spider Society keeps having to clean up. This is important later on when we engage the massive conversation that’s central to Act 4.
Oh, unrelated but I needed to mention this before I moved to the next act. This shot. Watching this shot frame by frame is mind blowing every time.
Act 3 — “You have to promise me Miles.”
Okay technically I’d say Act 3 doesn’t really start until Miles leaves his dimension for Mumbattan but we can call this little chunk after the clocktower as setup for the third act, otherwise it’s sadly shortened as Act 4 really starts when they go to Neuva York. Rio’s speech is also so central to giving the film a little restart on its action and onset. You can tell the story is really getting a setup here and once Miles takes the fire escape we’re taking our first real steps on a bigger journey.
Parents & Teens | Miles’s Story
Let’s back pedal though to Miles & Gwen’s return to the party for Jeff and we get some good development between Miles & Gwen and Jeff & Rio. It’s a fun “meet the parents” sequence even though Miles & Gwen aren’t a couple. The speech that follows though is such a foreshadowing moment. At first I didn’t get why Rio’s speech to Miles was splattered all over the trailers other than the implications that the Spider-Society wasn’t going to be what he had hoped for and to set up a theme of the bond between Rio and Miles. But those that have seen the movie a couple times now recognize that Rio’s speech is so important because every word of it comes true. Her worries are all accurate and even though that’s some movie magic it works so well in retrospect. Allows us to go line by line for a moment. Concern: “…What I worry about most is they won’t look out for you like us. They won’t root for you like us.” Reality: Mile’s friends don’t back him up enough and the rest of the Spider-Society have no interest in protecting Miles. Concern: “You have to promise…he never doubts that he’s loved. And he never lets anyone at those big fancy places he’s gonna be in tell him that he doesn’t belong there.” Reality: Miles feels abandoned by people he thought cared about him more than they have and will. Peter B. Parker won’t stand-up to Miguel. Gwen does but only after she follows his orders first and realizes he’s wrong later. Miguel outright tells Miles he doesn’t belong there and that he was never supposed to be Spider-Man. Concern: “And when he comes home (and he better come home!)…Just, don’t get lost.” Reality: Yeah, he doesn’t make it home, he thinks he does until the twist is revealed. And he gets lost in an entirely other dimension.
Miles is rejected by the Spider-Society that he so desperately wants to join, told he will never fit in, betrayed by his closest friends, and he gets literally lost in the wrong dimension. Every worry Rio has for her son comes true. It’s a parental nightmare and a key point in Miles’s journey later when he gets “home” and recognizes everything she said was right, further bringing him in alignment with his family over the Spider-Society.
Unrelated but the visuals underneath the watertower are some of my favorite “grounded” visuals in the film. Miles is looking out at the city at night and you can see the visual splendor that allures to what Miles yearns to experience more as night is falling, you hear the echo of the party on the rooftop below him, but he’s stuck, refusing to go back to his family while yearning for something beyond the amazing view in front of him. I’m a suburbanite who has always lived close to the city, but never constantly lived in it so it’s another situation where there’s something beautiful here for me that I can’t quite put to words.
Animation that Says it All | Score + Soundtrack
The next sequence of scenes after Rio lets Miles go I feel are so expressive and easy to put together in conversation here. The track “Annihilate” that plays as Miles rushes to chase after Gwen visually blends with the dark neon-tinged lighting to express the thing Miles is eager to run towards; it sets the hint that this is going to get him in a world of trouble, but as the lyrics say: “Nothing can shake me now”. The sensation that this is a turning point for Miles venturing out into the unknown is growing across the entirety of the next five minutes.
The plot progresses on camera; The Spot begins universe-jumping while Gwen was hanging out with Miles, Miles (and by extension the audience) learns Gwen wasn’t supposed to go see him and that Gwen is in trouble with her mentor figure Jess Drew (Spider-Woman) for doing so. Lastly Gwen vows to never see Miles again. The framing of the sequence before Miles hops into her portal to chase after Spot is able to say more without words. The circular holes left behind by Spot and the semi-destroyed building allows for a framing of the world beyond the problems of the immediate. Miles is being drawn away from that world to chase after Gwen and his future as a Spider-Person. We’re enclosed in this now. There’s even a little “Spider-Man Mythos” play on Gwen turning away from the upside-down Spider that’s in front of her face (albeit he’s invisible); a little play on “the kiss” moment from Raimi’s Spider-Man 1 while the moment isn’t being expressed as romantic and instead as one of an uncertain ache on both the parts of the Miles and Gwen dynamic, but for separate reasons. Miles is uncertain of what his friendship with Gwen means if she is following rules to never see Miles again. Meanwhile Gwen is uncertain because she knows in her heart this is wrong. But she’s been told by authority figures to not do that (again, more on that in Act 4). What they both want is in front of them, but there’s a lack of awareness happening on two fronts. Miles continues to look at Gwen and the portal to another universe behind her, but he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into (as if the warning signs are invisible to him, get it?). And Gwen is looking at Miles without her knowing it, her gaze set on the city behind him as a representation of her heart’s desire for friendship, something Miles doesn’t even realize until he turns around and sees the city. While Gwen is certainly aware that she wants Miles’s friendship, she doesn’t realize it’s closer than the vista in the distance, it’s not some impossible dream. And while Miles is aware of what he wants, he doesn’t show himself right away and his spidey-senses aren’t telling him to stay here. It’s funny how in this moment, if they did just talk, all that comes after might’ve been avoided. But Gwen hid behind her misdirection earlier, and left without resolving things with Miles, and Miles didn’t reveal himself to Gwen before she could leave, choosing only to follow after spying on her.
Miles remaining invisible during Gwen’s investigation is interesting in the fact that many “just talk” critics don’t show up here like they normally would. I feel in ways this is because the plot has, for the audience, properly given us the breadcrumbs to not trust everything going on here. Jess and Miguel had a separate on-screen conversation about why Gwen can’t join, but they let her. And then Gwen is clearly acting suspicious and not being entirely honest with Miles about her going after Spot. Miles is a quick study and seems to catch on pretty quickly that Gwen’s being dishonest but his affection makes him excited to go help her all the same. It’s a choice he makes and that shapes his character even better when you see him casting off those doubts and excited to help Gwen in Mumbattan. Interestingly, there’s an alternate version of this sequence as a deleted scene on the DVD and Miles uncloaks there during a conference call and meets several characters who outright reject him without a full explanation. Whether his hesitance in the final version of the film is because he’s already aware of Gwen’s dishonesty without having full answers or because he’s heeding the advice his mother gave him, I think what Miles is most blind to is what he’s potentially running away from by so quickly leaping into the portal. He’s made aware of it with Gwen’s departure, but chases his heart first and throws caution to the wind in that moment.
