The Cliffhanger Problem (Across the Spider-Verse)

this probably would have been a better topic to cover when I originally meant to cover it which was right after the movie came out but did anyone else walk out of across the spiderverse feeling a bit [Music] unsatisfied if you're here because you watched a certain spiderverse video made by a high schooler who thought he knew what fair use was but definitely didn't and that the algorithm randomly decided to shine its favor upon hello welcome back since last we spoke I have gained one college degree and one bowel disorder and yes I do consider spiderverse to be partially responsible for that first thing because it inspired me so much in a time that I needed it let me tell you around the time it sequel came out I could have really used another inspirational kick in the butt just like the original gave me but across the spiderverse ended up being intensely meaningful in a very different way a way that absolutely deserves examination unfortunately when I was walking out of the theater I wasn't thinking about that I was thinking about how [ __ ] that Cliffhanger was if we're going to do this we're going to have to talk about both topics so let's do the Cliffhanger stuff first and then we'll talk about the Transcendent experience of humanity through ART and all that stuff second sound good I sure hope so because this is a pre-recorded scripted and edited video so I already did it Spider-Man into the spiderverse is a movie where two egotistic mytical high schoolers engage in elaborate mind games in an effort to win at romance a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve wait this is not the right video Spider-Man into the spider-verse is a movie about Miles Morales a teenager who gets bit by a spider with Spider-Man juice in it even though he wasn't supposed to we'll get to that and is faced with the stressful task of preventing the Multiverse from collapsing luckily he has other spider people from other dimensions here to help him including Peter B Parker AKA spider dad and Gwen Stacy C AKA miles's Instant Crush we'll get to that too they help him figure out how to be Spider-Man which also helps him figure out his relationship with his dad and his new school he saves the Multiverse bad guy goes to jail and That's all folks a nice satisfying complete ending across the spiderverse is the sequel to into the spiderverse which means that we have to abbreviate them to across and into respectively or just say the whole title each time and I got to say both of those options suck in across miles discovers that there's a whole society of di mention hopping spider people led by this dude Miguel that his crush is a part of yay except they don't really like him and also they want him to let his dad die because they think that otherwise the universe will be in danger of collapse again not yay Miles isn't having that [ __ ] so he rushes to save his dad the spider people rush to stop him and then the movie ends you see the difference right but what the hell am I even complaining about spiderverse did not invent the concept of splitting a movie in half from Pirates of the Caribbean to wizard bigots to this year's Mission Impossible they've been splitting movies in half for a while now seemingly whenever it's a sure thing that the studio will be able to sell tickets to halves one and two but instead of being cynical let's assume that the movie was split in half not because of Any Financial or logistical reasons but because the creators simply had a big story to tell and didn't want to cram it into a single installment there's definitely something to be said for how this movie lets us luxuriate in the spiderverse without two movies for this story they definitely wouldn't have had the space in the runtime to do a lot of things including that whole opening act in Gwen's beautiful color splash bleeding paint music video Dimension which would suck because that opening act [Music] rules a day in the life of Gwen Stacy that makes the entire spider-verse more believable by selling us on a reality where she's the main character all while highlighting the mix of superhuman heroism and human struggles that has always made Spider-Man so special plus I think it would have been much harder to empathize with Gwen if we hadn't seen her struggles before she re-entered miles's story as a result it's not as tightly paced as the original movie but that's not such a bad thing when I'm already cherishing every second I get to spend with these characters and in this vibrant animated world well mostly animated I kind of hate the liveaction cameos but that's a different topic I also don't want to wave away the storytelling potential of going into a fulllength movie with the momentum of an unresolved previous Movie behind it across the spiderverse set up so much that it's looking like the next movie will be able to just start maybe do a little recap and then go that is undoubtedly coming at the cost of a less complete movie but hey it's not like Cliffhangers are some New Concept there's a lot of precedent for Cliffhangers and fiction even if there's an understandable tendency to view Cliffhanger proper ending that's correct thank you uh angry man pngs this works because of a known fact about human psychology we like when things have satisfying resolutions there are exceptions of course but in general we like our m explained our narratives concluded and our sentences wrapped up in nice little see isn't that annoying even though you probably know where that sentence was going it still bothers you that it didn't get there because you're a human I assume but the thing about marketing is that it's not just something that evil men and Suits do to suck the beauty out of the world and exploit your synaptic behavior for profit marketing is also like important when I try to make a good clickable thumbnail for this video I don't just do it because I want money from views I don't make real money from these anyway this is a hobby I do it because I want the people who are going to enjoy and get things out of this video to find it and that's what a cliffhanger can be for a writer a way to hold the attention of people who are invested in your narrative and thus we'll probably get something out of continuing to experience it if we