The Different Levels of Across the Spiderverse

across the spiderverse is a lot an overwhelming display of extreme sights and sounds Dynamic colors and stirring music every single frame packed to the edge of the screen with details and movement full to bursting with pure cinematic energy running from scene to scene and moment to moment with the frenetic speed of a bullet compared to its predecessor across the spiderverse is simply more more colors more fast-paced action more characters more music more everything everything everything everything it is undeniably ambitious in its craft and a sheer technical achievement if nothing else it is a movie that is at its most impressive when it's moving at 100 mph faster than the human eye can reasonably track but it's arguably more impressive when it shows its capacity to slow down to take a moment to enjoy those colors take in the music absorb it all in Stillness and appreciate it before it starts moving again faster than you can keep up with and as it sprints along at 100 mph you can still see the beauty in the blur that is across the spiderverse a visually intense Affair overstimulating by Design virtually impossible to take in all at once and yet it is the Still Moments that I keep coming back to it is a film of enormous scope yet it is also strangely intimate the stakes are potentially Universe ending but they are also intensely personal it is a movie that feels so large and yet so small at the same time it's so big because it's made up of so many smaller parts each one just as important as the last there's so much in across the spiderverse to look at so much to think about so much to take in and discover and in that depending on your focus your preferences your interests there are so many different ways of viewing across the spiderverse so many different interpretive levels and lenses by which to understand what this blur is trying to achieve and communicate but for me there are three that stand out the most three that cover the vastness of across the spiderverse and its complexity each successive lens standing for a much broader level of the film and its thematics and those three lenses are literal allegorical and metatextual and of those three I think the most important one and the only one really worth exploring is the first the literal interpretation because once we start getting into more allegorical or metatextual reading I think there's a danger of losing track of the story itself a literal interpretation Will Keep Us grounded and focused on the characters and their Journeys as they are so without further Ado this is a literal interpretation of across the spiderverse there is a surprisingly small amount of plot in this movie for its NY on 2 and 1 half hour runtime relatively little occurs miles fights spot fights spot again goes to the spider Society fights the spider Society goes to the wrong Universe to be continued and that's pretty much it but that's not a criticism because in between all of those big things are a number of smaller moments the movie's precious minutes are spent on characters people on Gwen's struggle with her father on Miguel's frustration as he tries to keep everything together on miles's desire to belong somewhere with everything else going on the movie always eventually refocuses its efforts on those elements on the people of this story and what they're going through why all this matters to them the first 20 minutes of the movie are focused entirely on Gwen and her loneliness her experience of being Spiderwoman and her father believing she killed her best friend it's the way she has to be closed off and adversario because she's seen firsthand what happens when she lets people in it's her tendency towards avoidance trying to escape problems rather than solve them clashing with her clear desire for connection and the very real pain that comes with being dishonest honest about who she really is and I loved Gwen as a character in the first movie but the first 20 minutes of this sequel make her an immensely more complex and interesting character for me than she had been otherwise and that goes for just about every character in the movie actually even relatively minor characters have more complexity than they did before like Rio miles's mother in the first movie she was more or less just the stereotypical Mother character she's barely even featured so what more can you do but here her role is somewhat expanded and her character has one or two more layers she's kind but she's proud she's hard but she cares a lot she's the only member of the family who doesn't just run out of places unexpectedly and so she kind of takes on a leadership role for the household with miles's Dad asking her permission to ground miles only for her to temporarily unground him unilaterally she's a character who wants to feel in control of the world around her possibly because everything around her feels out of her control but it's that desire for control that comes into conflict with a much more gentle and loving personality that just wants to do right by the people she cares about she's not the deepest character anyone's everever written she's not even the deepest character in this movie but for a minor character in this large of a cast the fact that so much personality shines through so clearly is a testament in itself to Across the spiderverse his dedication to its characters and frankly that's why across the spiderverse lends itself so well to a more literal straightforward interpretation because the characters the people are so integral to the way this story moves and operates that it becomes difficult to understand the film in any way that distances us too far from those characters and their personal literal Journeys throughout and this is most