Animation that Says It All | Mythos & Meta | Miles’s Story
Continuing the “Animation that Says It All” category, Mumbattan is a visual feast to behold and the point of “ramp-up” in the story’s rising action. Features on the DVD tell the story of how the initial animation passes of the city were disappointing to many animators of Indian heritage and wanted the opportunity to improve it. The end result is a work of immense passion and love for Indian culture. It’s the city that never stops from a vertical perspective and a perfectly placed experience in the story. Things are quickly ramping up in Mumbattan after about 15–20 minutes of taking things a little slower during Act 2. While we don’t spend more than 14 minutes here, we get so much in that time. Here the movie shows a couple new characters, ups the stakes, and delivers some action set pieces. The fast paced action allows for so much of the city to be shown and we condense more information in a montage introducing Pavitr Prabhakar aka: Spider-Man India. For the first time in a while we get to have a Spider-Person introduction akin to what we saw back in Into the Spider-Verse. It’s funny, quick, and establishes how new to all this Pavitr is. Later we get an absolutely astonishing introduction to Spider-Punk (Hobie Brown) and an animation style that breaks my eyes every time I watch it.
It’s here in the third act that the 2-movie villain for Miles (The Spot) really starts to take form. It’s worth noting how villainy is kind of complicated in these movies up to this point. For ITSV, Miles’s villain is more himself than anything, holding himself back from facing down Kingpin until he’s fully risen (by falling) to meet his identity. For ATSV, The Spot is the larger scope villain and he represents something but it’s hard to place because it’s seemingly empty at first (like a hole!). Spot wants to fight Miles because he places blame on Miles for what’s happened to him, but also just kind of because? He’s clearly aware of their symbiotic existence. That importance isn’t really clear to Miles until The Spot powers up and Miles recognizes just how out of control the situation is getting after he leaves home. In the fight against The Spot in Mumbattan, Spot is on cloud nine with how he’s tapped into his powers but there’s one little moment that demonstrates his primal rage. The collider is powering up and he’s briefly stopped all the other characters and he walks up to Miles. “This is going to be good for us Spider-Man. You and me, we’re finally going to live up to our potential. You’ll finally have a villain worth fighting for. And I won’t be just a joke to you.” The Spot explained in his big speech earlier in the movie that everyone has laughed at him after his injury transformed him. In an early scene that got cut, The Spot was supposed to go to a villain bar in New York and try to join them only to be laughed out of the room. When The Spot first revealed himself to Spider-Man, he also laughed at his goofy looks and powers. In “Lego Movie” fashion, Spider-Man attempts to stop Spot at the last second in a similar fashion to that of the other Lord & Miller films: “You’re not a joke”. He tries to reason with The Spot and give him the whole “You don’t have to be the bad guy” speech but it’s too late. The Spot knows what he has to do to be taken seriously. The Spot’s funny presence as a villain not being taken seriously across Act 2 means that when he’s showing his strength here in Act 3, we may not quite feel the stakes of what he can do. But we get the vision of potential future realities where Spider-Man’s dad will die at the hands of The Spot and can understand this danger. But Spot also disappears for most of the movie after this point. As I said: Getting the danger of villains across in these movies is kind of complicated.
Despite that, the real motivation behind Spot’s villainy is also a present monster in the film for Miles to face down: Rejection. While The Spot was laughed out of every interaction post-hole-event, never to be taken seriously as either a human, a villain, or archnemesis, Miles is soon to realize all of his closest friends have or will be lying to him, practically belittling him, or rejecting his status as a super hero. While Act 4 will show this stuff, the conflict finally getting stakes in Act 3 is excellently placed to mirror image what Miles did wrong with regards to The Spot against what is about to happen to him. Miles didn’t take The Spot seriously. And now everyone else is about to do the same to him. This is a story that spirals outwards into reality in ways. ITSV was poorly marketed by Sony before release, demonstrating a lack of faith on behalf of the publisher in the project. While the relationship between Lord / Miller and Sony seems to be fine at the end of the day, one can wonder what the dividing line is between The Spot and Miles. How far removed is Miles from turning into a villain just like The Spot? Exactly how much kindness from Miles instead of ridicule would’ve stopped The Spot in his tracks and changed his ways? ATSV really pushes us towards asking these questions about how we proactively treat others before they’ve had a chance to prove anything, or more importantly: Before they’ve even had a chance to prove everyone wrong.
Lastly, on Miles’s story for Act 3: It’s cool to see him quickly take comfort in a leadership role during the big disaster sequence. The teamwork is great to see in motion. Also a note here in advance of act 4 is that the hole that shows up in the bottom of Mumbattan is indeed, a hole, and not a glitch-out-of-existence that Miguel knows about from the world he destroyed. Glitching in the Spider-Verse movies historically have a colorful distortion effect followed by multiple versions of a thing layering over each other in an explosively artistic way. What shows up in Mumbattan isn’t that, it’s a hole. This is not canon breaking. It’s another string in the web of mistruths being spun by Miguel that I have to mention here so I can talk about it soon.
Act 3’s time in Mumbattan is quick, action-packed, and I have no particular category for this but there’s just so much to love. Seeing Spot with his powers unleashed is fun, Spider-Punk is cool in every frame, Pav’s young and uplifting energy consumes the scenes so well, and you gotta love that chai joke. It ups stakes and transitions things over to Act 4 with ease.
Act 4 — “I’mma Do My Own Thing”
Oh jeez. Uhm. Let’s start with the fun stuff, I guess?
Score & Soundtrack | Animation that Says It All
Daniel Pemberton didn’t get a single Grammy nomination for his work on Across the Spider-Verse. And that’s a shame. Sony submitted it for a few awards, one of which included his work on the final piece in the film “Start a Band”, which got plenty of fanfare as the movie hit theaters because it’s this fantastic layer cake that you hear being built piece by piece. But honestly this movie’s score shows tremendous strength here in Act 4 where Daniel carries us through seven minutes of music for the Canon Event explanation followed by a chase sequence that has to take a three minute breather in the middle to give an important character some room to try and rationalize some things for Miles before the chase can continue into its moonshot climax. Part of the beauty of Danny’s work on this score is in its simplicity to use motifs and themes that are recognizable and/or stirring. This is what makes his work in Act 4 so unbelievable, because Act 4 is anything but simple. Neither is this movie at times. Across the Spider-Verse is the longest animated film built by an American studio and features five non-distinct acts and the chase sequence following the Canon Event scene is so pivotal to setting up the true stakes of this film and its inevitable sequel. So much so that there’s not much else going on in Act 4 in terms of plot. It’s all about the Canon Event conversation and how Miles is going to react with some added fun by having a thousand different Spider-Characters on screen. And when that chase is done you still have 30 minutes of movie to get through. If the music doesn’t hit here like it’s the climax of a whole movie that still has some gas left in the tank, it could’ve fallen apart.