want to be liberal with our definition of cliffhanger which I definitely have been thus far there are little Cliffhangers sprinkled all over stories classic television structure is about cutting from the a story to the B story at the highest moment of tension rotating POV characters between chapters and novels accomplish something similar even just the simple Act of cutting to something different over the course of a movie is meant to entice you to keep watching with the promise of future resolution so there you go Cliffhangers aren't just a valid narrative device they're also kind of an essential tool on the writer's tool belt unfortunately none of that means that they feel any less awful the groan that carried through the theater when across rolled credits was the stuff of Legend I groaned too being left hanging is simply an unpleasant experience and that unpleasantness is Amplified more and more the longer the Gap is between installments waiting for the next scene is one thing waiting till the next week is another but multiple years that just sucks of course if the people making the art are striking for better treatment or are taking their time so they don't have to crunch their asses off to actually get it done we in the audience should be be completely sympathetic and stand in support of the workers in this video I'm only talking about the experience of the storytelling not the politics of the entertainment industry and the endless dangers of capitalism but yeah from a pure storytelling perspective having to wait a long time for that resolution is simply unpleasant there are ways to mitigate that unpleasantness for example treating a cliffhanger as less of a full-on gap where an ending should be and more of a little tease a lot of stories will tell a satisfying complete narrative where almost everything gets resolved and then hit you with a twist ending a final reveal or something otherwise unrelated so that they can have their cake and eat it too the satisfaction of a resolution creating a good story and the Cliffhanger drawing in an audience for the next installment across the spiderverse doesn't do that super well sure it ends with Miles getting away from Miguel and the spider people temporarily but it still ends having resolved almost none of the larger narrative arcs that it set up at the end of this movie movie miles is still racing to save his dad and prove that he can carve his own path he's still captured by an evil doppelganger he's still separated from the rest of the spiders he still hasn't made it home to his parents and he still hasn't revealed his identity to them the way the movie has implied he will or chosen with finality not to do it or whatever the next movie decides Miguel and his cool motorcycle driving partner Jess Drew are still after miles they haven't been redeemed or defeated for good things are still rough between Peter B and miles on account of the whole keeping the truth from you and then betraying you for Miguel thing and he's being an angsty dad about it the spot who I haven't mentioned because he's not that important basically like a villain of the weak has proven that he's not a villain of the weak he's still out there in dangerous and thanks to him one of the spider people's Dimensions is actively dissolving and then there's Gwen who reaches the end of an arc by the movie's conclusion but is robbed of the chance to follow through by its premature ending it's like if the original movie ended right after miles's famous leap of faith and didn't actually show him put putting his character growth to the test and then finding a new status quo on the other side the only things that are actually resolved at the end of a cross beyond the level of individual scenes are hobie's betrayal of spider society which was awesome as hell and Gwen's relationship with her dad which is fine but expecting it to do the entire job of creating a satisfying ending to the movie is absurd yeah Gwen does serve as a secondary protagonist in this movie but that doesn't change the fact that our primary protagonist story is still unresolved and yeah Gwen does get some resolution with her father but her story with the spider Society is still just as unfinished as miles is in other words the ending is unsatisfying but that's not even the end of it the need to end on a cliffhanger also messes with the story on a structural level the last 20 minutes or so of this movie totally drag because they feel less like a resolution for the movie you just watched and more of a sneak preview of the next one they introduce a bunch of new ideas and even some new characters and it's exciting and interesting and I can't wait to see what they they do with all that stuff in the next one but the actual movie We just watched you know across the spiderverse that movie ended a while ago before all this new stuff came in and it's impossible to shake the feeling that the movie is trying to end and failing for a good 15% of its runtime so yeah on a nuts and bolt storytelling level I think this Cliffhanger ending is definitely lacking it was a hard truth to cope with that the series I love so much had such a significant flaw and it left me scrambling for how to make this video video at all at least until I started to look past the Cliffhanger at the actual meat and potatoes of the movie and began to realize how little that Cliffhanger debacle actually matters after all structure is really just about finding the best method of presenting a story's heart and the Heart of this movie is just as incredible as the last one metaphors are cool because they allow stories to be about more than what they live literally depict into the spiderverse is a movie about being a spider person but thanks to the power of interpretation there's a million different ways that being a spider person can be extrapolated into something more relevant to actual everyday life that is of course assuming that you are not an actual spider person I don't know you I did a lot of interpreting in my original video but I definitely didn't cover every possible reading and that's fine with a great movie like spiderverse each valid interpretation adds to and interacts with the next like a big ecosystem system of meaning and one of those alternate meanings kept coming back to me while I was