obviously seen in our protagonist Miles Morales himself much like Gwen he feels lonely mostly because of Spider-Man he can't tell anyone about who he really is and that creates a wall between him and the people he knows especially his parents who feel very much like they're getting cut out of their son's life and that's kind of because they are but with Gwen's experience of telling her dad not going very well miles has very little reason to expect that his would be any better so he remains alone unable and unwilling to reveal himself to the people that he loves while the people who already know him our universes away at the end of the day miles just wants to belong somewhere he wants to be a part of something he wants to feel like who he is and what he does matters it's why when Gwen tells him about the spider Society he immediately wants to join it's a place full of people who actually know what he's going through because they've all been through it too it is a place that will accept him fully and without caveat or at least that's what miles thinks because Miguel O'Hara the man in charge of the spider Society rejects him Miguel is trying to keep everything under control trying to to preserve the Multiverse itself as the events of the first movie have thrown everything out of whack and now constants of each Universe known as the cannon are in danger of being lost which could have disastrous consequences Miguel knows those consequences well and miles in Miguel's mind is the entire reason for this because the spider that bit miles wasn't from his Universe he wasn't supposed to be Spider-Man Miguel calls him an anomaly the original anomaly in other words a mistake a problem and on top of all of that they want him to let his dad die to preserve the cannon it becomes clear that this place doesn't care about him and so the only thing he can do is accept himself literally reaffirm who he is in the face of Miguel's rejection in the face of people telling him that he isn't what he's supposed to be and that's what across the spiderverse is all about accepting yourself as yourself refusing to let let other people tell you you don't belong and choosing to be who you want to be and what you want to do and miles is going to have to face the consequences of that spider biting him instead of a different miles and I'm sure that whenever beyond the spider-verse comes out it will give us something new to look at but for now this is the story I definitely left some stuff out because it didn't really fit in this literal lens but that's just the way of it maybe in some other Universe I looked at it from one of the other ones I mentioned but I don't in across the spider to look at so much to think about so much to take in and discover and in that depending on your focus your preferences your interests there are so many different ways of viewing across the spiderverse so many different interpretive levels and lenses by which to understand what this blur is trying to achieve and communicate but for me there are three that stand out the most three that cover the vastness of across the spiderverse and its complexity each successive lens standing for a much broader level of of the film and its thematics and those three lenses are literal allegorical and metatextual and of those three I think the most important one and the only one really worth exploring is the second one allegorical because I think we risk getting a little too broad with a metatextual reading losing sight of the actual story in the process but a purely literal reading is a bit insufficient we need to find a way to connect the literal narrative to our reality or else there's not much of a point in analyzing the movie at all an allegorical interpretation allows us that opportunity so without further Ado this is an allegorical interpretation of across the spiderverse across the spiderverse has a very teenage attitude about it and I don't mean that in a bad way at all I just mean it in the sense that across the spiderverse is very much a movie about being a teenager a movie that can in many ways be taken as an allegory for the teenage experience itself this is a movie where our two main characters are teenagers and their primary conflicts are centralized around the struggles between them and adults where the greatest desire is acceptance and the greatest fear is rejection one of our protagonists Gwen doesn't want to tell her father that she's Spiderwoman because she's afraid of how that might make him see her afraid that he would then reject her and when circumstances push her to reveal the truth he does reject her tries to arrest her chooses to put his duty within the system over his love for his daughter and so in the face of that rejection she instead chooses to embrace the acceptance of a group she knows very little about the teenage experience is one mostly of finding identities slowly but surely starting to break away from your dependency on adult figures to tell you your values and instead figuring out what you believe on your own and as your identity becomes more complex and more specific the Quest for where you belong and who understands you becomes ever more important and so that desire for acceptance and the fear of rejection also becomes ever more powerful and influential that's certainly the case for Miles our other protagonists being Spider-Man is a huge part of who he is now it's how he spends most of his time seemingly but that leaves him alone in the world because in his world he's the only Spider-Man the only person alive who knows what it's like to be this when Gwen and miles are talking about this very thing they do so while literally sitting upside down on top of a building a perspective that literally could only be had by spider people I mean how