*It’s right there in the title, folks—full spoilers ahead.*
I’ve talked a fair amount about the Spider-Verse franchise lately, and it’s been a lot of love. In my review of Across the Spider-Verse and different character-related posts, I’ve focused on the film’s great points, which is understandable—I like liking things and enjoy talking about them. Today, though, I want to talk specifically about a couple story beats from the movie that don’t work for me as well.
The first is more about plot construction. When we’re introduced in Gwen’s universe to Miguel, Jessica, and the concept of the Spider Society, we’re told that the collider explosion in Into the Spider-Verse opened up tears in the multiverse that are causing various people to slip from one universe into another. And since the original collider-induced portals were specifically tapped into Spider-Man, there’s a stretched but plausible sort of logic that these new ones would continue to seek out Spider-Folks and their rogues galleries. So, Miguel and co. are going around cleaning up the multiversal messes inadvertently caused by Miles, Gwen, and co., right? That works. That’s a clearcut mission, and I get why Gwen, and later Miles, would want to get involved with that, even as they both have additional reasons for wanting to help out. I’m on board.
Once we see Spider Society headquarters for ourselves, though, we discover something much more grandiose. As Miguel has recruited frillions of Spider-Folks for his efforts, he’s not just going around dealing with multiverse-displaced baddies or closing portals. No, he’s also laser-focused on ensuring that what he calls Canon Events are not disrupted. There are certain events, he explains to Miles, that must happen in every Spider’s life, and if something prevents one of those events from occurring, that Spider’s entire universe is at risk of crumbling.
Okay, first of all, I don’t see how we get from point A to point B. How does “the collider explosion in this one universe is causing troublesome portals to pop up all over the multiverse” lead to “all Spider-Folks must follow the extremely Spider-specific Sacred Timeline (a.k.a. the Canon) to prevent multiversal collapse”? It’s been a little over a year since the events of Into the Spider-Verse. Where did Miguel even have the time to discover all this and compile his huge compendium of examples of these incontrovertible Canon Events? I’m not a fan of the pivot from one plot to the other, because the connection doesn’t really make sense to me.
This also ramps up the Importance!!! of Spider-Folks in a way that I don’t really like. It’s one thing for every universe to have a Spider who gets these powers and fights to keep their city safe, it’s quite another for those Spiders to be the very key to holding the entire multiverse together. Why do interrupted Canon Events for Spider-Folks imperil their whole universe? For me, it gets too much into destiny and pre-determination, and while those kinds of stories work for me sometimes, I don’t tend to be a fan of them when the weight of destiny is retroactively bestowed on a character who wasn’t initially painted that way. I like Spider-Folks as smart, sarcastic kids from New York (or Mumbattan or wherever) who get these wild powers they’re not really prepared for but do their best to roll with it and figure out what’s right. This whole Canon Events thing bestows too much specialness on them externally. To me, a Spider is special because of what they do, not what they are.
This brings us to story beat #2. Given the typical nature of a Spider’s story, most of Miguel’s Canon Events deal with loss. The one most relevant to the movie involves a Spider being unable to save a police captain at a critical moment—Peter Parker’s inability to save Capt. Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man is one of the examples used to illustrate this. And the thing is, Miles’s dad is a police captain with a complicated relationship with Spider-Man. Naturally, he doesn’t want to entertain the possibility that his dad “has to” die to preserve his universe, and he certainly doesn’t agree with Miguel’s insistence that he stand by and let it happen. (Which doesn’t even make sense, because the actual Canon Event isn’t just the captain dying, right? It’s the Spider trying to save them but losing them anyway.)
This conflict, along with the reveal that Miles was never “supposed” to be Spider-Man, because the spider that bit him came from a different universe, causes Miguel to lay down the law against Miles in a big way. He sends the whole Spider Society after the so-called anomaly, both because he says Miles isn’t one of them and to prevent Miles from damaging the multiverse by, you know, not letting his dad get killed. And this is where it breaks down even further for me.
I understand why Miguel is so obsessed with the Canon. After losing his family in his own universe, he tried to find happiness in another where his family lost him, and then the entire universe was lost. He’s carrying around a backbreaking amount of trauma, and it colors everything he does. And maybe loss is something that connects all Spider-Folks. But there are other things that connect them too. I think of the scene in Into the Spider-Verse when they realize that one will have to stay behind to destroy the collider after sending the rest home, condemning that Spider to a painful death in the wrong universe. Simultaneously, all of them raise their hand and volunteer to be the one to sacrifice themselves.
I love that moment, and I love that about Spider-Folks. You cannot tell me that Miguel has convinced soooooo many of them that 1) their loved ones need to die for the greater good and 2) they need to fight this teenage boy who doesn’t want to do that. It feels so antithetical to what a Spider is about, and I just can’t buy that he’d have near-total obedience when he gives that order.
I have my fingers crossed that, whenever we finally get Beyond the Spider-Verse, Miles and his friends are able to show that destiny doesn’t own them, and that Spider-Folks may lose people they care about but they never stop trying to save them. I did ultimately love the second film for oh-so-many reasons, but it was frustrating to have the story revolve around such major plot points that didn’t work for me. Here’s hoping they can land it in the third film and bring everything home.
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