How Into the Spider-Verse FIXED Miles Morales

[Music] i tried to fight it i tried to tell myself i wasn't going to do a spider-verse video because i'm not just a spider-man channel but stan dammit i have something to say and i have a feeling no one else is going to do a video about this spider-man into the spider-verse made miles morales not suck it either changed or threw out everything bennis did with his characterization then added a lot of new stuff to finally make him feel unique it was kind of an accident and i don't think they made these changes because they didn't like miles i think they made them out of necessity and that they fixed a broken character that was just an empty void of charisma spider-verse made miles interesting for the first time ever as i said in a previous video miles morales has very few distinguishing traits that separate him from peter beyond the superficial his personality morals and characterization are either too similar to peter's or just muddled and undercooked when they're more of his own he's a character that's placed squarely in spider-man's shadow but his character arc has never been to step out of it it's just been to fill the same space begging the question of why we need miles at all if he isn't special beyond his appearance with that said some of the more memorable and unique things about miles are his supporting cast and his environment he has a young and active set of parents who can be more directly involved with his social life he goes to a school for intellectually gifted students and he has a comic relief best friend that knows his superhero secret and supports him these are the very few bits of creativity in any of bendis original run on miles while he ultimately didn't do anything with these ideas these ideas did have potential to give miles some new kinds of situations to encounter that peter hadn't and then the mcu comes along and steals all of it to give to peter we wouldn't have gotten this vision of miles if it weren't for mcu peter so let's talk about that for a little bit by this point we had seen two live-action spidey adaptations that borrowed heavily from the ultimate comics for his origin making peter and harry childhood friends making ozcorp the originator of the spider and having peter yell at uncle ben before his demise which amplifies peter's guilt the state of spider-man franchise left the creators at the mcu in a complicated position one we already [ __ ] know spider-man's origin story just don't do it again that'll be boring we've seen two peter parkers that live in a house in queens and date a cute girl they both fight mad scientists and harry osborn after he's had a meltdown they both mourn uncle ben and test out their powers make their own suit and yada yada at this point we didn't need to see a third draft of these scenes and ideas they had to do something different new they had to rebuild spidey from the ground up and were falling all over themselves trying to do it in a short amount of time the deal between marvel and sony was such an 11th hour thing that marvel studios was prepared to release a cut of civil war with him not even in it then they had to rush tom holland onto the set and add to him at the very last minute 2. bendis the idea machine had already been used twice with relative ease his ideas on spidey lend themselves to a modern take very well every time a new spider-man movie comes out the producers will tell you while we're taking a different direction with this one we'll be basing it more off the ultimate comics this time even though they've done it every time lee and ditko spider-man has been left largely unadapted save for a few scenes in the rainy trilogy and the occasional visual reference and the other stuff and will probably stay that way forever for some reason ideas from 616 continuity only start getting mostly incorporated from around or after the time gwen stacy gets killed off marvel producers wanted a fresh new take and bendis comics have a history of working out so they turned to pages of miles for new ideas of which there was only a handful but it was enough to use as a springboard for a new and different take on pierre because god forbid the eight screenwriters just come up with a new direction on their own without having to rely on baldylocks for the millionth time 3. despite what a lot of outspoken fans from around the time wanted miles could not become the default in first spider-man of the mcu i won't rule out the possibility that he can show up later but sony specifically has contracts that say spider-man has to be a straight white guy keep in mind this is from the film studio and not stan lee so if you're one of those idiots who thought andrew garfield got fired by stan for suggesting mary jane be a black guy you can bury your head into more paranoia and engineered outrage i guess but a wider audience really couldn't accept miles just outright replacing peter with no explanation moviegoers are too attached to the original spider-man it's like if the dc extended universe started and batman was azrael and was just running around killing people but peter isn't as expendable as bendis would lead you to believe all of these factors led mcu peter parker to essentially just being miles which is a clone of peter parker with less attitude and wit and more clumsy and bumbling while everyone tells him what to do now he has a young and active parent he goes to a school for gifted minds and ned leeds is a very thinly veiled reincorporation of genki plus he has all these avengers he looks up to and desires to impress miles wanted to prove that he could be a real superhero to them and live up to peter's name now peter wants to prove he's a real superhero and like live up to being the comic version of spider-man i guess peter was never really comfortable on a team setting he accidentally beat up all the x-men and the avengers treated him like he was an annoying [ __ ] rather than an impressionable kid he's more of this lone wolf who was able to do team-ups but found himself operating better outside of them this whole characterization feels pulled from miles miles was a weak character to begin with but now all he had going for him was poached and