But Mr. Pemberton pulls it off stupendously. The “Canon Event” suite gives us the name for specific motifs we’ve been hearing for the past 90 minutes and carries us through the wonder of the multi-verse, the delicate way all of it weaves together, how Miguel has done achingly bad things for his own self-interest and done irrevocable damage to entire realities, it hints at the very dark possibilities of Miguel’s controlling personality, and the overwhelming response by Miles that rejects the whole operation with a devastating strike to Miguel’s authority. The fusion of string and synth work here is majestic and the bassline is foreboding as can be when the tension in the room starts ramping up. The chase sequence music phenomenally blends “Light the City Up” with Daniel’s own score piece so seamlessly it took me two viewings to realize that they were actually two distinct pieces of music. And what a pull! Light the City Up feels directly written by Miles making a statement of being underestimated and forced into the corner, with his only response to, well, “throw some gas on it”. And then the six minute “Nueva York Train Chase” score piece expresses the frenetic, frantic rush by Miles as he attempts to escape an entire world that’s out to stop him from doing the right thing, no friends to help him any longer. It’s fast, it’s dazzling, and it trails off into a drop from space when Miles realizes the betrayal by his friends runs deeper than he knew even ten minutes prior: They knew everything and chose to keep him in the dark.
On the animation side of things, people are going to be enjoying the chase sequence for years to come. The team on this movie made sure the most important thing is center frame but there’s just so many Spider-People on screen it’s impossible to catch it all without freezing the movie every few seconds and just taking in all the art. One of the rumors I heard is that the animation team spent almost an entire year on scenes involving the Spider-Society, and it’s hard to think that might be a lie when you watch all the scenes that have all the Spider-People. They must have spent two to three weeks alone just looking for different people in the real world to bring into this fiction in different ways, including Dayn Broder’s spdiersona creation of the Spider-Person that uses crutches and a wheelchair, voiced by Danielle Perez, a comedian, actor, and writer that also uses a wheelchair. The finely tuned detail in these shots is immaculate and sometimes on screen for mere frames. The burgers in the Spider-Society cafe have Miguel’s Spider-Mask-face on them. There’s a Spider-Cat, a Spider-Dino, a Spider-Therapist that deals with the grief of all the Spider-Characters, a Spider-Practice-Course where they fight holographic displays and prepare for their big “be on a bridge holding two heavy things” moment. Nueva York is a dazzling place to observe. Miles falls from the Spider-Society tower that defies internal physics down to a city below through flying car traffic, falls through the ground into an underground system of machines and finds a way to escape into underground highway traffic and then rides a train that drives vertically towards the moon on a skyrail. It’s a crazy amount of movement through a world’s various different sectors and blends seamlessly, all while dancing to the tune of a constantly flashing cyberpunky color scheme. Don’t rush the next movie. Take your time. Don’t crunch the animators. Please. It’s so pretty. Just look at all this.
Mythos & Meta | Mile’s Story | It’s Actually Gwen’s Movie | Breaking the Feels Barrier | Parents & Teens
Time to talk about the big thing. Act 4 is particularly hard to talk about because it bears importance on defining every main character, who is also present within the Canon Event scene itself. I’m not going to lie, I can’t watch Miles burst out of that trap set by Miguel, or stand up to that train of people after saying “I’mma do my own thing”, or watch Gwen get that smirk on her face at the end asking the audience “You in?” without either tearing up or just bawling big crocodile tears. I couldn’t understand why my feelings were always so overwhelming to me until I started writing this paragraph and then it became so unbelievably clear. So let’s try to tackle all of this, this act 4 insanity, in three runs. First, the mythos & meta, then we’ll cover Miles’s perspective, and then Gwen’s. For reasons.
We have to talk about the mythos and meta here because the canon event sequence is about more than Miles or Gwen or even Spider-Man. It’s about hero stories in general and the way we choose to tell them. Fantastic writing was done not long after the poorly-received “The Flash” movie came out and how that movie is a direct failure to recognize the very things ATSV tackled so well. In “The Flash” the protagonist comes to the realization that he shouldn’t try to do the impossible and change the world for the better, he instead accepts that things that have happened already cannot be changed. It’s the entire crux of the story with Michael Keaton’s Batman standing in as the older generational voice trying to teach a younger hero character how the world works. While “The Flash” has a complicated element of time travel messing with the conversation (because no time travel fiction is complete without the precautionary warning of “if you change the past, you break reality or the future”), the writers forgot one stupidly important thing: It’s a superhero movie.
Audiences are routinely given superhero stories that reinforce narratives about the real world around them; that tragic loss cannot be avoided and that despite having powers, we are somehow powerless to change anything. I do have to admit that this conversation varies from character to character, writer to writer, and so on. But it doesn’t have to be the norm. We get lost in the idea that what has been always should be, structurally and universally. But we forget that before Frank Miller changed the face of Batman forever, Batman was, at one point, a guy dangling off a helicopter ladder trying really hard to use his shark repellent. Frank changed the character from an established, very successful norm that had been going for decades. Sure, superheroes can experience tragic things, but not because they have to, it should make for an interesting or gripping story. I think that’s why it’s so easy for people to get lost in the weeds on this when thinking about someone like Bruce Wayne. Because Batman is defined by a single tragedy, it creates him. And that’s interesting! But that’s one origin story that’s just been accepted as the norm for a long time now. In the wider cultural conversations about myths and hero stories, “canon” is often weaponized to erode variety in favor of singular realities instead of exploring why a change is interesting.
With Spider-Man, Stan Lee humanized superheroes, as we all know, by giving the superhero’s identity human-sized problems. In a series of early comics, Peter Parker/Spider-Man dealt with this string of issues: His aunt was sick. He couldn’t get enough money from ever-stingy JJ to pay for his Aunt’s hospital stay. But Peter didn’t want to give JJ photos that he’d just use to make Spider-Man look bad. Peter caught a fever once and it messed with his ability to stop crime for a couple days while people he cared about were in danger. The comics were about adolescence and responsibility. Somewhere in there, we confused the idea of “this superhero suffers a lot” with “heroes have to suffer to be heroes. It has to be in the script, it has to be the story.”
This is a lie. And Miguel believes it. So do many people who love heroic stories. This is a rogue personal opinion (but then again most of this is all my opinion so who cares?), but it seems like different generations want to hear these hero stories told in a way that reflects their own values. It works because we desire these stories oftentimes to see ourselves in them, the self-insert, instead of trying to inhabit a person’s experience. And while I can’t speak for my entire generation, I can confirm that a perspective millennials seem ever so abundantly capable of dolling out in these narratives is “Jaded sarcasm.” We care about what’s happening but can’t act like we care too much or we become too powerless to it. We joke about it instead and try to carry on. This is probably a bad approximation, but let’s think about Miles and Miguel and this whole “canon event” debate but from different value sets. The comparison was already made when “The Flash” came out that it’s trying to take the stance Miguel does in this movie, something understand vaguely as “older generational” even if the generation isn’t clear cut “Boomer” or “X” (and “X” has its own sub-sets honestly), but imagine if ATSV was written where the dominating perspective from Miles would be one of just some plucky response, pretending to not care too much about the implications of his dad becoming a Captain soon and just going “Eh, what does it matter? I’ll save the day. Let’s go stop Spot.” and then he has a funny but angry conversation about it with Peter later. Or what if we leaned a little more on the jaded end Miles would maybe be outwardly as indifferent as Miguel and accept the story being told? But that’s not what happens in Act 4. Instead, ATSV provides that perspective as the opposition (jaded sarcasm, and others, through Miguel) but ensures that a specific one shows its face by the time the credits roll. And I want to make the case that this perspective is what we need more of.
