Why SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE Works - A Scene-By-Scene Breakdown

so i want to talk about one of my favorite superhero movies no no not not that one this one i can't remember the last time a new film came along and so radically spoke to everything i adore about movies and i feel like there's been so many interesting conversations about the way this film was made the brilliant inventiveness of the animation the layers of hidden jokes the deep dives into funny references and most of all the commentary on the way the film strives for inclusiveness and presents layers of so many great thematic points and all this wonderful commentary on the importance of representation there's been so much wonderful critical work on this film already but i want to talk about the writing because there are a few films that so exemplify both the incredible complexity of juggling multiple characters complicated plot lines and deep character arcs while also holding so true to the simplest storytelling concepts that drive its function it's a testament to everything that is small big intricate broad nuanced and glaring and it all starts with a question how how did they do this how did they make a new film about spider-man when no character is so saturated the market quite like this one i mean there have been seven spider-man movies in the last 18 years alone three actors playing the character not to mention cartoons comics spin-offs how do you take all that show an understanding of it and still drive it forward into something that feels resonant and new turns out the answer is not about ignoring that saturated reality the answer like almost everything in this movie is that you include it and in doing so you make something so much more than the sum of its parts so let's break down how they did it you know [Music] from the onset we get the familiar logos but the film is also letting us know that something is different that we're going to be glitching with familiar iconography preparing the audience for the style that is going to come and then we get a recap alright let's do this one last time a way of showing awareness that this origin story has been told so many times and people are likely tired of it but it then proceeds to run through it in the most enjoyable way possible because look it's spider-man it's the most classic version of the character that we've come to know let's call this particular guy golden age spider-man but you know the players in his life there's uncle ben his wife mary jane the familiar rogues gallery it helps that it directly copies the iconography of the sam raimi films which a lot of the audience would likely be familiar with in that it also captures that golden age sensibility but the point of the sequence is threefold one it communicates who spider-man is for those who aren't familiar two it establishes the language of quick introductions that will be used throughout the film and three it uses what will be one of the film's core screenwriting strategies make information funny because what else both communicates something important to you also makes you like that information it even tackles the sillier parts of the character's history with a knowing link but it's more than the joke it's creating a dialogue with the audience and understanding of that shared history really it's about getting on the same wavelength and establishing a sense of trust we're all on the same page and somehow they managed to do all of it in just two minutes of screen time it's economical beyond belief but sequence also sets up a core dramatic condition it's all about communicating that spider-man has this defining characteristic that he will always get up again and again and again i always find a way to come back a notion that will be such an important story touchstone for this film and then it ends on a declaration that's really just a perfect transition to the following sequence there's only one spider-man and you're looking at him but that's not always going to be true is it sequence 2 you are miles morales we cut to a young man that we are now looking at too here we have to do the humongous job of introducing our main character people always talk about establishing likability but that's sort of the wrong word because we don't want to make someone seem like they're this impossibly good person who is saintly and above the audience what we really want to do is build empathy which usually starts with the familiar the mundane the things that make us fallible so what do they do here for miles he's working on his drawing listening to music trying to sing along but he doesn't know all the words it's one of those perfect little choices it evokes the way we try to be so polished in our heads yet we always fall short it speaks to something so small and specific and yet also speaks to something that's a universal experience of how we're all silly but the empathy building doesn't stop there miles has got to pack for school while he's late and in a rush the sequence is throwing so much shorthand information at you the bilingual household the relationship with his parents and their impressive stature we see him with friends in the neighborhood putting up stickers and having fun and that's the police well it's worse than that this is dad okay quick aside because we have to talk about the fact that his dad is a cop and he's also named after confederate president jefferson davis holy [ __ ] is that true oh yeah yeah oh my god what the [ __ ] oh yeah yeah yeah no it's like like it's one of those um it's it's oh it's a choice yeah look i'm not the person to unpack this or get into why the original creators made the choices with this character but there's a lot of complications here and whether those ideas can possibly be constructed into positive ideas or probably most likely something that puts it in a negative light especially when it comes to the troubling glorification with police portrayals and media the truth is however negative these connotations are in our world we also have to deal with them in terms of the narrative's intent in some ways the film shows a lot of awareness of these problems even with the little detail of switching the name to pdny it's trying to distance itself for a reason but the film also understands the emotional and historical role of being a cop in the world of superheroes because within that system the good cop is usually the person who believes in good and lawfulness in a world full of masked vigilantes they are not likely to understand the hero's approach so for miles morales this manifests in someone who is a direct contradiction to himself well's father clearly loves him and has this jocular sensibility he's also single-minded and it creates this further sense of distance between them one exacerbated by the fact that he's this towering stern figure who dwarfs him his father is also out of touch and believes in these old systems note the way he can't seem to keep up with a changing new york is that a coffee shop or a disco emotionally speaking miles is also clearly embarrassed and dislikes the idea that his father's a