watching across something that I mostly breeed past in the original video but that is definitely deeply present in the movie The Power of finding a community that shares your hidden identities now the phrase hidden identity sounds really intense and it can be for example I think the reading of miles's Journey as a metaphor for discovering queerness as a teenager is one with a lot of credence Papa you know you can tell me anything I'm I'm sorry I was late but it doesn't have to only be the intensely important and meaningful stuff it can be more Universal than that for example sometimes it's best not to bring up your political opinions around certain family members that's a hidden identity there is a necessity to hide when you're the only one you know with a certain hidden identity it's really easy to feel lonely and Confused sometimes hidden identities are things that you decide on for yourself but even then it often doesn't feel like it a lot of aspects of your identity can feel more like the inevitable result of you being you and less like anything you purposefully chose for yourself so you end up like miles bitten by a spider by pure chance realizing he's Spider-Man and not knowing what the hell to do or feel he wants to go to his parents but well he's not sure they'll get it or even accept that part of him and that's another place where I feel like the queer reading is particularly meaningful you really hate Spider-Man it isn't until he meets Peter B Gwen and the others that he finds someone he can actually talk to about his spider problems not only that but these spider people have more experience with that hidden part of themselves than he does and can guide him through the growing pains something that's true of the first movie but that I noticed a lot in the second is that spider people don't ever bother hiding their true identities from each other some characters just don't seem to have designs that would account for taking off their masks but even then they share their names and most of the others are totally comfortable with their masks off even Hobie who makes a joke about not showing the audience his secret identity takes off his mask without a second thought when it's just other spiders around I know that in the logic of the story it's because they're all from different dimensions but there's a lot of meaning in the fact that they don't feel the need to hide from one another when it's just other spider people around they can be their full honest selves the other spiders serve as mentors and role models guiding miles on his journey towards his authentic self and the moment he Embraces Spider-Man as a part of his identity and once they're all gone just the thought that there are other people like him out there all struggling with and enjoying that identity that they share keeps him going but as we see at the beginning of across the spiderverse he's still growing still figuring it out but he misses them he has feelings for Gwen definitely but he's desperate to see any of them just to talk to someone else who gets it so it's a dream come true when right after clashing with the parents that just don't understand Gwen turns up someone else who feels the same pressure someone else who wears a mask to hide their identity from the people they love or at least did I mean my parents I mean maybe if I told them don't trust me on that her ability to see the world the way he does is beautifully represented by the visual metaphor of them sitting upside down together it's electric for Miles he's so damn happy just to see one of his friends which is why he's so excited by the idea of a society of spider people and so hurt that Gwen won't include him then he has a talk with his mother and a combination of witnessing the way Gwen runs off and motherly intuition leads to her telling him exactly what he needs to hear wherever you go from here you have to promise to take care of that little boy for me make sure he never forgets where he came from he never doubts that he is loved and he never lets anyone at those big fancy places he's going to be in tell him that he doesn't belong there she does that difficult parenting thing and acknowledges that her son has grown and then she lets him go free as long as he remembers the love and acceptance he's felt while he was still under her Wing she wants him to be the one who decides where he belongs and where he's going no matter where he ends up to grow and face the world but not to lose himself in the process just don't get lost this scene makes me want to go give my mother a hug without fail with his mom's blessing he follows Gwen and ends up among the community that she was reluctantly trying to exclude him from how little he knows about interacting with this community is immediately evident but when the chips are down it turns out he fits in great even when he unknowingly does something that is considered bad by the community everyone actually present can recognize that he's done something amazing but then he meets the leader of the community Miguel oara the guy who everyone defers to because he's been there the longest he very much shares that hidden identity which is why despite his hard ass tough guy exterior he empathizes with miles's situation tries to make him understand when he could have just tricked him instead but he explains to miles that there's a way things are done around here an order that Miles has tampered with when it becomes clear that Miles has no interest in such strict societal rules and isn't just going to assume that Miguel is right because he's the leader Miguel tries to force him into line all the while shouting about how miles doesn't really belong how he isn't a true member of the community H where have I heard that phrasing before I think this is a movie about gatekeeping I mean just look at what they named the supernatural force that brings ruin to every spider Dimension that doesn't share key similarity with the others that might not even actually exist and that Miguel worshiped they named it the cannon spiderverse has always been eager to take a very meta look at Spider-Man as a cultural construct but this feels like a very deliberate response to certain types of fan backlash it frames Miguel as an Old Guard hardcore fan a grognard a sweaty Reddit moderator except