Heroes suffer because humans suffer. It’s just an aspect that makes them interesting: How do they respond to struggles? Bruce Wayne was born out of experiencing something that made him suffer for the rest of his life and it changed him. That’s what made him interesting. Peter Parker was awkward around girls and one day he got bit by a spider, and he continued to be awkward around girls. The bite didn’t change much and had nothing to do with who he was before. Spider-Man isn’t defined by his suffering, but by responsibility. That’s what made him interesting. He’s defined by the highs and lows of human existence all while juggling being a superhero. In the comics, Peter did eventually get married. He did find a way to pay for Aunt May’s surgery. Sometimes Spider-Man looked good to most of society and Peter chose to focus on that instead of JJ smearing him. He had good days that worked out for him. It just wasn’t every day. That’s what made him dynamic and interesting.
Trying to decouple these warring perspectives (heroes must suffer terribly “because it’s the job” vs. heroes are humans choosing to do their best and trying to help everyone they can and that some suffering is just a part of their life) is what is central to the argument about canon events. Why must every Spider-Person experience the same traumas over and over? Is it because it makes them interesting? Or is it because that’s what’s been done before? Is it because we are confusing “this super hero suffers a lot” with “heroes have to suffer to be heroes”? Miguel O’Hara is a stand-in for the answer that heroes are destined to suffer to become heroes. It works as both a self-referential thing, making all Spider-Characters part of a shared canon, but also a conversation with the audience about whether or not we want to keep telling these stories again and again, both literally and metaphorically. “Do we want more Spider-Man?” Also “Do we want the same themes in every Spider-Man movie about someone dying because of responsibilities and sacrifice? Does it always have be this character?” Sure, the Spider-Verse stories remix these origins constantly. Miles’s uncle dies by being a villain, thereby complicating Miles’s desire to fight him. In Gwen’s story, Peter dies by being a villain (but in the comics they explore Gwen’s rage and not holding herself back when fighting him leading to her killing him). But in both it’s loosely because of who Miles and Gwen are and how they’re getting their personal lives tangled up with their heroic lives that makes it feel special and unique. It’s contrasting versions of the original Peter story mainly for the sake of telling the same story from a perspective that others might prefer or resonate with. The comics for these characters did this too in their own unique ways. But does someone have to die to teach a story about responsibility to a wider world compared to your own friends and family? Does it always have to be a police captain, thus stringing Miles and Gwen’s stakes to this canon in a specific way? Some movies may stray from these questions that just build and build. Many movies are lauded for just managing to ask them without answering. But a lot of us are tired of hearing the same answers every time. ATSV sets up these questions here in this act and our protagonists and the film don’t shy away from providing answers to those questions a little bit at a time, leaving us dangling for the remaining ones by the time the credits roll. Personally, I’m dying to know what the answers will be. I’m worried because the writer might might walk it back. It’s pretty rare for trilogies to end phenomenally. In many ways I and others are still reeling from the backtracking of “Rey Skywalker” five years ago at the end of Rise of Skywalker; it was the sign that an industry can’t escape nostalgia and follows Miguel’s stance that “what once was must continue to be”. My response to that statement, personally, is barf. Miles’s response is defiance. And even if the dust settles in a way I hate later, I love that the writers allowed this framing of the perspectives. Miles is right in his defiance.
Now that we understand what this scene really is about, let’s start with Miles and his response. Act 4 is this culmination of everything we’ve been building up to for Miles. He’s amazed and excited to be where he is and ready to show Miguel that he can join this club. He has this interesting moment where he seems to connect with Margo Kess (aka Spider-Byte) and Gwen gets a little jealous. But then we get to the meat of the canon event sequence and Miles begins to comprehend all of this for what it is. First he’s on the defense, shielding himself from Miguel’s blame about “blowing another hole in the multi-verse” (as if he was the one doing the collider experiments back in the first movie; he wasn’t), and as discussed earlier, The Spot is responsible for what’s happening in Mumbattan. There’s a brief reunion with Peter B. Parker to catch us up on what he’s been up to. But we then get into the full breakdown of how canon events work. By the time we see the web collapse, Miles is clearly shaken with this knowledge. It’s understandably unnerving to think everything about what you do is predestined and that you can’t change any of it or the universe will collapse. How do you know you’re making the wrong choice? Miguel frames this first through how Miles saved Inspector Singh followed by Miguel’s own mistakes in the past regarding canon events. For Miles, he was just doing what came naturally to him and saving someone. For Miguel, Miles is risking destroying everything. There might be something interesting here in terms of parallels to modern technology for older generations vs. newer ones, and that very famous Jurassic Park quote definitely comes to mind, but I won’t dive into that.
Miles realizes following this canon event logic means his dad is bound to die. What I love about this moment is that Miles starts asking for answers everyone is scared to give, “When will it happen?” Sure, there’s some general concern for knowing the future and trying to stop it from happening, but what I love more is that Miles is already thinking about saving his dad. He asks when it’s going to happen and how and has no hesitation: “Send me back.” Miles’s stance on all of this is straight defiance. “You can’t ask me not to save my father”. His perspective is one of loyalty and love to his family and one of defying the accepted norm that canon events have to be followed every time. This gets meta-textual when he expresses “…all because some algorithm told you. You realize how messed up that sounds, right?” This almost alludes to the way these stories keep getting told is practically machine-based and has little to do with putting humanity into them. Having Miles’s dad becoming a Captain wonderfully complicates the question posed in Act 4. Heroes suffer sometimes because they’re human and that makes them interesting. Do heroes need to suffer because that’s the lore? The canon? Do we have to follow the canon this time? How bad will the fans react if we don’t do it that way? Miles even tries to rationalize this with Gwen, knowing her dad is also a Police Captain and faces similar certain death if this theory is true. Gwen’s response is a stoic but clearly rattled “Yeah”, making it clear she knows this is going to happen but either accepts it or simply knows no other thing to do. (and by the way how is Gwen leaving her current life behind not a canon breaking event?) Miles breaks loose when Miguel tries to lock him up and then during the escape there’s the larger revelation that the spider that bit Miles was from Earth-42, which suggests Miles was never meant to be bit and that him being Spider-Man in any reality is an anomaly itself. Your existence breaks lore. I wrote about it back when I wrote about the first movie, but I heard people negatively react to that movie existing by positing “Spider-Man can’t be black”, to which someone else replied, “Dude Spider-Man is a PIG. He can be anything”. Clearly some people didn’t hear the movie’s ending message of “Anyone can wear the mask” and to this day likely still don’t get it. Miguel telling Miles he’s not supposed to be Spider-Man is revisiting this conversation I heard all over again, acknowledging the awful cultural pushback we still see every time these stories are told again with a different spin. People reject the change, they go up in arms about some historical accuracy or lore-related version of a piece of fiction as if things have to be the same every time. I can’t imagine how tough it was for the first movie to be mostly ignored by Sony only for it to turn around so hard with accolades and fanfare, but even worse must’ve been the toxic reaction at Miles taking center stage for a Spider-Man movie.