policeman even with these pressing morality questions it's more that he's a teenager going to school and that means his dad has the least cool job on the planet and worse he does things like this you gotta say i love you back my god that's embarrassing but i also want you to note how there are four core pieces of conflict that have really been going on in the scene within the car we understand one his dad hates spider-man two how much miles hates it at his new elita school that he just won the lottery to get into why can't i go back to brooklyn middle three how much he dislikes that his dad is forcing him to take this opportunity and four how much he still looks up to his uncle aaron even though there's clearly a division between him and his father what's wrong with uncle harrion he's a good guy all of these things are these critical pieces of setup that provide conflict for what is to follow but here's the thing it's not really about the information i see so many movies treat exposition like it's a list of facts that we want the audience to memorize instead audiences tend to track the emotion because people don't catch all the words or memorize the proper nouns hell how many times have you seen a movie and not remembered a single character's name often the thing that we remember which is to say the thing we most absorb in a given scene is how the characters feel that's what you have to write and put into the story to establish these conflicts we call this an emotional arc and it's what happens with stories that aren't always driven by the therefore butts of conventional plotting by the way that just means that the story is directly related to the cause and effect of the central plot it's stuff like oh no they attack new york and suddenly all the heroes have to go there but here the cause and effect is entirely within the character's headspace so in all these scenes that are to follow think about it and ask that question how is miles feeling because it's gonna be our guiding light take the way the next sequence extends into the school we see that he feels embarrassed from the goodbye with his dad but he's trying to put up a brave face we also see someone say he's just inside and he replies yeah i'm aware it's a choice it's another one of those beautiful little details because it's a choice of something that he can have control over a little bit of chaos and rebellion and sloppiness that he can introduce in his life and as he tries to navigate school so many things move fast and furious but we track these feelings they stack up on top of each other all aligned to a purpose great expectations pressure stress we understand so much of his headspace he hates the pressure of having to live up to any of this he just wants to be unlaced and free but then when miles runs late into class we briefly meet a new character who's come into our story now romantic comedy terminology this would be called a meat cute and it's when there's some cute or fun way that two characters first interact but i think meat cutes should have a broader application than more than just romance because there's all sorts of fun ways that all sorts of characters can come together and what do we get for our first introduction to this young blonde schoolmate of his sorry it was just so quiet yeah it's a pity laugh and one that can find some matter of kinship afterward now there's all these other hidden layers of what's going on with this character and why she's there but right now it mostly exists to establish their relationship dynamic that would be her pity and purely by the fact that the story is emphasizing their interaction it tells the audience she will be important to what is to follow and yes if we're tracking the feelings miles obviously has a crush on her too but even with this nice little connection the pressure is taking its toll on miles to the point that he's actively trying to fail out of school his teacher recognizes what's happening and instead of punishing him makes him understand that what is happening in his life is a choice thus she gives him an essay on who he wants to be as all the notion of great expectations hang over him but so often the question of who do we want to be is so lofty to a young person because the real thing that teenagers care about is what do i want to be doing right now and miles wants to be outside he wants to be with people who understand him and don't put pressure on him he wants to be free and having fun enter uncle aaron he's the cool uncle the one member of the family that miles can actually talk to but also someone miles is trying to impress there's a real aspirational relationship here he wants so badly to be seen as cool and like he's doing great it's a new girl actually you know she's kind of into me and his uncle wants him to live up to his cool potential too he even gives a piece of advice on how to talk to someone he's interested in find that girl walk up to him be like hey no this is not a good idea don't do this but here's the thing about all of it uncle aaron just wants to help miles do what he wants to do which means it's time for them to do some fun graffiti in the subway now this scene also does a remarkable job with setting up little key details and setups like seeing how miles is bad at climbing and setting the seeds of uncle aaron's future role in the film with the line and i also love this transition when he's talking about the graffiti and he says and then we cut to a super spider this one's number 42 which seems both a tribute to jackie robinson and hitchhikers it's sort of a combination of different ideas there but more importantly there's just this tenor of miles and aaron's relationship we love seeing the two of them together we love how light and fun it feels and what's great is that uncle aaron is putting no expectations on him it's the way he can feel clear and do what he wants not what he's supposed to do he can follow his own spark and in that way we see how these two figures uncle aaron and his father represent two competing instincts within miles duty and freedom but the truth is as much as we want to be free expectations are something that get put on to us like a seemingly innocent spider pipe that can actually change your life let's go god that's such a funny cut in here i've talked so much about the plot set up and getting into the main head of the character understanding their psychological space and now the main conflict of the spider bite is ago they somehow pulled all of this off in 14 minutes like sequence 3 puberty and thanks to the radioactive spider bite our young miles has some new expectations thrust upon him at first the powers manifest with funny little details but instead of using these new powers to be cool and do awesome things he couldn't do before hey the story builds more empathy through horribly embarrassing things it's just puberty i don't think you know what puberty is it's all conflict that feels real and human and mortifying remember we're not perfect graceful beings we're all idiots just dumb wet babies falling in the grass and the great thing about the puberty lines that he keeps