you know sexy who doesn't take kindly to newcomer challeng in what he's known this whole time to the point where he can't see the beauty of people who weren't quote unquote supposed to be Spider-Man becoming Spider-Man anyway he tried to stray from the cannon in the past and was hurt for it so now he views anything and everything that Strays from it as certain Doom in other words he thinks the reason that his Spider-Man story didn't work out is because any alternative interpretation is inherently a problem but if you ask me I think he's wrong both metaphorically and in the story I don't think the cannon is real or at the very least I don't think it works how he thinks it does pavitra's universe is dissolving but it's not because of the broken Cannon it's because of what the spot did but Miguel won't even listen when miles brings that up nor when Gwen questions him later he enforces his own views and makes no room for different perspectives this is the way it was for me so this is the way it has to be for everybody else otherwise you don't count as one of us you're not a true in insert identity here what's also interesting about Miguel and the spider Society is that part of how they Define being Spider-Man is experiencing certain familiar pains that's something you see all the time in gatekeeping whether the thing being gatee kept is a community a fandom or even just a status like adulthood I'm not a kid GW that's exactly what you are you're just a kid we had this terrible thing happen to us as part of our hidden identities and you just Walt in here without going through that and call yourself one of us but there's a couple flaws with that mindset first of all the idea that everyone should go through the same pain that you did is a very Boomer mindset if newcomers to a community don't face the same obstacles or pains that you did that's not a bad thing that's good sure they might not know the same things as you but that means there's less pain in the world that's the goal second of all pain can be a teacher and sometimes we humans can do this incredible thing where we take our pain and turn it into Beauty a charity for people who have gone through the same thing a piece of art that really captures the experience of that pain or even just the motivation to keep moving forward but that does not make pain a necessity we do not have to Define ourselves by what we go through that's how you end up stuck dragging your trauma forward with you instead it's usually better for us to Define ourselves by what we choose to be when Peter B says to miles that bad things are going to happen he's right being alive means bad stuff happens to you but when he follows It Up by saying they make us who we are he's dead wrong pain doesn't make people it's love that makes people the pain is inconsequential it's love that saves them miles isn't jaded like Miguel he still has Love and Hope still believes in a version of his story where the police captain doesn't have to die with the spark of individuality he learned to harness in the first movie and perfected with the help of an anti-authority Legend he rejects Miguel's close-minded idea of Spider-Man and sets out to make his own path maybe what's next is for him to show Miguel and the others that there is no set path that a bit more variety in their community and its various identities isn't threatening but wonderful and that newcomers who haven't gone through the same pain as him being Spider-Man doesn't invalidate what he's gone through but this [ __ ] ends on a cliffhanger so if we want the full thematics statement we we kind of have to wait I'm so torn what do we do here how how can I feel a sense of closure about this movie how do I not end this essay on a cliffhanger let's figure it out okay I've done some thinking shocking I know that's very unlike me the long and short of it is this when I first walked out of that theater I was frustrated but with every day that has passed since the first time I saw it my appreciation for across the spiderverse has skyrocketed much higher than I ever thought it would have and that I think is the ultimate lesson here satisfying storytelling and good entertainment is worth pursuing it's what pulls an audience in and makes a story sing even for people who don't look very far beyond the surface but I do think sometimes we can value that immediate interest and satisfaction that monkey brained release of dopamine more than the deeper stuff the stuff that will actually last in our memories ultimately this Cliffhanger thing is a problem that will mostly go away forever as soon as beyond the spiderverse comes out and all of the stuff that sucks about splitting this spiderverse sequel into two movies is just a consequence of something that every writer faces the struggle to take their narrative and put it into a format chapters episodes movies sequels Parts volumes even scenes and if you want to sound like you're in a writer's room for a second story beats there are all ways to make for a better experience for the audience which to be clear is an important part of what The Art of Storytelling is but also something that can occasionally get in the way of Greater artistic aims it would be convenient if every narrative fit perfectly into a digestible format that has proven to work in the past but it would also be profoundly limiting artistic expression is simply bigger than the sense of disappointment one might feel when asked to come back for a sequel so yeah as long as the objective is to to create a grand story and not a grand amount of money for companies I think I'm okay with Cliffhangers we can definitely continue to have that complicated conversation about ways to do Cliffhangers better and worse but when it comes down to it the number one takeaway I have from this whole experience is actually incredibly simple I'm really excited for the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: Blizzic

Views: 22,522

Keywords: blizzic, across the spider-verse, across the spider verse, across the spiderverse, into the spiderverse, leap of faith, cliffhangers, trouble with cliffhangers, miles morales, gwen stacy, miguel o'hara, spider-man, spiderman, spider man, to be continued, ending, gatekeeping

Id: tMaM35Iei-U

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024