It’s been long overdue for me to watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse. Though the Spider verse movies are not two dimensional, it surely gives a feel of that. It sort of brought back my childhood memories of Spider-Man: The Animated Series from 1994 that used to run on the television network, Fox Kids. Already, Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse was a huge success for Sony and with the latest storyline, it just validates that Sony animation can still work as a savior for Marvel when Disney’s take on Marvel universe disappoints.
Instead of focusing on Peter Parkers, here we have the luxury of diverting our attention to a new entrant into MCU. To me it gives me vibes of 2017 thriller movie, Get Out. It surely is difficult for a new Spider-Man to break through. Something similar to Get Out where a black American guy is tortured to an extent that it becomes evident that he is unwelcomed. But, surprisingly, Daniel Kaluuya from Get Out has given his voice to the Spider Punk character, Hobie Brown. You might even notice the British accent of Hobie Brown with a lot of references to British slang and frankly I didn’t get the most of it. But, it’s subtle and there for you to decipher the cultural nuances of different Spider-Men.
One of the other interesting aspects is that it brings all the cast possible from every Spidey movie in cameos and makes it believable for the audience that Miles Morales is no different than them and he is too destined to become a true hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You can see Tobey Maguire and even Andrew Garfield for that matter. All of them come to light while Miguel O’Hara from Earth 928B tries to explain the fabric of time to Miles and how they intersect and exist as a crucial juncture in each and every Spider-Man’s life.
But what I liked most about this movie is the way the storyline turns and shifts its gears towards making other Spider-Men as antagonists to Miles Morales. When Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse came out, Miguel O’Hara was always projected with a sinister background music and now we can see why. The flip side of it is that neither Miles was in control of the situation where he got bit by the radioactive spider from another dimension nor he manipulated time in any possible way that Miguel O’Hara accuses him of.
The only time altering thing that Miles ever did was to save Captain Singh from the Indian spider-man’s life, Pavitra Prabhakar, where he intentionally followed Spider Gwen to one of the lesser known cities, Mumbattan. A bit of irony there as Mumbai is an Indian city but somehow Spider-Man has to always belong to Manhattan. This entire sequence is so relatable because of Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man cameo where Andrew loses Captain Stacy while fighting with Doctor Conner’s lizard avatar. So, something similar to that was supposed to happen to Pavitra Prabhakar as well which Miles avoided due to his innocence.
The entire movie misses to show the main villain, Spot and ends abruptly only to give way for a third installment Beyond the Spider Verse where Miles would eventually take on Spot to correct his time altering mistake. This was a clever move because we now have the full view of the Spider verse and also know how it works, and especially to see that Miguel O’Hara is kind of a bully to other spider-men. It surely would be interesting to see how Miles would beat Miguel too. So, I think in order to induct Miles properly into the Spider verse, the entire storyline would make more sense in the third installment and I’m sure like me we all have that excitement to watch that too.