saying over and over and over it's a puberty thing is that it's actually calling out the metaphor of what so many teenage superhero metaphors are really saying anyway it's all that teenage anxiety and tech it's written right into the fabric of the scene they're talking about me they saw everything he knows she knows they know wow she's super tall again we track all of this because of how miles feels and as it's all happening and spinning out of control we get another part of the metaphor here because he's stuck which means he's operating in a place of fear and paralysis he's clinging to the ground there's no leaping happening here just sticking he doesn't even understand it he just knows that he hates it but then we quickly get our answer to what's happening yeah it comes with a silly convenient joke as an answer is literally falling into his lap but think about it we've already established spider-man's role and how it all works but there's an even better reason it's not interesting to dwell on it any longer there's no drama no purpose to him not understanding what's happening any longer than the fun hijinks we just saw anything else would be repetitive so we want to get from point a to point b as quickly as possible because once we get to point b there's so much better drama to be found so the story gets us to point b quickly that's the whole thing they managed to do yet another whole sequence of setup and learning in just 18 minutes and 29 seconds how do they do it so fast sequence four the two spiderman we move into our next sequence by staying right in miles headspace notice how it even uses the comic bookie thought bubbles that guide us through his feelings but it's also directly impacting the plot there's this saying in writing that the next scene shouldn't be some preset beat in a stale formula it shouldn't be a step in the hero cycle it's simply sitting down and asking what would the character do next and it's much easier to answer when the character is well-defined like this one because miles is looking for help so of course the first person he calls is uncle aaron but it seems he's working on another job so miles has to go to his next option and that means calling dad but we've already established how they have bad communication between them so we understand his apprehension thus we completely understand when miles hangs up that's what good writing does it's so you don't have to explain things in the dramatic moment you set it up so that we already understand when they make the choice next miles falls further into denial he wants to convince himself that he's not spider-man that this can't be true so he goes back to the scene of the spider bite we see it literally on the wall the kid who wanted no expectations but he has a big one right here and upon inspection the spider is definitely not a regular one then he hears a noise well it's the spot you're gonna have a third act climax but for right now it's a place that's drawing you in to something else now here's a question how does miles just so happen upon a spider-man fight isn't that all the luck in the world well again the thing that put him into the spot in the first place was his uncle aaron learning about an engineering job so there is something responsible for this of course and also of course his spider sense is drawing him in his connection and so we get our first look at spider-man we get to see our golden age peter parker hard at work it's sort of everything you want from spider-man the jokes the confidence the charms the failures right in the middle of trying to make everything work but then we get a brief respite right in the middle of the fight spider-man realizes that miles has his powers too i thought i was the only one you're like me you get the sense of amazement but more also this quiet relief he's not alone miles expresses his fears about having to be like him that he doesn't want to live up to this but golden age spicy spicy golden age spicy perfect yeah but golden the golden christmas spicy the golden age spidey tells it to him straight i don't think you have a choice kiddo there's gonna be some real expectations to this but the hard news also comes with a message of mentorship and the support he so desperately needs right now you're gonna be fine i can help you if you stick around i can show you the ropes but of course the moment is interrupted right as they're getting along seems golden age spicy has to go spice of course [Laughter] [Music] okay golden age spidey goes off to save the day as miles hangs back but there's this line in the middle of the fight that is so poignant i i can't explain how much it affects me because i think about it all the time i am so tired it's this expression that we don't see enough in the humanization of these kinds of heroes this constant need to save the day the pressure the grind the years of thanklessness the sheer exhaustion it's all there and yet spider-man pushes on now this is also where we meet our villain kingpin again think about the strategy of the writing here the story has stayed completely focused on miles and building all the things that we need to do with his character we didn't cut away to some needless build up or introduction scenes instead our villain enters the story when he enters miles's viewpoint and boy does kingpin take up a lot of the view a man larger than life in every way the menacing manhattanite of organized crime he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants and right now he seems to want something very very badly all we know is he's going to use this giant quantum machine to get it and as spider-man fights goblin in the collider they breach the five dimensions and everything goes unstable spider-man gets thrust into the time stream and sees something the world begins glitching ends there's immediate consequences spider-man's been hurt badly he needs miles to finish the task well he will keep kingpin distracted miles makes the promise that he'll do what he needs and then he moves away but kingpin and spidey have a standoff spider-man tells us a really important line i know you're trying to do and it won't work they're gone we see the way it hits kingpin we get this brief second of hurt and emotion in his eyes and then and that's how spider-man dies really truly dies simply by telling his greatest enemy the truth he doesn't want to face miles is traumatized by this moment there's no other word stuck in that place of fear he sticks and immediately puts himself in danger after all spider-man always has to be moving but this is doom and so the prowler comes after him and there's this terrifying chase and miles barely escapes but what now he's not going to have a mentor he's on his own so far we've found so many details and scenarios and moved our hero around so fast with so much plot and the question is why well the first reason is because we're getting miles into a place where he can engage the main plot of the movie around him which in this case is a bunch of dimensional disturbances but think about everything we've established now we now have a mission a mentor who's gone a villain