In-story, this theory about canon events doesn’t hold water the more you think about it because something has been creating more portals and sending characters across the Spider-Verse since before The Spot grew his powers. And Miles hasn’t been building a bunch of colliders that we know of. Something else is at play but ignored because Miguel already drew his conclusions and has blamed Miles for all of this. He’s not “supposed to be” Spider-Man. Miles suffers betrayal in layers from this mindset as he realizes no one wants to stand up with him except for Hobie (we’ll get to Hobie in a minute). First, no one came to him this whole time. As he mentions to Peter, they never came and found him when they had the ability to travel. Second, Gwen coming to see him meant Miles ran after her into other dimensions, leading Miles to this situation where he’s being pressured or physically restricted from saving his family, all leading up to the largest heartsink (#3): His friends believe this lie that Miles is dangerous and chose to shun him without his knowing, months ago. They all agreed Miles should never join the Spider-Society and never be visited by his friends. “You talked about this?” They all made this decision about him, without him, and then kept him in the dark. It’s gut wrenching to see him unfold just how much he’s being rejected for who he is.
In other translations, fans have rallied around Mile’s rejection of Miguel (“Nah, Imma do my own thing”) as a metaphor for generational divide conflicts. Miles, this young man, being told he’s just a kid who has no idea what he’s doing while Miguel accepts the old hero narratives and forces it onto Miles. Miles is told that to be part of the club you have to accept certain truths about the universe, one of those truths being “Yeah your dad has to die because he just happens to be making Captain, and you have to lose yet another parental figure because Spider-Person uncles die too.” If there’s anything I identify with easily these days, it’s younger generations expressing what an absolutely crap deal they’ve been dealt constantly by people who have power over them, for absolutely bogus reasons. They don’t want to be listened to. They don’t even get to change the world around them a lot of the time. But Miles does. And I really hope the writers continue to let him do that. Back in Miguel’s lab, Miles is interrupted but expresses “I can do both! Spider-Man always-(does both/saves the day)”. And while it’s true Spider-Man historically at times failed to save everyone, Miles is framed as the right person here in the lab and up on the train fight because Miles, being a young person who doesn’t have that dollop of jaded sarcasm us millennials have, knows it’s wrong to sit back and do nothing while his family, his emotional world, is about to be destroyed. The creators of this film seemed to recognize that younger generations are tired of people having this stance that just because things are terrible or bound to get worse means that we should just give in and give up. If I were as young as Miles, yeah, I’d be tired of stories being told that we can’t try for something better. It’s different for everyone, but my experience with this was first being asked what I wanted to do with my life, as if the whole world was available to me. Then as I got older, I was told that so long as my grades were good, I could go to college and do whatever I wanted with my life. By the time I was nearing high school graduation, the conversation had turned into “You want to pick a college degree for a field that’ll pay you well so you can have the nice life you want.” Affording college stopped being a conversation by then. I got to watch all those “promises” slowly disappear. And if you noticed, I didn’t mention anything about being told to expect school shootings. While they were absolutely a reality while I was in school, they were somehow on the periphery for me and the schools I attended in (both private and public) never put me through the mental strains and exercises of preparing for an active shooter event. I don’t know what it’s like to be told from the outset that everything’s already ruined. Younger generations love this movie, this moment, this stance Miles has on it. Miguel is wrong. We know it. And now Miles does too. And Miles proves them all wrong.
Or so we hope. He definitely shows the Spider-Society he’s a force to be reckoned with, not just a kid to be belittled, but someone who has ideas and capabilities just like anyone else sitting at the table. Whether or not Miles can save the day in the third film remains to be seen, which is to say, the writers can still walk this back in the same way we experienced the writers walking back Rey’s lineage not being important to who she is in Rise of Skywalker. It sure would suck though. How Miles would pull it off is questionable, but I’ll leave that for Act 5. There’s still that whole “Two cakes” thing to talk about there.
For now, let’s briefly talk about parents & teens because I feel like there’s something here about how every individual treats Miles that reflects the different things parents or adult figures may do to a teenager in a situation like this. It also lets me ease into the Gwen part of this act. Miles wants to accomplish something, something big, and he’s got a room full of adults, friends or otherwise, telling him to not do it. The story version of this is that they all believe Miguel, they all buy into this myth about Spider-Man failing to save a police captain in fiction. But everyone looks at and treats Miles differently throughout his time in Nueva York. Miguel, for example, controls and blames. He controls the narrative, he wants to lock Miles up and either wait this out or hopefully Miles will just see things his way. When they fight on the train, Miguel gets into straight-up gaslighting and abusive approaches to this, saying all the things Miles was warned about when his mother gave him the big speech in Act 3. Jess Drew, meanwhile, has little direct interaction with Miles but is along for the ride in what Miguel says for the most part, following along with these narratives and trying to be led by common sense more than emotions. Miguel also blames incorrectly. How could Miles be both an anomaly but Spot is simultaneously causing damage in cities that create canon events (like the threat to Inspector Singh’s life)? These characters that are related can’t be both causing canon events and also breaking them. They’re either anomalies when they’re doing things in other universes or aren’t. But Miguel is comfortable putting it all on Miles.
Next, Peter B. Parker is maybe the biggest disappointment next to Gwen. Miles notices Peter again and again passively belittling Miles instead of truly recognizing Miles’s value. When Miguel blames Miles for what’s happening in Mumbattan, Peter first defends him, “Hey, go easy on the kid. He had a terrible teacher.” But this self-ridicule doesn’t last long and Peter tries to defend Miles to Miguel by explaining “He wasn’t thinking.” Peter sees this as Miles’s strength, that he goes with the flow to make things happen and save the day, but for Miles he finds that offensive and false. Miles does think about what he’s doing, even if it is on the fly a lot as the job of Spider-Man requires. But it’s not like Miles has the wrong idea when he tries to absorb the energy gate in Mumbattan’s Alchemax facility, he just doesn’t know how to use his powers in that way yet. In another scenario he’s mostly trying to get to the “Go Home Machine” when escaping the facility, but knows he can’t do that with everyone on his tail and so his constant escape turns into a plan of misdirection and losing the chase. He keeps briefly touching Miguel’s suit while Miguel has him pinned down so he can confirm if Miguel’s suit can be absorbed by his venom drain. When Miguel has Miles “captured” and everyone is arguing about what to do regarding Miles (a conversation he isn’t allowed to partake in), Peter calls him a kid, which is what Miles responds to vocally as he breaks out “Stop calling me that”. Later while Miguel has Miles pinned, Miles also expresses regarding how everyone has handled him, “Who decides that? I’m not a kid.” But Miguel only agrees and uses this point of pain for Miles to belittle him further.