many people can you talk to about this stuff you don't even know and that's very much the feeling of a teenager even if it's not necessarily true like it is with Miles a teenager is just starting to form a genuine perspective on the world for the first time as they start gaining a more complex understanding of how the world works but that perspective is incredibly Limited at first and so it can feel like you're all alone in it there can be a sense or perhaps simply a fear that nobody understands you that nobody will get it if you tell them what's going on or worse that they'll actively reject you if you tell them that's miles's fear with his parents that they won't get it if he tells them that they won't understand that they'll be mad at him punish him even spurred on in that notion not only by Gwen's experiences with her dad but also by his own parents intensity maybe he's scared to talk to you why would anyone be scared to talk to me the Spider-Man identity can be a standin for really any type of secret a teenager may be hiding from their parents whether it's something as small as liking something they see as embarrassing or something as major as their sexuality or differing political beliefs anything where there may be some fear that it won't be understood or accepted for some reason and that they will in turn be rejected by the people that are supposed to always be on their side that fear dominates the first half half of this movie while the spot may give us plenty of superhero Antics most of the first hour is centered around a teenager being afraid that who he is and who he's becoming won't be accepted by the people important to him while the adults in his life consistently try to instill control over him control his story themselves afraid that he's going to grow up and become part of something that won't care about him the same way they do and what I worry about most is they won't look out for you like us they won't root for you like us his parents fear him being somewhere they can't protect him doing things they can't help him with or things they don't approve of and in that despite the assurances that he is loved the message remains that they don't trust him enough to make the right choices they don't respect him enough to believe that he'll do the right thing they don't care enough to let him try and so the fear lives the fear of rejection the fear that those assurances are are merely lies the fear that they only exist based on the assumption that he is what they expect him to be the fear that what and who he is is wrong and in that fear when you're given the option of remaining where you are and facing it or going off to a place where people may actually understand you what would you choose and as we dive head first into the second half the scope of the film becoming much broader we also head into a much broader aspect of the teenager experience not just the fear of being rejected by your peers or your parents but by the very systems that you live within because while a teenager first has to deal with how their burgeoning identity interacts with their immediate surroundings it must eventually begin to confront the wider world they're going to occupy and that wider world can have a greater influence than anything else and to talk about this we have to talk about the spider Society a group of spider people who deal with anomalies things Crossing dimensional lines AC accidentally due to the Multiverse shaking events of the first film and I want to take a look at the two separate experiences of this group that are two protagonists have we've already touched on Gwen's experience in the midst of rejection by her father this group was there to accept her give her a sense of purpose and most importantly a way to run away from her problem but for Miles he is actively seeking out this group but is turned away Gwen even actively lies about what the group is to try and get him to lose interest in it because she knows the truth and her avoidant personality won't allow her to tell him because that would mean confronting the discomfort of that truth and of course the truth is that the spider Society isn't the team of spider people saving others that Miles thinks it is in fact the primary duty of the spider Society is to make sure that bad things happen to make sure that the cannon remains intact that every spider person goes through all of the various deaths and tragedies that tend to befall them including the death of miles's Father every Spider-Man loses a police captain that's close to them and miles's dad is just about to become Captain miles is understandably upset by the idea that he has to stand by and let his father die and so rejects the notion that this is the way things have to work he rejects the system that is forcing him to go against what he believes is the right thing to do but Gwen didn't Gwen accepted that reality even though it clearly makes her uneasy even though it would also mean allowing her dad to die too because he's a police captain but it's easier this way this place accepted her or at least acted like it did while her father didn't and it would get rid of the problem she has without her doing anything in fact it relies on her doing nothing Gwen was accepted by the spider Society first and then learned the truth of what it was but miles learned the truth first and they never planned to accept him at all because miles was the original anomaly the spider that bit him wasn't supposed to bite him and even though it wasn't miles's choice to be bitten Miguel blames him for all of these problems he's trying to solve even among other spider people miles isn't understood he isn't accepted he doesn't belong who and what he is is wrong and as a teenager's identity forms it is those intera