a conflict and even a mcguffin i'm sorry goober but while we're doing all that table setting i keep saying it's about tracking miles's feeling and his emotional arc so here's a question that goes with that what is the point of putting mentorship right in front of him and yet cruelly yanking it away almost immediately i mean we know the familiar trope about mentors dying but why do it so quickly well it not only makes miles challenge even harder it shows us the thing he needs in his heart and more aptly it shows what is going to be lacking around him in the following sequence reeling from the loss miles immediately goes to the next place where he can try and feel safe he doesn't even ask questions he just needs a hug first the relief from danger he knows that his father and mother can be that in a literal sense but there's something so much more dangerous about the prospect of opening up to them about everything that's happened you know how he set up the idea that his father hates spider-man earlier well you're miles so badly wants to tell him but he has to be sure it's safe and so he asks you really hate spider-man but miles doesn't get the answer he needs the emotion of the scene is so reminiscent of when teens want to come out or tell their parents some huge personal news that they're not gonna like and it all feels more of a disconnect when they continue to put that pressure on top of him with new pressure our family doesn't run from things miles but little do they know the thing he's running from it's the most daunting pressure that can be put on anyone the mantle of being spider-man which is something we begin to articulate so beautifully with spider-man's passing it's said that the best eulogies get into the heart of who someone is peter parker has always been one of my favorite protagonists because of how much difficulty he faced not just evil but in juggling responsibilities or having no money and all the while he always fought for a normal life he fought for love in the face of all these challenges he was a regular person just like miles only he rose to extraordinary heights and in this moment of reflection and feeling like he could never live up miles is told something he needs to know from a familiar face can i return it if it doesn't fit it always fits eventually to me how one uses the obligatory stanley cameo to find so much about how you feel about the material because you're talking about someone who's good at being a one-note joke in some things but he can also lend tremendous weight to what appears on screen hearing him say the words it's something that really hits home to this day especially with the fact that stan lee would die soon after filming this he gives the words of advice that miles needs to hear and in traditional fashion the emotional moment comes the great joke but that's just part of how this movie explores the range of humanity but with those words of encouragement miles begins with a real intention to try and be spider-man standing there in a store-bought imitation costume he feels like an imposter and notice that the scenery is reminiscent of sam raimi's first movie and the first jump that character does like peter he's going to try and sum up his courage embarrassed he tries a smaller building and instead he doesn't even get to jump and it's not just embarrassment he utterly destroys the computer chip his one promise to golden age spidey it's not just the failure of living up to him it's a failure in the most catastrophic way possible it's futile there's no way he can do it feeling at a loss miles goes to spider-man's grave again think about how this moment really isn't about plot it's mile's emotional journey it's the one place he would go the place that shows where his head is at how low he's sunk and how little he can do i mean he can't be wait does that say this version of golden age spider-man was born in 1991 god anyways as low as miles feels he's about to meet someone who will change his fortune you know eventually sequence 6 not quite on his own enter peter b parker we get the familiar one last time montage and what i like so much is it's not a singular version from the comics but a composite of a lot of the later storylines which were more sad and dramatic we see that this version of the character he and mj have split and aunt may has passed on we even see that he's jewish but once again they're making the information funny it's not a sad modeling affair what we see is that he's putting up a front and a plays for laughs but at the same time it's front for some serious depression so it still feels honest and real and vulnerable and more importantly we still understand what this character wants in his heart could you imagine a seahorse seen in other seahorse and then making it work now here's the thing the entire reason to switch to peter b is inspired because it also shows you that there's a different range to this character within peter parker but also it gives miles a foil that's cynical and doesn't want to be there someone who he can have a real relationship with and end up changing and thanks to the glitch in the quantum whatever machine now he's here and their fates have been tied together i mean literally this is like a total handcuffing trope where two people are stuck together and you know must escape also the following action sequence is kind of perfect in that it shows how hard it would be to be spider-man web slinging around i mean i would just be freaking out all the time and hitting everything right but it also sets this perfect counterpoint to the more elegant fighting that's gonna come later and even when they get away and there's still so much danger first they need to stop and get their objectives aligned because peter b just wants to get home but there's a chance that means mile's world would get blanked out of existence without fixing the chip i love the way the two of them pace outside walking up and down the walls trying to find a moment of synthesis aka getting on the same level and the only real way miles can get through to him is just by guilting him but once he does that they can be off i love his burger so delicious okay i really love this second part of the scene because in writing sometimes you need to slow down and really set up a bunch of important stakes and character dynamics and when you have a lot of exposition and negotiation to get through sometimes you want to break it up into two scenes just like they do here some of it is just technical plot stuff and establishing the name of the goober which is their fun name for a mcguffin but it's more about establishing their dynamic miles and peter b are attached in a fatalistic sense but they're still in a moment of dramatic impasse because they're two characters diametrically opposed with different needs peter b is largely given up he's honestly depressed and he just wants to slide into fixing the situation and the easiest way possible there's other elements he doesn't want kids he doesn't want to be doing any training he doesn't want that responsibility he only cares the bare minimum but miles he needs him to care