Meanwhile Hobie is the movie’s secret MVP. The man is Mile’s only true ally in this weak moment and enables Miles every step of the way. He tells him how to use his powers better, cheers him on when Miles tells everyone else off about saving his father, he even warns Miles as he goes to meet Miguel to not sign up until he knows what war he’s fighting, which is respectful considering Hobie doesn’t know Miles too much yet. So he shouldn’t be the one to tell Miles what’s going on, it’s probably why he asked Gwen how much Miles knows, because she should’ve told him. But Hobie is responsible enough to at least warn Miles about what’s about to take place as best he can. Hobie tells Miles he’s mostly sticking around to look out for Gwen, he quits the society when it’s clear all of this is falling apart and a sham that has unmasked itself, and then he was stealing equipment the whole time to build a watch(es) that can be used without needing Miguel’s control. Hobie Brown, punk at heart, is the only ally Miles has, even though he does kinda leave Miles stranded instead of helping him out during the big chase.
And then there’s Gwen. Gwen gets to serve two perspectives here because she too is a friend of Miles’s who’s buying into the lie and perpetuating Miguel’s control. When Miguel brings up how Miles wasn’t supposed to save Inspector Singh and Gwen tried to stop him, Miles says, “I thought you were trying to save me.” And Gwen replies “I was doing both.” Here Gwen presents her answer to this perspective of how canon events work out: Collectively, we can control that myth, I can misdirect and simply not tell you something you deserve to hear. With all of us working together, we can keep Miles in the dark and preserve the canon. But it doesn’t work out. It’s time to talk about that authority figure thing from way way earlier in act 3.
Gwen buys into the lie while simultaneously trying to maintain her friendship with Miles. It breaks everything as a result. Because this is Gwen’s movie, about how she hurt Miles, how this all falls apart, and how she feels like it’s all her fault. And she did it because of her relationship with two different authorities. Gwen leaves behind an authority figure, her dad, that rejects her identity as Spider-Woman and a hero. If there’s anything worse than future generations being doomed by older ones, it’s younger generations being rejected by older ones for how they see themselves. I will say the writers clearly have some empathy for parents, being parents themselves. Gwen’s dad is written in a somewhat sympathetic light in the shock of Gwen’s reveal, she has been keeping the truth from him about something awful that happened. Rio and Jeff clearly have a love for Miles that’s expressed in a more patient and empathic light when Miles isn’t around (which isn’t how it should be but it is). But the writers also don’t forget who the audience is going to be cheering on at the end of the day. Gwen’s dad failed her in a moment of vulnerability. So Gwen leaves her dad and walks into the shadow of another authority figure, Miguel, that accepts her as Spider-Woman, a hero, who was there in that vulnerable moment. But she learns the wrong lessons from him because of that acceptance. She believes Miguel’s opinion about Miles and the Spider-Verse. She believes Miles has to be protected from hurting the world around him. Gwen doesn’t tell Miles anything about this as she visits him in act 3, believing the lie that Miles can’t handle it, and then pushes her own experiences onto Miles in terms of what works out / doesn’t work out when talking about revealing Miles’s identity to his parents. She doesn’t know what will happen. Just like Miguel doesn’t actually know what’ll happen if Miles stops The Spot and saves his dad. What Gwen has been doing all movie is complex. In projecting her own experiences onto Miles, she gives Miles advice that’s not necessarily accurate regarding Miles talking to his parents. In hiding why she’s in Miles’s dimension and not telling Miles the whole truth, she unknowingly lures him away to join her and falls into an experience of mass rejection by his peers. Just imagine if she told him why she was there, why he can’t join, and so on, he probably would actually think twice before jumping in. And by keeping this truth from him, for months, she betrays Miles’s friendship and trust in her the same way Gwen’s dad felt betrayed in realizing his daughter has kept a massive secret from him. If Gwen has a conflict she’s fighting in this movie, it’s the fear of losing those close to you. And at this juncture in act 4, Gwen has lost everyone. She lost Peter through not seeing what he was turning into. She lost her dad by hiding who she is from him (and more importantly his rejection when he finds out). And she loses Miles because she tried to protect him in an attempt to not lose another person close to her. For each time it happens, it’s happening all because of issues with who she is or isn’t being. A best friend that sees the signs. A daughter that’s accepted for her real identity. A best friend that does the diligence of being openly honest. You’ll hear it later, “I can’t lose one more friend.”
Later, Miles stands up to all of them, including Gwen, and you can briefly see it all hits her on the train. First you see her realize how much she has hurt her friend through the lie of omission, deciding what’s best for him without him even being in the conversation, visiting him, being dishonest with him the whole way, and then not standing by his side when the time comes. Then, she realizes Miles is stronger than Miguel, that he knows Miguel is wrong deep down. There’s a look on her face that recognizes they’ve been going about all this wrong and she starts to wonder “what if…” Gwen’s journey isn’t done because there’s still another act to go, but her perspective on this meta-myth conversation is so interesting because this is also her movie. Her journey. And in act 4, her best friend shows her that she’s learning the wrong lessons. Your identity shouldn’t need to be a secret to those you love. If your parents reject who you are, that’s not your fault, it’s theirs. Not all parents are the same. We aren’t limited to one outcome in life, but many. Heroism isn’t about doing what we’re told, but what’s right. Friendship isn’t maintained by deceit, it’s harmed by it. It’s hard to blame Gwen for all the mistakes when she has suffered so much loss and a strike of rejection that melts our hearts. (do we need to go back to Act 1 and think it over again?) It’s hard to blame her when we know she just doesn’t want Miles to go through the rejection she did, she’s informed by that rejection deeply. But it’s clear she’s made a grave mistake exchanging one authority for another that perpetuates something just as sinister. After all, who ruined an entire world? That isn’t a question just for Gwen. It’s a question for the viewer. How did we get to a point where we’re tired of superhero movies because they’re generic and bland and overdone? How did culture come to accept the same hero myths again and again? Who told us that’s how it has to be? When did we just decide to accept it? Gwen realizing Miles might be right and that she has ruined her friendship with him is the movie knocking down the first dominoes on these questions: Gwen realizes Miguel is wrong. He’s excluding Miles from the conversation and his ideas for how this doesn’t have to end the way everyone says it does. He has fresh ways of handling problems, he can outsmart any of them, so why can’t he be included?