actions with the systems they live within the supposed way the world works and the people who maintain it that have some of the greatest impacts miles is consistently told by Miguel the leader of this group and a deao representative of this system that he is just a kid that he doesn't know what he's doing Miguel treats him from the moment they meet like an inferior a problem that causes other problems and he treats miles's resistance to the way things are as nothing more than the result of inexperience he's naive too young to really get why this is how things have to be and whether he's right or not the movie leaves it rather ambiguous that only reveals to miles that Miguel is nothing more than a stubborn and incurious man unwilling to listen like every other adult in his life someone who just wants to force a story onto him rather than listen to the story he's lived all of this while Gwen accepted by these people one of miles's only real friends sides with m even though she doesn't seem to think this is right either because she was accepted by the system A system that may very well benefit her even if she's not completely comfortable with how it benefits her because it's easier for her in a way that it isn't for miles but it's when she sees miles reject that system not because it rejected him but because he doesn't believe it's right that Gwen starts to question it herself asking Miguel if he's sure that this is actually how it has to be and that is is when Miguel rejects her sends her back to her Dimension leaving her with only one thing to say we are supposed to be the good guys the overall point of this allegorical interpretation of across the spiderverse is that as teenagers form their identity it is their interactions with both the people around them and the systems of our world that play the most vital roles when a system accepts them for who they are or at least claims to they are much more willing to form their beliefs around maintaining that system even if it contradicts other beliefs or feelings they may hold especially if they aren't accepted elsewhere but if they have an identity that is incompatible with the system that leads them to being treated as inferior or being rejected altogether then it is much easier to see the flaws of that system and understand what it really cares about like I said before the movie leaves things ambiguous for now not ultimately solving the primary question about who is right I'm sure we'll get into that in the sequel as miles continues his quest to find where he belongs as he ends this movie in a dimension he literally doesn't belong in and as Gwen starts to try and make up for her complacency by beginning to resist the way miles did but for now this is what we're left with and I so much and across the spiderverse to look at so much to think about so much to take in and discover and in that depending on your focus your preferences your interests there are so many different ways of viewing across the spiderverse so many different interpretive levels and lenses by which to understand what this blur is trying to achieve and communicate but for me there are three that stand out the most three that cover the vastness of across the spiderverse and its complexity each successive lens standing for a much broader level of the film and its thematics and those three lenses are literal allegorical and metatextual and of those three I think the most important one and the only one really worth exploring is the third one metatextual because a metatextual reading will allow us the broadest interpretation of across the spider verses many elements allow us to engage with the farthest reaching aspects of this movie and come to a more holistic understanding of its themes and ideas it will allow us a big picture perspective freed from minute details on the ground level to understand what this movie is not only saying about our world but about itself and stories in general so without further Ado this is a metatextual interpretation of across the spiderverse The Meta elements of across the spiderverse are rather clear to the point where it's a little hard not to notice them though most of those metatextual elements don't really start showing up until the second half of the movie the first half deals mostly with building character and individual relationships which aren't of particular importance to this interpretation really all that's worth talking about is the Canon the Canon is just all of the things that every version of Spider-Man in every Universe has to go through they're tropes that's what they are they're tropes they are the things that show up in every Spider-Man's story in one way or another every spider person is bitten by some kind of special spider every spider person loses an uncle or the rough equivalent every spider person eventually has to deal with a symbiote in some way they are things that just always seem to show up in these stories and Miguel O'Hara the leader of the spider Society is obs obsessed with keeping things this way making sure all these things continue to happen in all of these stories because he broke the cannon once and it seemed to have an adverse effect and because so much of the Spider-Man characters defined by death and tragedy maintaining these tropes is often a matter of allowing bad things to happen allowing innocent people to die something that is very unsp manlike and this whole situation itself asks a question about the very nature of the Spider-Man character what is more important the good that Spider-Man does or the pain that he endures the good results that he achieves or the failures that have become iconic the failures are the things we remember we don't remember the random children that Spider-Man saves but the girl whose neck