so badly still they managed to make an uneasy agreement of dramatic synthesis which pushes them forward into the new conflict and a bus ride which is really just one of those perfect superhero jokes in the movie that's actually chock full of them and that's something to talk about too so much of this movie's writing is just endlessly strong gags and dialogue that's fantastic i could sit here and be like ooh the key is really be funny i don't know but the truth is that this is actually crafted stuff the same lessons of setups and payoffs and dramatic structure those are the same elements of comedy it's creating tension and relief in alternating fashion and having a dialogue with the audience's expectations of what's about to happen next that's comedy and that's writing too anyway they get to alchemax and now it's time to pull off a heist full of clearly articulated goals and objectives along with the way that they make that information funny step three i re-examine my personal biases they even used so much shorthand with the characters to put them on the same meta page with the audience this is pretty standard spider-man stakes you get used to it now of course the heist goes terribly wrong because failure is always way more fun but we see these clear hints of miles invisibility and shock powers the ones that he can't control by the way these are really great character choices that reflect both miles fear and his creative spark but i love the way this entire scene builds on so much chaos miles can't control his powers a new version of doc ock reveals herself the scientists all have guns and they even have to navigate cluttered desktops god that's such a good gag in writing action scenes we call this stacking the odds which means we're piling conflict after conflict after conflict you want the characters and thereby the audience to feel the pressure of this everybody knows that the best way to learn is under intense lifestyle and pressure but even with all that pressure they somehow get away with the goober and it leads to this cathartic moment where peter b actually teaches him how to thwip better but as great as this accomplishment is it's short-lived getting away from a super villain is a much harder task doc ock gets the goober back and they're seemingly done for now they need someone to come to their rescue but whoever could that be sequence seven enter the spider persons here we meet spider woman aka gwen stacy aka kwanda complete with another one last time montage i love the way we're establishing the rhythm of these now but also it's really handy because there's probably someone in the audience who doesn't know her spin-off comic book story and it's like we've really built this quick and ingenious way of communicating important ideas and what i love about her origin is it's not just about her obvious coolness but how much of it is really in her autonomy and how the depiction of platonic friendship is really important to her the biggest things we understand about gwen at this point and i don't do friends anymore just to avoid any distractions but really it's the trauma of her loss notice that important link these are two characters that have been wounded in their lives and they're coming to a new space to learn about how to be but also notice her character hasn't shown up out of nowhere there's a reason they put her dimensional shift one week earlier and then peppered her appearances throughout the story one reason is logical we understand that she would be working on her own and this is simply the point where her interests aka getting the goober meet with the other heroes and it's also because putting her earlier allows them to do so much great character and relationship building earlier in the story when it fits we don't have to catch up we're already caught up and here she comes into the movie where all these things are happening and it's not an interruption nor a diversion but a moment that's been built up to it's a reveal it's a moment where we can slap our palm against our foreheads and go of course we can also understand why her relationship with miles might not be on the best terms right now i like your haircut you don't get to like my haircut meanwhile back at the lab doc ock has to tell the boss that they got away but along with the standoff scene and the synthesis that realigns their villainy and goals there's a moment where we go deeper to understand what it is that the kingpin is really after where we get to understand what he wants and why he'll stop it nothing to get it back turns out the kingpin had a private life he had a wife vanessa and a son richard and he lost them but they weren't felled by a hero it's that they turn and ran when they saw the monster that kingpin really was they died as they ran from him in overcome with a mixture of guilt and shame he'll do anything to go back to his safe place of happiness including tear apart the universe to try and find a dimension where they are alive so he can be with them again now it's certainly a moral corruption that we have no doubt but we still understand the human core of that instinct the one kingpin tries to hide except for the brief flashes in his eyes back on the bus we get a quick but critical scene with miles and gwen talking it's not just about the relationship building it's about them coming to a new synthesis in agreement after the prior conflict in moving forward they've both been through so much and still have so much to figure out but now they also understand the joy of knowing that they don't have to figure it out alone it's kind of nice not being the only spider person around with that we transition to someone else who is going to help them along their way now there's something so profound about the way this storyline takes all this high concept hootenanny about different dimensions and all that and grounds it in reality but really it's just about relationships and looking at alternative versions of ourselves that provide perspective on the things going on in our own lives and here aunt may and peter b they get to see the very people they've lost i'm not ready for this it also evokes that emotional feeling of seeing people who have been gone from our lives suddenly right there in front of you they both share this sadness but she can't stop being on may to him she senses the depth of what peter b has lost and the kind of person he has become the movie is so good at this it throws so many jokes and bits of crazy action at us but right when it has a chance to get emotional it goes horton this really earnest and open way and when it comes to the plot it knows exactly what to skip over because aunt may already understands who they are and why they need help so the audience can just skip right over it too and turns out there's a really good story reason that she's holding on to for we emerge into golden age peter parker's cool ass lair and as miles sees all the aspirations of what he could be just as peter b sees a version of himself that was happy we then get to realize that all three of them are not alone once again we're hit with the one last time montages but