Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Across the Spider-verse’ movie instead. To put it concisely: it works. Why?
Firstly, it deals with the multiverse correctly – it
is a huge, jumbled complex that can accommodate, well, everything, from myriad
of spider-people to a world without shrimp, or something along those lines.
(Also, Gwen Stacy as a Spider-Woman? That does not sound quite right). As a
result, whereas MCU is struggling to fit the multiverse into itself, Sony’s
Spider-Verse does not – the spiders do not control the multiverse and let it
flow as it is… or not.
Enter Miguel O’Hara, who is one of the movie’s main
protagonists, (especially for Miles): he is not so much evil as orderly – he is
a champion for inevitability of fate, (cough, Thanos, cough), and he and his
cohorts are doing their best to enforce this P.O.V. across the Spider-verse
multiverse. By contrast, Miles, Gwen, and their
cohorts are more about freedom of choice – hence their conflict with Miguel and
his team.
…The more traditional struggle between good and evil
here is embodied in the character of Spot, who, (he is a canon Spider-Man
villain, BTW), is trying to demolish the Spider-verse multiverse just because;
this version of Spot is chaotic evil, and unapologetically so. …Of course,
since this is a good movie, Spot has
his own journey to travel before he arrives at this alignment, and so he does.
What is next?
The delivery of the movie – there is humor in it,
drama, and everything else beyond. The style of the Sony Miles Morales’ films
is something else – I found it unnecessarily distracting and overwhelming in
the first film, and I consider this the case now. However, given the popularity
of these films, I am guessing that the overwhelming art style of theirs’ also
works. Anything else?
The film doesn’t have a mid-credits’ scene because
it has ended on an open-ended ending, pardon the tautology – the conflict
between inevitability of fate and the freedom of choice, (mostly human, though
there are sentient pigs, cats and non-avian dinosaurs as well), is still going
strong, while the Miles Morales that the audience got to know and love,
(cough), is still at large in the Spider-verse multiverse because he can. There
are consequences for one’s choices, always, but following/believing in
inevitability is one of them, not an exception or an alternative. Also…
Also, the relationship between Miles and Gwen,
(throughout this movie at least), is an interracial one, cough. Mind you, it is
nothing new – Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Zendaya’s MJ relationship is an
interracial one too, not to mention the actual relationship between the two
actors in question – but Hollywood follows its’ own rules when it comes to
interracial relationships, it seems.
Yes, I am talking about the upcoming ‘Elemental’
movie, which is a weak rip-off of ‘Zootopia’. The racial history of the U.S. is
a messy and a complicated one; these days, (the early 2020-s), there are still
people who have issues with race and interracial relationships, but the sort of
a vapid response that ‘Elemental’ is offering is no solution but the other side
of the problem; not to mention – I suspect – that it is the reason that we didn’t
get any sort of a ‘Zootopia’ sequel after the ‘Zootopia+’ mini-series had been
released, for otherwise ‘Elemental’ would’ve been blown clear out of the water,
(pun intended). What next?
MCU’s ‘Secret Wars’ mini-series, apparently. This is
MCU’s latest attempt to fix the whatever hole/damage AoS had inflicted on its’ narrative
– but that is another discussion, for another time. (Sony’s Spider-Verse had
wisely avoided any but the most basic mentions of MCU. Good for them!)
For now though, this is it. See you all soon.
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