broke falling off the Brooklyn Bridge we don't remember the countless times that Spider-Man has saved his loved ones but we all remember the few times that he didn't Spider-Man can't have at all that's been one of the key aspects of the character for decades he saves one person but another dies he dedicates his life to saving everybody but he loses any sense of happiness for himself for every good thing there is a bad of equal measure and we always remember the bad far more than we do the good being Spider-Man is a sacrifice that's the job that's what you signed up for this is just the way it's always been done the way these stories always go and so it must remain Spider-Man has to keep going through these things because if he doesn't it's not true to the character the person writing it doesn't understand them like the fans do even though the fans seem divided on what actually Define Spider-Man as a character but here's the interesting thing to me the spider Society began as a reaction to different people showing up in Dimensions they weren't supposed to be in potentially disrupting the cannon if they remained where they didn't belong and that was happening because of everything that happened with the collider in the first movie and according to Miguel all of that happened because miles was bit by a spider that was brought here from a different dimension and thus was not supposed to bite him miles is the original anomaly but who says that this was an anomaly who's to say that wasn't what was supposed to happen who's to say that this wasn't just a different way of telling the story I mean if the cannon has already been disrupted then why is miles's Universe still intact in this interpretation miles takes on the role of a disruptive creative Force trying to change the way that the story is told because he doesn't believe it should be told that way anymore and isn't it then fitting that miles would become Spider-Man because of a seeming disruption of the cannon it doesn't look like the way that it's always been done but why does that mean it's wrong why does that mean it's an anomaly just because this creepy guy says so just because he had to experience a terrible tragedy and now thinks that everyone will suffer the same if the story ever changes across the spiderverse is a story about people trying to control the story if you've ever tried to write a story you know just how unwieldy it can get how one change Echoes across the landscape of the narrative in ways you never expected how the more you try to make it work exactly the way you want it to all it ever seems to do is push back not in Malice but simply because it is in the nature of the story to resist and that's because of the characters the people who are forced now to contend with what you've done and are going to react in whatever way they see fit regardless of your intentions because a story is just people all with their own stories all interacting and bouncing off each other making a mess a tangled web of pain and joy and loss and love that each and every one of us is trying and failing to control in our own ways we like tropes because they're predictable because it makes life feel more like a thoroughly planned sequence of destined actions rather than a blur of colors and sound voices and actions fast-paced and over stuffed and hard to keep up with an overwhelming display moving at 100 milph and when you look at this story from up here all you really see is the blur you're too far up to see the individual people and their influence a single story is made up of a million other stories just as a singular system is made up of a million other individuals the spider society as a group rejects miles and supports the system as it is without question but it's the individuals within it that make the biggest impact Hobie Margot Peter B it is their actions their choices that are instrumental in helping miles to escape even when against a much much larger and stronger Force you have have to take the people into account you have to remember that they're there in the blur the broader the conversation gets the higher up you go the more important it is to remember them the more important it is to keep an eye on where the conversation began and who it is ultimately going to affect because a story or a system isn't a very good one if it doesn't remember what it's really there for the people tired angry afraid and with no other options Gwen goes back to her home her father is there as though all this time he's just been waiting for her Gwen tries to run away again avoid the problem like she always has but her dad stops her wanting to try and talk only for Gwen to prove that she's not going to listen to him any more than he ever listened to her he goes to leave but Gwen does the unthinkable and goes after him and she talks she tells him all that matters that she's trying as hard as she can to do the right thing to make the right choices with the responsibility these Powers have given her but she's failing at every turn as the colors around her begin to bleed and as her father tells her that he quit being a cop the backgrounds become nion complete abstraction he tells her the most important thing he could ever tell her you're the best thing I've ever done she pulls him into a hug as the world around them turns to this strange sort of mess only the outlines of things remain parts of the picture are erased completely blue is blending with pink and white and strange patterns and yet it feels soft almost comforting as these two stand solid and unmistakable the rest of the world is there sure but it's only barely perceivable because In This Moment the center of the universe lies at the center of this Frame the metatextual reading is obvious because her father quit