now we're introduced to three new spider persons spider-man noir penny parker and a robot spider both from the future and yes john mulaney voicing the great spider-ham there's this hilarious layering of the devices we've come to see with small alterations and it's all building to this utter joy of realizing they're not alone either you're like me but once again i'll stop and ask why why is the story making this choice why present these characters all at once why even include them in the narrative at all doesn't this seem like a lot well the answer is simple because it's delightful damn it i mean there's so much joy and laughter in bringing these characters on screen who doesn't want to see john mulaney be an old-timey cartoon or nick cage doing a hard-boiled detective voice sometimes i let matches burn down to my fingertips just to feel something anything it's something that brings out this magical it factor but more than that it expands the very horizons and understanding of what spider-man can be it can be dark and brooding or over-the-top and cartoony it just makes for something that's so much fun but you know i understand things can't just be fun they have to be integrated in a story in a way that functions and that's why it's happening right now because when they come in and tell miles that you're just like me that's the problem he's not like them he's still scared and can't control his powers remember how i keep saying that the story is what it feels like inside miles head well right now we're introducing everyone and it feels so overwhelming to miles he's trying so desperately to live up to them but these five accomplished spider persons they're on their way they wear him down even though he still wants to make his promise to golden age spider-man even though he's still trying to do what's asked of him they say what he knows is true deep in his heart ready it's obvious and that's because he still has some things to work out on his own sequence eight family troubles okay there's two questions i see come up in the popular discussion of this movie a lot and i want to address them the first is like why doesn't miles like man up and be a hero and there's a simple reason it's because it doesn't want miles to be another in a long line of stoic detached badasses that allow for indulgent fantasy they want him to be a vulnerable person the second question is actually an offshoot of that first one why does he spend so much time refusing the call and i have to confirm a really important point he doesn't right from the moment where golden age spider-man asks him to do something he says yes just as he tries to swing on his own just as he asked peter b to train him the problem isn't that miles is saying no the problem is that being a hero is really really really really hard and unlike so many other superhero movies it acknowledges that it takes time to get better at things and there's so much aching humanity in the way that miles fails throughout this movie he's so vulnerable and hard on himself for this failure too when he's pulling away it's not saying no it's him falling and the truth is there's a root cause behind a lot of his problems because so many of miles issues with himself and not living up to expectations they have to do with his family life which is exactly why this sequence returns to this arena it's the part of his life he needs to solve before he would even know how to become spider-man we need to get to the root cause speaking of which miles is missing from school and thanks to this little adventure he's now on his father is worried he even calls uncle aaron because he has a soft spot for you but it's more that he knows uncle aaron is the person that miles is not scared of so of course miles goes back to him but how short that feeling of safety will last i have to admit the fact that the first time i saw this movie i didn't know that uncle aaron was the prowler was a real testament to the film's ability to keep you diverted to be thinking about something else as it sets up this whole thing so well in the first act but the second the scene starts the realization sets in of course it's him it makes so much sense now we get the few dramatic moments of irony before miles learns the truth in turn along with a haunting echo to hunt the young spider-man down you know me sir i don't ever quit oh it turns out this family never quits indeed but like the onus of that responsibility it now feels more like a threat than ever we get another terrifying chase where we see that miles is out of control and desperate miles barely escapes and comes back to aunt mays back to those who can help and console him he's so shaken reeling not just from seeing something scary but something full-on traumatic he watched for gankman he tried to kill me but turns out uncle aaron isn't alone and her whole sword of rogues gallery people ready to go after our heroes oh great it's liv wait isn't that only what her friends call her there's a story there anyway it's pandemonium we see miles doing his best trying to protect everyone and get the goober out but then he goes outside and immediately comes face to face with the enemy he doesn't want to face they come to the moment where they're unmasked and you can see the hesitation on uncle aaron's face from everything we've seen we know they really love each other but it's an impossible situation for him because he knows he can't not deliver for the kingpin but more than that he knows he could never ever hurt his nephew it's an impasse it's something that's impossible but he can't do it but no there will be no catharsis no team-ups no scenes of him joining the side of good only only the consequences only the loss the necessary action continues but the film smartly gives us a moment just a few minutes later to say goodbye aaron apologizes and offers understanding words and encouragement you're the best of all of us smile you're on your way but i'll ask you what does that really mean how is miles the best of them the truth is that miles is a combination of uncle aaron and his father he's smart and easygoing and sensitive and awkward and fearful and empathetic it's all the things that make him achingly human it's all these instincts and the openness to emotion and being scared that makes miles the best of them this entire time he is so wrestled with his humanity and yet he never put that humanity in doubt this is not only what makes him human it's what makes him spider-man but that new identity also makes him a target and it makes him a target to another member of his family there's such pain and seeing his father pointing a gun at him never has he needed so badly to communicate to his father more and yet never have they been so far apart so miles doesn't want to run but he needs to sequence nine the space of reflection one of the mistakes that blockbuster movies make is rushing past death it's like they fear it will be a downer or a drag but if you do it right it's one of the most powerful storytelling things you can do miles goes to his dorm to find some space to just get away and the rest of the spider gang shows up they