worked into reinventing peter side note i now think i've finally fully articulated why i always roll my eyes when someone says tom holland is the most comic accurate spider-man he's not accurate to the 616 version and he's certainly not accurate to the ultimate version either because that guy was a moody edgy angsty teen who yelled at everyone and was prone to violence instead of thinking things through tom holland doesn't come across as an angry hothead and i seriously can't envision a scene where his version of peter parker loses his temper and just starts ripping on someone's character flaws to hurt their feelings before seguing and how much he hates his own life mcu peter is accurate to the ultimate comics circa 2011 this is all a blessing in disguise because it forced creators of into the spider-verse by their own admission to start thinking of new ways to characterize miles and his story they had to cut back on stuff like genki and had to look at things from a new angle they were put into the unenviable position of having to give this piece of bread in a spider-man suit a personality well it goes without saying that they made miles a little more confident when he feels like he's in his element he's social and outgoing he values the community and culture of being a kid from brooklyn in the comic he doesn't really have an opinion on where he lives but his parents act like he's escaping poverty when he wins the drawing to go to the fancy smart people school it's just one of those lazy examples of bendis telling instead of showing we don't see miles going to a public school being a bad thing or how his life benefits any differently from leaving it we don't see brooklyn being any different from any other neighborhood in new york so there's not really any significance to this spider-verse makes brooklyn feel like a character in its own right the people the scenery the style are also vivid and memorable that you can understand why miles likes being here and feel safe here movie miles is now a fish out of water in his new school at visions academy not because he isn't smart but because he just doesn't relate to any of the kids here when the hell did peter have to deal with a conflict like that it's the exact opposite of being the only super smart kid it's being one of hundreds of smart kids and wanting to feel more like an individual miles also deals with heavy expectations from his parents and they're not subtle about that part they want him to be gifted and special according to their standards instead of his own jefferson pushes him to reject his culture and upbringing in favor of his education but after a while realizes that being smart isn't what makes miles special it's his passion and his creativity his adventurous love for creating art and leaving his mark on the world what's the conflict between miles and his parents in the original story well they um he uh they're strict they don't want him to hang out with his uncle because his uncle is a dangerous psychopathic criminal and his uncle is a dangerous psychopath a criminal so i guess they're pretty right about that uh i guess you can't talk about the changes to miles without acknowledging the changes to aaron davis all right i think bendis absolutely fudged every single aspect of this character's inclusion in his original run and bungled so many potential story threads and character motivations and emotional moments that it's incomprehensible what goal he was aiming for with the way he wrote this for one having both jefferson and aaron do something weird and abnormal one becoming a shield agent the other becoming a high-tech cat burglar really ruins the idea that miles is just a normal average kid it's the same as having peter's parents be cia agents we know how well that worked out rebooting jeff as just a run-of-the-mill police officer really helps to stabilize that element and enforce the fact that it was two brothers who went down different paths in life one became a cop and the other became a criminal not one became a secret agent for an organization with flying boats after that aaron being a cool fun uncle is about right at the start he's not a bad guy at the start and lets miles just relax and not have to live up to any rigid standards although in the comic miles likes hanging out with him because it's fun and he lets him have ice cream and watch movies in the movie version miles feels like aaron fosters and encourages his creativity and allows him to pursue things that make him happy one of them just has a better thematic function where he really diverges how aaron treats miles after discovering he has powers in the comics aaron immediately tries to capitalize on it and use miles to get ahead even beats on him a little to encourage him to act more like a thug and then blackmails him it's played like aaron is trying to seduce him with the dark side but at no point does he really let miles benefit from being a jerk he just throws him into dangerous situations where he's scared and having a horrible time and getting his ass kicked so of course there's zero conflict when miles is faced with the choice of being a good guy or a bad guy then he fights his uncle and they get into an accident that results in aaron dying and with his last breath he just says something shitty and cruel yeah i bet any of us will be real choked up about losing this beloved relative so because aaron is a jerk miles doesn't really take anything he says to heart and then after like two issues doesn't really even think about it ever again until this poorly thought out resurrection and his death was really just a flat out accident that resulted mostly from aaron trying to fight miles it's not exactly miles fault that this happened even if aaron goes out like a [ __ ] trying to make him think it was ugh let's catch up with the movie version aaron only fights miles because he doesn't know who he is under the mask he's just following orders to act as an enforcer for kingpin but the second he realizes it's his beloved nephew he has to fight he has a major change of heart he's faced with just about the only person he can't look in the eye and hurt no matter what money or advantages come of it he lets miles go resulting