And just like that, the first dominoes have fallen.
Miles rejects the perspective outright.
Gwen realizes it’s wrong to go about doing it this way.
Soon doubt will be cast everywhere.
Act 5 —Home Isn’t Home
So my breakdown of this movie into “Acts” isn’t necessarily following the traditional meaning of an act in a film or play but mostly built on just larger pieces of story taking place and how they, at times, feel cut into chunks in terms of rising and falling. Act 1 clearly ends right before the credits roll (or you could call it a prelude). Act 2 and 3 sort of have this muddy lack of clarity but I feel like Miles jumping in the portal to go to Mumbattan is a pretty big “okay another story is starting” moment because we’re leaving so much behind and starting a new journey. The time in Mumbattan is short but everything starting from Miles going to Nueva York up until he’s standing up in victory on that train feels so cohesive and put together, not to mention the finality of the score in that scene, it all feels like it is its own act. On rewatch once Miles is back in the lab in stealth mode you can feel yourself mentally going “Okay, we’re on the falling action of this movie now”. This is why, for me, Act 5 starts here. Because this act plays out in a specific fashion, I’m going to put Miles’s stuff front, sandwich a lot of goodies in the middle, and then put Gwen’s stuff at the end. It’ll make sense when we get there.
Mile’s Story | Parents & Teens | Animation That Says It All
So if there is ever a bigger hint that Miles and Gwen may not work out in the end, it’s right after he says “Goodbye Gwen”, jumps off the train, and makes his way back to Miguel’s lab in Nueva York. Miles activates the Go Home Machine, and in all this chaos as Miguel is trying to rip his way into the machine and stop Miles, Margo and Miles exchange this brief look. The two of them interacted for less than maybe two minutes earlier, but Margo looks at Miles and sees this scared young man and lets him escape. Margo is later shown joining Gwen’s band that’s going to go save Miles at the end of this movie, but there’s something here between Margo and Miles that the two immediately seem to have empathy and compassion towards each other with ease. When Margo earlier tells Miles about her living situation and how it’s nicer here, Miles simply replies, “I hear that.” Margo had no explanation as to why she should help Miles. Miguel told her to stop him. Maybe seeing Miguel be this violent was a bad sign. Maybe it’s their humanity. Maybe it’s simply the fact that this (at least for American audiences) ethnic minority knew this look of fear Miles had; there’s a compassion there that Gwen didn’t show Miles. And I’d be willing to bet that comes up in the next movie, even if just briefly.
We get a great sequence of Miles swinging home and all his doubts flooding over him. I do love the detail all throughout his journey home that his world is shaded a different color of purple and green, hinting at you constantly that this isn’t Miles’s universe. The same happens when he’s home, the room looking slightly different in color and in what’s in the room, not to mention Rio’s eye color being different. Overall the tones are green, purple, and black almost like they’re on charcoal paper. Even the clothes Miles throws on as Rio enters his room are purple and green, covering our hero in Prowler colors. Miles’s big speech to Rio is so heartbreaking knowing that he completed this emotional arc with his mother, but not with the Rio that raised him. There’s a concern on my end that Miles’s Rio won’t ever really hear that speech, but a fleeting one. There’s a brief moment in Miles’s speech that concerned me more on my first couple watches too.
Miles’s Villain Origins (surprise category!)
Okay look, I don’t think Miles will actually be a villain in the third movie. But there’s a bit of something here where Miles tells his mother “I let ’em have it”, a confidence that Miles gleans from being right in having beaten Miguel in their conflict and it sort of shows this side of Miles that’s getting a little cocky, a little proud of how he got away and no one else in the Spider-Society matters to him now. Miles, his parents, that’s it. No one in any other universe matters. This internally-facing mindset of “protect me and my own” is exactly the sort of thing that would, in other fictions, lead characters towards a life of crime. His friends lied to him, rejected him, tried to let his dad (and probably mom) die. They tried to capture him, hold him back, and tell him he shouldn’t even have the powers that he has. If the movie didn’t go where it does, I’d be concerned Miles was actually turning into a villain by the end simply due to the experiences he’s been through in this story and how he’s walking away from it with a brief flash of arrogance. In the first movie triple validation from parental sources gives Miles the push he needs to become Spider-Man. This time, parental validation is a murky, scary subject that has implications far more painful and gut wrenching than last time. Because it admits children, teens, sons, daughters, those people need their parents more than they can recognize yet. And if all parents do is push and pull instead of sit and stay, the kids might run away and become villains. That’s part of what makes the alternate Miles Morales so genius. It allows us to explore the idea of Miles becoming a villain without our Miles actually being one.
Parallels, the Poetry that Rhymes | Score & Soundtrack | Odds & Ends
Okay, time for the last things to talk about before Gwen’s chunk of Act 5 and wrap it all up. One of my favorite little parallel nods in this movie happens when Miles wakes up after Earth-42 Miles knocked him out. The visuals match that of when Peter B. Parker wakes up in ITSV, Miles having knocked him out with his venom blast unintentionally in that movie. It’s a first person perspective that peers around Uncle Aaron’s apartment, seeing first a little cat figurine and then more of the apartment before Peter realizes he’s chained up to a punching bag. There’s also a parallel of the way Aaron adjusts the EQ and volume on his speakers but this time for a specifically sinister action of masking the pained cries of someone he and Earth-42-Miles are about to interrogate on a rooftop. The parallels here draw you towards the realization that either A) Miles in that movie got this from Aaron in a sort of “we’re not so different you and I” comparison because Aaron did the same to Miles here in Earth-42 or B) Miles in Earth-42 did it to this alternate version of himself, suggesting how much the two Mileses think alike. Regardless I love this little callback that just emphasizes similarities in different universes.
Now everyone has no doubt seen or read or heard the various ways in which “Start a Band” is such a fantastic finishing score piece for the movie. And I don’t disagree. The various character themes play as they’re introduced as members of the band and there’s an incredible way in which the Miles and Prowler themes are engulfing and overtaking each other in a way we’ll no doubt see hashed out in a real conflict in the third film. Someone even figured out the Prowler’s theme is built out of a reverse scratch of Miles’s Spider-Man theme. But I want to call attention to whoever picked this needle drop in this scene.