know that he just lost his uncle no it wasn't an uncle ben type aaron was a villain in the ropes gallery but that doesn't matter it was someone just as important the fact that uncle aaron was a complicated person that's just something that's already tied up in mile's own life it's part of the traumatic fracturing of his own instincts and the kind of person he wants to be but the rest of them genuinely are here to help they had their uncle ben's their best friends their own loved ones lost at the center of everything they do is that endless possibility it will happen again and again and of course these moments haunt them all trauma haunts us but they are there to commiserate to empathize to hold space for miles in his loss then damn it of course you make spider ham the most fun and cartoony character precisely so he can say devastating sad lines like this the hardest thing about this job is you can't always save everybody i'm crying very much now but as much as these friends will hold space for him they're also here to leave him they need to finish the rest of the plan on their own because miles isn't ready he can't be in the moment he can't use his powers on command this only frustrates miles further but it's something he knows is true he only put them more in danger before they go there's one last conversation and he asked peter b when will i know i'm ready and then miles gets the truth you won't it's a leap of faith miles stews in the chair we know what he's feeling he tries to get out but his hanger won't release him nor his dejection he's stuck there silent and bound the way he's felt for so much of the movie but then his father comes to the door he knows miles is inside and simply thinks he's not responding his father realizes there's so much danger in losing him he acknowledges that he puts so much pressure on him and yet he knows they could drift apart like he and aaron did he's so full of guilt now and so his father makes a huge step in his arc and he does the one thing he could never do in the beginning of the movie he tells miles i love you you don't have to say it back though it's a gesture that gives him space that isn't putting expectations on him that is letting miles go his own route he simply wants him to know that he loves him and that he can go through things at his own pace and most of all it is the recognition of the spark inside him not the polished professionalism not the neat and tidy upkeep of this person who lives up to all the great expectations it's the spark of humanity the verve the enthusiasm the desire to bring happiness to people around him and to create these are the things that make miles miles and with the freedom to be that person to really truly be that person miles finds calm he finds the moment all the thoughts slow down and the focus comes in the music swells and the spark comes out it's a moment of sudden control but even though there's still so so much danger before him sometimes you just have to say hello i wish i could just show this whole sequence because i get goosebumps every time but there's so much elation so much joy so much catharsis and so many amazing details the way he's dressing himself his way with his shoes still untied there's always going to be a little bit of disorder in who he is but it's a choice and then there's the way miles fingers are still clinging to that glass he's going to have to tear them apart because of course he's still afraid but he's doing it anyway the glass is gonna have to come with him instead of vice versa there's no better visualization of fears and leaps of faith and then we get the most incredible shot but it's not that miles is upside down really it's showing us that he's soaring as if rising into the sky showing us how sometimes the greatest bravery we can do in life is just being willing to fall without a map he gets into rhythm as he strides and we see him now jumping on the very same building he tried at the beginning miles it's not that he's becoming spider-man it's that he's becoming himself sure he had moments of doubt his moments of falling his moments of needing help and seeking solace but in the end he does what his family does you never quit [Music] and that's how you earn your comic book cover now let's go get em sequence 10 call back the punch line coming right after the emotional high of that last sequence you might imagine the movie would want to carry the momentum but instead there's such a smart little reset because this story isn't just about miles there's all these people he has relationships with chiefly peter b parker now the man has given up and receded and currently he thinks he's going to sacrifice himself because he has nothing else to live for but he's been gaining back these small little bits of courage from his growth through the story which gives him a new sense when he sees this universe as mary jane and using the metaphor of bread he tells her all the things he really should have told mary jane in his own universe it's a way of making peace before the end and it's the most incredible way to check in with his head state before they all go into the final conflict which of course goes off the rails immediately i mean they all do their best but they quickly get in trouble but luckily someone's there to come to the rescue enter miles peterby cannot be happier and the relationship arc has gotten to this moment that so affected him he could be fully on changing his mind i love you i'm so proud we're all kids god jake johnson's so good in this the battle goes on but so much of this isn't just cool fighting it's about relationships coming together and achieving moments of synthesis it's an endless series of setups and payoffs come true you realize how much everything in this movie has just been leading to this huge ending catharsis callbacks fly fast and furious and there's even a really emotional consequence when penny nearly loses her best friend but together peterby and miles help get their friends home it gives so much attention to the emotion of these goodbyes but notice the way it's also turning some of these goodbyes into mini arcs spiderman noir didn't close up his feelings in the end instead he tells them i love you all and he does it without a hint of irony and of course in traditional fashion the moment is underlined with a joke but that's just how they make the goodbyes more enjoyable and then there's gwen in the end she did the one thing she couldn't do at the beginning she opened back up and made a friend now we've cleared space for the final goodbye but it's going to be one that is born in the fires of threat because kingpin's there and everything with the goober is going wrong peter b wants to stay and help and sacrifice himself but miles knows this isn't about saving the day this is about the fact that peter b is afraid to face his past life to go back to his mistakes and so miles tells him what he needs to hear gotta go home man and making it work will be a leap of faith and now with his goodbyes done and relationships settled comes one more and it happens to be the face-off with the villain but miles comes at him