in kingpin killing him miles takes aaron to a safe place to have a final moment with his uncle where aaron regrets the life he chose and encourages miles to stay a hero and pursue his dreams he affirms to miles that doing the right thing even when it gets you hurt is the way to go his final words to miles motivate and inspire him miles also feels partially responsible for his uncle's death because aaron essentially sacrificed himself to protect miles miles has to live with the guilt that aaron placed his life above his own and paid the ultimate price when i said miles needed his own uncle ben i didn't mean that he needed to be more like peter i meant that he needed a concrete tangible reason to become a hero every good protagonist has an uncle ben moment be it batman's parents luke skywalker's mentor obi-wan the punisher's wife and kids or that little girl who died in a car accident in irobot and made will smith racist against robots they need an inciting incident that pushes them to be whoever they're going to be as a character whether they use their grief to become vengeful responsible distrustful or guilty they need something to establish their motivations it doesn't always have to be a death of another character but these can often be the most effective motivators in origin stories an uncle ben moment can be as simple as a character's life changing from a cancer diagnosis character like walter white realizes he wasted most of his life being the world's [ __ ] and decides to use his final years for something cruel and spiteful in response which he disguises as a desire to help his family no one even had to die for this moment it was just the threat of death but we get why the character is doing what they're doing and we can get behind that we can understand it in the comics miles gets to peter parker's last stand relatively at the end of it and just watches the aftermath he can't directly intervene because it's already over peter is dead before he gets there so there's no guilt away on him i said in my original video that i would have preferred if he showed up like halfway through this fight and even considers using his powers to give spidey some much-needed backup but backs down from the fear of getting hurt this is exactly what happens in spider-verse miles outright states that he can't let peter die twice and he feels obligated to protect him when given a second chance to help out and his uncle's death really sells him that using your gifts for evil won't get him anywhere but more pain and suffering for the people he loves aaron being a criminal damaged his relationship with miles father and jefferson even tells miles that he's afraid of them drifting apart the same way all it took was a slight adjustment to the context and now both of these deaths have infinitely way more emotional weight and importance for miles we now have a version of miles with a well-stated motivation conflict in his personal life that peter didn't deal with and best of all character agency miles becomes spider-man because he feels it's his responsibility and he learns that he doesn't have to just copy everything peter did in fact things seem to go smoothest for them when peter says stop listening to me and miles starts learning to do it on his own my favorite line from the trailer is don't do it like me do it like you and that never appears in the film but it's pretty much the main point of the story anyone can be behind the mask not just people who are identical to peter parker miles succeeds as spider-man by just being himself even his costume reflects that the comic version contradicts and undermines this point by having miles always worrying about copying peter and living up to him i can't express how much i love spider-verse in general it's my favorite animated film to come out since i was a kid and it reinvigorated my love for this character after feeling really beaten down and jaded by his fandom it's 2018 and you can still make a really good spider-man movie not only does it finally allow miles to become the character he was always meant to be but it also shows us that there's always going to be room for peter parker too and the classic isn't going anywhere miles morales has been a very mixed character for me because i appreciate what he's meant to symbolize and the insane amount of potential he has but i always felt bogged down and annoyed by how little that potential was fulfilled he was held back because unfortunately the guy who created him had no idea how to write him in a way that was satisfying i fully believe that as bendis kept writing this book into the ground with repetitive and uncreative arcs miles would have been forgotten by history like that time captain america was replaced by an impersonator named the us agent at that time deadpool died and was replaced by a guy named agent x who had the same sense of humor what was more sociable this [ __ ] happens all the time in comics ideas don't stick legacy characters are forgotten the status quo is restored and it all becomes an obscure did you know fact on a trivia game 20 years later under bendis's writing miles would have ended up this same way forgotten spider-verse may not have sought out to reinvent him out of spite for the source material but out of necessity through a lot of happy accidents i think that made for a much more interesting character who will have staying power this is the miles morales i can see my grandkids buying action figures of like he's been there from the start so let's give credit where it's due bendis came up with the initial spark but lord miller as well as the whole crew of the film crafted something much greater to put it simply this kid taught us that anyone can wear the mask but this kid came along and proved it [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: GodzillaMendoza

Views: 3,148,213

Keywords: Spider-Man, Into the Spider-verse, Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse, Spiderverse, Miles Morales, Ultimate Spider-Man, Peter B. Parker, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Spider-Ham, Origin, Brian Michael Bendis

Id: De3av1LFn9s

Length: 18min 5sec (1085 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2019