being a cop he isn't a captain and therefore the cannon has been disrupted the story was not supposed to go this way and yet here they stand the story can change for the better sure it's not the tragedy we expect from a Spider-Man's story but it's just as honest just as real in the allegorical reading it's a teenager finally opening up about who they really are and what they're struggling with finding the courage to confront the possibility of rejection because as Gwen learned it's better to be honest with yourself and about what you believe then to let the fear of rejection and the desire for acceptance change you and in the literal reading well it's right there I don't need to tell you you can see it feel it and that's the most important thing I think allowing yourself to be at the ground level where the people are simply being not that the rest of it doesn't matter if I thought that I wouldn't be making this video but I do think you need to start here enveloped in the moment with the people you need to know them first so that you can remember them later across the spiderverse works because it remembers them it works not because of all the colors and the music and all of its technical Marvels it works because all of those things only matter as much as the people this blur of a movie is about the people that make it up it can be seen from so many different Vantage points viewed from so many different perspectives the ones I've outlined here are but a few but I think the true success of across the spiderverse is that it never loses sight of the things that matter the most through every level as it gets broader and more complex as the scope gets bigger and bigger the individual people only matter more and more a single story is made up of a million smaller stories and across the spiderverse never forgets that there's so much in across the spiderverse to look at so much to think about so much to take in and discover and in that depending on your focus your preferences your interests there are so many different ways of viewing across the spiderverse so many different interpretive levels and lenses by which to understand what this blur is trying to achieve and communicate but for me there are three that stand out the most three that cover the vastness of across the spiderverse and its complexity each successive lens standing for a much broader level of the film and its thematics and those three lenses are literal allegorical and metatextual and they all matter they are all important ways of looking at the movie they're all just a fraction of what makes it up and you can't talk about one without at least acknowledging the others that's what this movie is about I think just look at its villain the spot just wants people to care that's all he's a villain made up of holes and the world around him tells him that those holes are all that matter about him in fact when he has no holes he begins to resemble a wireframe body an unfinished unidentifiable drawing of a person he can't get a job he can't make friends he can't be a member of society whatsoever he has simply fallen into the role of being a super villain because that's the only identity he can have where people will care and if the only thing that makes him special is his holes then he comes to the only conclusion that makes any kind of sense he needs to become just one big hole defined by all the bad he's gone through all the tragedy he's endured the emptiness that he feels the movie itself labels him as a villain of the weak a joke just something something Spider-Man has to deal with another part of the blur but for the spots he's not just a villain of the weak he's not a joke this is his life this matters to him more than anything in the world whether the rest of the world cares or not in a world that's already far bigger than us in a universe bigger than we can truly comprehend in a Multiverse that expands that size out into seemingly Infinity how can we truly matter every character character in this movie has their own perspectives their own ways of viewing the world their own struggles within that world and all anyone really wants is for someone to listen to them to hear them to care but one of the main flaws those same characters have to overcome is their unwillingness to listen their unwillingness to believe that anyone else's problems could be as important as their own because the moment we start to think of it that way is the moment that it becomes possible that everyone's problems are more important than ours that what we go through doesn't matter our story doesn't matter our victories and our tragedies aren't important in this blur of colors and sounds but that blur is made up of so many tiny pieces so many stories that each push it along in their own ways without one single spider the entire world could change it's important to see the blur as a whole to try and understand it in all of its many facets but it's just as important to remember that you're still there maybe from up here you are imperceptible but you are still there I don't know what's going to happen in beyond the spiderverse frankly I'm content to wait rather than speculate but I know that it won't forget the people it won't forget miles or Gwen or Miguel oara or the spot because it knows it has to remember them so that when the film is pulling you through everything at 100 m hour you can still see the beauty in the [Music] [Music] blur [Music]

Channel: StoryStreet

Views: 63,053

Keywords: Spider-Man, Across the Spiderverse, Into the Spiderverse, Spiderverse, Gwen Stacy, Miguel O'Hara, Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Interpretation, Video Essay, StoryStreet

Id: Wr9_WYTPbIc

Length: 36min 30sec (2190 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2023