with no fear sometimes these things just click and they fight in a culminating battle kingpin keeps getting haunted by images of the past of vanessa and reggie trapped in the cycle of ignorance he takes that same rage that same anger and he nearly kills miles but here's the thing even though kingpin is alone miles isn't his dad is watching okay quick story note his father shows up in the sequence but i don't think it's exactly properly set up because as it's established so far we really don't know what his father seeing spider-man fighting fisk would really mean to him we sort of just react off his reaction i mean there's even the scene earlier which establishes his father as in the building but i feel like it needs this moment of showing us how he previously felt about fisk then realizing fisk is bad and then seeing spider-man fighting him right so that we can properly track his psychology and how he gets to maybe spider-man is good does that make sense anyways it doesn't really matter because the scene totally works it plays right into the most powerful thematic ideas and all the emotional arcs miles has felt like an imposter all movie and suddenly kingpin is there right in front of him and he starts alluding to the real spider-man but miles is the real spider-man now more than that he even survives the same hit that killed our golden age spidey and he does the one job of wearing the mask he gets back up and most of all he knows he's not alone while kingpin is the villain who always lets down his family miles won't let down his and as his father watches on he hits a moment of true synthesis and a gesture to his uncle the man who would never consciously hurt him he finally got some game hey the way the elements of catharsis play into this final sequence are just this constant series of payoffs things you didn't even know were setups all allowing for this constant sense of euphoria it's a testament to everything you've seen so far it's the most impeccable writing feat because it's the kind of thing that feels so organic i mean if you tried to reduce this movie to some super simple structure you'd be like again it's so unorganized but the mess was a bit like miles a little bit of chaos and it's all going somewhere remarkable hell the ending makes it feel like you're seeing the seams of the universe and the code in the matrix in the moment of resolution that comes afterwards between spider-man slash miles and the cop slashes dad it's just this messy it's all wrong and scrambled but there's still so much in this crossed communication of what they're trying to say but can't but sometimes it understands all you really need is a hug sometimes there's few things better epilogue just one last time and so we get one last montage for the spider-man who has been at it for two whole days just as we get one last look into our characters from the other worlds miles and his father have found a way to take his spark and do something communal with it and most of all we get the final notions of what this movie has really been about i always worry that superhero movies have gotten bogged down in the notion of specialness that heroism is about destiny and being chosen by the gods and the reason you are chosen it's because you're a genius it's because you're great it's because you're rich it's because you have magic blood folks it's no accident that this stuff plays into super gross eugenical thought or randian nonsense about simply being better than others those ideas are so far away from what real heroism is about this movie outright tells us anyone can wear the mask and that means anyone and that's the heart of mile's journey into the spider-verse it's about taking something that could feel so so far away and making us realize that it can be us too and there's so many different kinds of human beings who face the same hero stuff that spider-man does and in that pursuit there's so many amazing people who can rise to the challenge their strength and inclusion and teamwork and knowing deep down i'm not the only one but it's even deeper than the moment the characters keep trying to tell us let's do this one last time yeah but there will never be one last time heroism isn't just a multitude it's an everlasting cycle we will live we will die heroes will fall and new people will have to step up into shoes that feel far too big for them it will go on forever even with the post-credits sequence of this movie it can go on for someone named miguel in spider-man 2099 but these stories will go on forever because we will always need them too we will always need new heroes within that there's this belief that i really dislike in the superhero genre that origin stories are boring there's nothing inherently true about that statement they're only boring if they're treated like rote paint-by-numbers explanations and not what they're really meant to do because they're meant to be the kinds of powerful stories where you go into the depth of a person's soul their fears their hopes and their greatest possibility for growth you just have to be willing to engage it and make no mistake into the spider verse is an origin story for miles morales but it's one that tells his story through the lens of so many other origin stories too so many stories that came before it's a distillation of the endless myths not in just a meta way that's cloying or referential but in a way that feels like meaningful addition one that is often completely hilarious and ingrains all these important overlaps of these spider stories into meaningful relationships full of heart and thematic resonance it's a movie that makes me laugh and empathize and cry and feel like i'm not alone it makes me feel like i'm included and that it's okay to be scared and afraid of the things that come next you just have to get back up and you have to let yourself fall into it because if you take that leap of faith you'll feel like you can soar want to thank everybody so much for watching it means it means so much you know sorry for the audio quality we're recording this one on zoom right now but uh just really wanted to thank you and also a special thank you to all our patreon supporters you have no idea how much it means and how much it makes this possible so special thanks and here's a few shout outs to lynn yang and stephanie wu and bill gallagher from greg x graves and pressly and puzzle which i always like saying husband also special thanks to daniel palembo tempera and from relax the poodle in j6js yeah yeah j6j let's go back and kemper heron and brian frankshu courtney lilly what's atm garcia hey how's it going and then uh we have henrik.org in borf or with period i like the period one we have clementine webb and ari runin telly julian rodriguez andrew robles eric goldberg and bridgette god uh again your support means the world uh uh thank you so much and i can't wait for next time

Channel: FILM CRIT HULK

Views: 389,820

Keywords: Spider-man, spiderman, spider-verse, spiderverse, film criticism, film analysis, essay, video essay

Id: Q2aK-ZuyvJY

Length: 58min 45sec (3525 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020