Across the spiderverse thoughts
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse has been greatly anticipated since they announced it shortly after the first film came out in 2018. This film series is a literal game changer in the animation industry. As a fan, I’m incredibly grateful because since then we’ve gotten a lot of awesome animated features and series inspired by it. This sort of prestige comes with downfalls though. (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.)
As much as I love ATSV, I can still stop and see where it’s lacking. There’s nothing wrong with it visually. Of course it’s a gorgeous film and all the character designs are amazing. The music is great. I really love Gwen’s theme and Miguel’s theme. Honestly almost everyone was pretty likable. Almost.
For me, I don’t particularly like Gwen as a character and definitely as a love interest. I never liked her as a youth because I was a MJ stan. As much as I like Bryce Dallas Howard, I still could not bring myself to like Gwen Stacy. It never looked good for her in my eyes even back in the first Spiderverse film. I simply wrote off Miles’ crush on her as a simple crush that would go away. Especially considering that she was from another universe. It would not work out considering the whole glitching problem. Gwen’s personality is too guarded in my opinion. She’s that cool girl trope. One of the boys type deals. And on top of that, I’m getting this uncanny Black people obsession from her in ATSV. She wanted Jessica Drew to adopt her almost immediately. She was already sort-of friends with some Black girls at her school but she quit their band in the opening scenes. She seemingly reciprocates Miles’ feelings to some degree. She joins Hobie’s band and stays at his place. One or two of these would not have bothered me but the desire to be in the proximity of Black Coolness is quite obvious. It may be a coincidence and no one involved with the story actively made her this way, but it still kinda sucks.
Another thing, Gwen (and Peter B.) betrayed Miles while siding with Miguel regarding fixing the dimensional rifts caused by the collider and all that other sci-fi jumbo that went on in each film. I understand Gwen being swayed by Miguel because he’s older and authoritative. She also looks up to Jess. I’m surprised that Peter B let them persuade him into thinking of Miles as an anomaly. As if any of that was his fault in the first place. Yes technically he is, but all of that was because of Alchemax and The Spot. It’s just tonal whiplash to me because the first film was all about how anyone could be Spider-Man and anyone can wear the mask. Now we have all these Spider-People and their self appointed leader is telling our protagonist he’s a mistake.
A lot of the dialogue in this movie was hit or miss for me. Sometimes it was good, then we had moments like the train scene which were good but very cutting. That was fine, but then we had that awkward speech from Gwen to her father. And then later when she’s in Miles’ apartment talking to his parents. And this is petty but I was so annoyed at how Jess was dismissing Gwen and told her to shut up and it seemed like... they were making her meaner than she really is for the sake of whatever. I don’t know it bothers me but I like Jess.
Now, that speech from Gwen would have been fine if she didn’t equate her Spider mask to his police badge. FUCK THE POLICE. I don’t care that half of the characters and their girlfriends or boyfriends have parents in the force. That aspect of superhero comics is so corny and counterintuitive. Police in real life don’t protect anyone. They don’t care about anyone the way comics and other media would have you believe. If there was a way to separate superheroes from cops without setting off a million alarms for the US Military and whoever else polices how Hollywood depicts them, I would love it for someone to do it.
Miles not having friends aside from Ganke and the other Spiders feels so forced for the sake of the story and his motivation. At first I was very taken aback by that considering that Miles is cool and smart! That’s the best of both worlds when you’re in high school. I think that if he had one or two more friends and had a little group, I still would be invested in him wanting to be with the other Spider-People. It could have been that the normal friends were always wondering where he would go when he disappeared to fight crime. There could have been tension about them being too close to finding out. Ganke could have caved and told one of them. His parents could interrogate them about Miles’ disappearing all the time. It would have added more believable drama regarding his secret identity. It would have painted his need to be with Gwen and Peter B in a more natural light. Instead it came off as a little obsessive to me, although I understand that too.
The fake love triangle cop-out thing? I don’t have the words for it. Hobie seemed extremely platonic towards Gwen and the toothbrush line was probably just the creators being tongue-in-cheek or whatever and for Miles to be jealous that someone “cooler” was spending more time with Gwen than him. Soon after, Hobie was helping Miles more than Gwen and he knew him for considerably less time than her. You can tell some people who worked on Voltron worked on this.
This movie would have been perfect without the copaganda. I really loved the grey area with Miguel as a secondary antagonist, although The Spot didn’t get as much limelight. I put that all on the fact that this movie was mostly building up to the finale. I remember thinking towards the end of the film that there’s so much going on, what are they going to do to fix anything? That’s the whole point of it, to make the odds feel impossible and the events leading up to the resolution will be a wild ride. I’m really excited for part two and I’ll be waiting for that three movie pack to drop so I can have a movie marathon at home.
