The trouble started with The Spot, a lesser villain with lesser powers. Our Spider-Man, Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore), barely takes him seriously, enjoying a microwave burrito while kicking the ink out of the poor bastard. To be fair, their fight is less a fight than an exploration of animation fun. The Spot is sort of a personification of the game “Portal” and this dude can displace space at will.
(It’s nearly impossible to describe, but I’ll try: imagine some joker in a giant Dalmatian suit and when you try to punch him in the gut, your fist enters a black hole the other end of which is right next to your jaw – hence you end up punching yourself in the head. “Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?”)
That’s some nifty power, huh? But The Spot is such an amateur that he gets caught trying to rob an ATM. –If you can displace space at will, why do you need money? Why not just collect whatever you want from wherever it is?
Meanwhile, the multi-verse. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse This film gives a much bigger role to (our) Spider-Man’s would-be GF, Spider-Woman, aka Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld), the super-spider powered recipient on Earth-65. Miles is on Earth-1610, but the Spider that bit Miles is from Earth-42, which makes Miles a double-aberration (?!)
Oh and there’s a universal Spider-central somewhere that contains all the Spider-people from their various Earths. This makes sense when Miles follows universe-hopping Gwen to Mumbattan of Earth-50101, the
home of Hindi Spider-Man, aka Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni), which he shouldn’t have done, cuz then the Spiderpolice led by non-Gwen Spider-Woman aka Jess Drew (Issa Rae) has to get involved to right the universe.
Yes, this is confusing. Totally confusing, but the good kind of confusing, where Spider-Man can be black, white, Indian, English, a boy, a man, a woman, a father, a pig, a punk, a vampire all depending on who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and when and how. The film explained this to me, so I’m explaining it to you, best as I can: every variation of Earth has a Spider-“Man.” Simple enough, right? Most Spider-Men are Peter Parker, but several significant ones are not.
OK, try remembering that as I go into the next part: while the Spider-Men are all different individuals from different variations of Earth, the Spider-Man story always hits certain milestones. It’s a little like leveling up in a video game – no matter how you get to the big boss room, you gotta defeat the big boss to make it to the next level. On Earth-1610, Miles managed to collect Spider-Man powers, but somehow skipped a few steps in the standard Spider-Man story arc … and now the Universe is threatened making Miles Morales the target of the entire Spider Council or whatever.
Ummm … here’s a thought, do you suppose there’s an Earth where Peter Parker simply dies of radiation poisoning instead of gaining superpowers? I mean, the part where he gets strong and powerful because of a Spider-bite is a little far-fetched, and yet it exists in every universe.
This subtlety of sequel canon is my favorite part to this tale – there’s a standard guide to superhero sequels. (And this is even true of Rocky films) In the first film, the hero is learning their powers and what they can do. The film is essentially about exploring capabilities and the hero dealing with the fact
they now have super powers. The second film is –generally- about battling oneself. By now, the hero knows exactly what they can or cannot do and the question is if they are worthy of the power they wield. There’s a lot of self-doubt in the first sequel.
In the Miles Morales Spider-Man arc, he sure does battle himself in film two and that takes the form of him battling … every other Spider-Man in the multi-verse. So it’s just like the battle of self but taken to the nth level. Good stuff.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a nerd paradise. It’s high-brow, diverse, and combines all level of intrigue from the obvious to the subtle. I laughed out loud when one character called another “Dark Garfield” and then wondered who else would find that funny. This film also comes with footnotes, constantly alluding to specific graphic novels where a given character is introduced. Can you imagine putting footnotes in a James Bond film? This, of course, is the drawback, if any, for Across the Spider-Verse – it’s about a superhero and it’s a cartoon. Hence, it should be geared towards pre-teens, you know, the largest purveyors of graphic novels. And yet, this film is both too long and too confusing to be appreciated by the same audience who would be ga-ga for the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man. I loved this film, but I couldn’t help wondering whether your six-year-old would understand the complexity of “good” Spider-Man being chased by 1,000 other good-but-acting-for-the-greater-good Spider-Men.
Animated Miles, quite clearly not done
Has decided this Earth is an imposition
The story’s full of charm
But go easy on the smarm
Earth-22 Frog is tearing you a new one
Rated PG-13, 140 Minutes
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Writer: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham
Genre: Confusion, but the good kind
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Nerds!
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you don’t like animation, you certainly won’t like 50 different forms of it