I didn’t know about this song until I saw the movie but then I listened to this song (and all songs in the movie in their entirety) and read the lyrics and couldn’t be more astounded. The placement of this song in the movie carries so much weight and potential meaning. In one interpretation, Earth-42 New York has no love in its heart because it doesn’t have Spider-Man, thus there’s no hero here to solve its problems. In another interpretation, this song reflects Earth-42’s Uncle Aaron, a man pushed further towards crime because his brother, a police officer, was killed, and so he turns his heart towards crime more and enables it in his adopted nephew Miles. The lack of Jeff’s existence unbalances what little goodness was left in Aaron’s heart, and our Miles is facing a truly dangerous person that won’t hesitate to kill him. Unless Aaron killed Jeff; something to think about there. In another interpretation, Miles from Earth-42 is the emotional core of the needle drop, having no love in his heart due to his dad’s unexpected death and lacking the bite of the spider meant for him that would’ve possibly given him powers to save his dad. Powerless in this city, Miles’s love is gone, turned “Batman-esque” and relying on tools to accomplish his goals but driven for his own self-interest. Regardless of interpretation, this song also stands in stark contrast from where we started this journey. Rakim’s “Guess Who’s Back” illustrates a love for the cultural melting pot of New York that Miles has but this song is a bluesy jazz for the city not having the love that Miles knows. It’s a needle drop that plays simple but can serve every possibility of emotion that this movie’s ending opens up for the viewer’s thoughts. This will no doubt narrow when the third movie comes out because there will only be one version of the story. But for now, this song in this scene only makes me mentally applaud the more I hear it.
Okay, I think we’re there.
It’s time for the last section of stuff.
Parents & Teens | It’s Actually Gwen’s Movie | Breaking My Feels Barrier
Gwen gets an arc this movie; a beginning, middle, and end. Her old stability is that she is all alone and can’t tell her dad about her life, her struggles losing Peter and that she’s not the person he thinks she is. This discomforting version of stability is thrown into chaos when she has to show her dad who she really is and he rejects it. She runs away, goes on this big experience for a few months, and then she stands up to Miguel. She knows he’s wrong about Miles and how to handle this situation. She even starts voicing this a little earlier in Act 4 talking to Jess, her hearts says this is wrong. Miguel sending her home forces Gwen to talk to her dad again and we get another gut-wrenching sequence that really codes things pretty explicitly as a trans-experience. It’s only ever really being able to be half of any identity and each identity just winds up hurting someone else. As hard as that conversation is to hear, it really makes me shed tears when her dad expresses that he can’t arrest Gwen because he quit.
One of the bigger themes in this movie is adult characters not fostering an environment that invites teens to talk to them. Gwen never feels like she can tell her dad about her because he has always been outwardly against vigilantes. Miles has always been in the same boat and when he wants to talk to his dad in act 2, it turns into a shouting match instead. Miguel, similarly, only wants to force his perspective on Miles and Gwen instead of listen to what they think. It’s only when Gwen is finally able to talk to her dad in frustration and at greater length that things come together again. Later, when Gwen is listening in on a conversation between Rio and Jeff, they talk about how they have to make some adjustments to how they’re raising Miles, at least a little, compared to how it’s worked before. Both parents and teens are growing up, the parents having to learn what the teen needs from them, while the teen has to learn how to communicate some of the harder stuff to talk about. In the sequence leading up to this as Miles swings “home”, MJ expresses this in a way that works metaphorically for the film too: “There’s no handbook for raising someone like her (referring to Mayday, her and Peter B’s daughter, who has super hero powers). You just have to make the right adjustments at half-time.” This idea works for teens yes, but these movies as well, recognizing that ATSV has to be this movie that is about more than one thing at a time to serve both this movie and its sequel well.
Gwen’s resolution with her dad knocks another domino down in that list of questions posed earlier in Act 4 about hero myths and the stories we tell. Gwen realizes that telling her dad didn’t mean things would be disastrous the way she warned Miles about. She also realized telling her dad and having this conversation she was scared to have actually meant her dad stopped being a cop, as Captain Stacy is more willing to renounce the job and stop hunting Spider-Gwen than to actually arrest his daughter. Gwen has found her new stability. This would, canonically, take him out of the danger that he’s in in the world of Canon Events. So not all Police Captain characters have to die. Gwen is starting to recognize another way Miles was right and that she has potentially steered him all wrong. Caught up in a desire to fix it, enabled by Hobie’s secret watch, she sets off to fix things. But Miles is in the wrong dimension so she talks to Miles’s parents and tells them about how much Miles loves them. Remarking on being able to find Miles and bring him home, Gwen expresses the things Miles taught her in this movie: “One thing I’ve learned from Miles…It’s all possible”.
Bake two cakes.
I have to get a little “theory-crafty” to talk about the ending of the movie so here it goes: I think this paradoxical problem of the spider being taken from Earth-42 before Miles in that universe was bit is going to be solved by our Miles being semi-present in that universe. In a sort of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” situation, Miles is going to have to two-time his job and fill in as being Spider-Man in both dimensions. Either that or he’s going to have to convince his other self to be a hero instead of a villain. Miles’s inventive thinking about the two-cakes conundrum is and always was the answer though to every problem posed here. “I was doing both”, “I can do both”, there’s many Spider-Characters talking about doing both in this movie but not by being both, not by working together every time it comes up, not by living a life that fuses both identities of Spider-Person and the person under the mask. Rarely are characters recognizing the strength of how they can do more together. Gwen is starting to realize that Miles was right and he may not even see how yet. While Gwen doesn’t know about the other Miles, we can see how these elements might fit together in a way where there being more than one Miles or there being so many Spider-People can address this problem. And that mindset, that approach to these conundrums, it’s a positive one. It’s a proactive perspective that thinks of solutions that are inclusive and doesn’t work in a reality that says “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” It instead says “How can we think of stories, solutions, myths that teach good lessons without demanding senseless suffering?” Bake two cakes. Work together.
I don’t know if Miles will have to kill his other self. Or simply never redeem him. If he’ll wind up losing his dad. If he’ll even need to beat Spot in a fight to the death or if Spot can be saved. But I know the answer I want doesn’t lie in just sitting back and letting things roll out like any other Spider-Movie. I also know the movie is telling us that no matter what, he won’t be alone. When Gwen talks about never having found the right band to join, and she looks on to the portal waiting for her, and asks us, the audience, if we want to join her band, “You in?”, I feel something overwhelming hit me every time. I alluded to it earlier in act 4. I remarked these questions that have plagued hero stories have been given a response for a while now in a way that millennials fall into way too often: Jaded sarcasm. We go “don’t take it too seriously”, or provide witty banter to serious questions in our stories. It takes the seriousness out of the situations so that we don’t feel bad for going along with the continued narrative that “heroes must suffer to be heroes” instead of accepting any other possibility. It’s ultimately, a deadening feeling, because you bury the part of you that asks “Is that what I want?”
What I feel when Miles breaks free, what I feel when Gwen has resolved things with her dad and he tells her that she’s the best thing he’s ever done, what I feel when Miles stands up to everyone who tries to stop him from doing the right thing, what I feel when Gwen offers us, the audience, involvement in this gang of heroes that’s going to help Miles chase his ideas, and bake two cakes instead of accept someone telling him that it’s unreasonable to ask for more, I feel the hero stories I’ve always wanted to feel. And that feeling is the opposite of jaded sarcasm.
I feel hope.
