2023-06-02 08:29:46
What do you do when a story has been told, spelled out in all variations, when there really isn’t anything left to tell? This is where the Spider-Man stuff found itself sometime in the early 21st century, after decades of having some spin-off of the Marvel series hit theaters every two years.
But then “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” was released in 2018, the beginning of a trilogy that wanted to do everything differently and at the same time drew the consequences of the existential crisis of the New York superhero. She put Peter Parker, Queens’ great white Spiderman, on permanent burnout time – and handed the spider mask over to Mike Morales, a loner Latino boy from Brooklyn. At the same time, the first Spider-Man animation film relied on radical alienation effects and made the protagonist’s identity, which had become questionable, the subject of the film.
It was a spectacular success. But can such an experiment, which dares to break with all traditions, be continued? Now Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is here. We ask all the important questions about the film – and answer them ourselves for the sake of simplicity.
Mann mit Comichintergrund: Spider-Man (Shamiek Moore) in „Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse“
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
The first reviews are raving about “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”. Masterpiece, art, greatest superhero movie of all time, best cinema trilogy ever… Of course the usual exaggerations, right?
No.
Is it more detailed?
Difficult, the film leaves you speechless.
Let’s try it simple. What is Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse about?
Well, from Spider-Man.
very funny Maybe we should just end this exchange here?
Please don’t, it’s less mundane than it sounds! The film is not just about a Spider-Man, but about numerous versions of this comic book hero, even about the platonic idea of Spider-Man in general – like “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, the beginning of that trilogy, the second part of which is “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”.
He’s easier to spot masked: Miles Morales (Shameik Moore)
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
Who thinks up these stupid titles? Nobody can remember that!
Yes, it’s very simple. Actually, only the preposition before “Spider-Verse” changes, the rest stays the same. And the sequence of the prepositions corresponds to a spatial logic. First “Into”, i.e. “into”, then “across”, i.e. “through”. If you want to have a head start in knowledge, you can already memorize the title of the third part, which is where “beyond” comes into play: “Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse” is scheduled for 2024 appear.
What does the new part bring?
Well, even in the first part, Miles Morales, a Hispanic boy from Brooklyn, met some stray Spider-Man lookalikes. But in the second part, Morales discovers an entire Spider-Man metaverse, inhabited by every Spider-Man that has ever existed, even all that could ever exist. There’s Pavitr Prabhakar, a Bollywood spider-man living in Mumbattan, a sci-fi fusion of Mumbai and Manhattan. Or Spider-Punk, who fights with a guitar and speaks with the cockney accent of British punks. The individual of the superhero splits into an infinite variety, just like the comic figure created in August 1962 has since been realized in countless incarnations, in the most diverse styles, epochs, characteristics, media.
Sorry, but you said “Spider-Mans” earlier – that sounds odd. Shouldn’t the plural be “Spider-Men” correctly?
Let’s just agree on Spider-Men, although that’s also a bit wrong, because there are also women among them. An African-American Spider-Woman is even visibly pregnant and still pursues a villain on the motorcycle. Like many recent superhero films, this one is also very innovative in terms of role models. Peter Parker, Morales’ predecessor, stars as the bleary-eyed father of a baby Spider, who he carries around in the carrycot in front of his chest. He even reads a guide, “How to Talk to Children So They’ll Listen.”
Also on maternity leave: Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) in the classic cliffhanger
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
Can you see the second part without knowing the first part?
That’s easy, because the plot of part one was so confusing that it’s largely forgotten by now – at least if you don’t have a PhD from Marvel University. But that doesn’t matter. Across the Spider-Verse is a film that sucks you in, much like a parallel universe you fall into through a wormhole. It’s fitting that the villain, a character named Spot, is basically nothing but wandering black holes, so his opponents often stumble into nothing when attacking. Once in a fight, Spot falls into his own hole and finds himself in a metaphysical nirvana inside himself.
Bullseye: Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) battles The Spot (Jason Schwartzman)
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
Black holes, parallel universes, metaphysics – is this actually a blockbuster or rather a kind of philosophical-cosmological crash course?
Legitimate question! In fact, the film could be used as an illustration of the concept of “possible worlds” popular in the philosophy of language. The hero exists in different forms, his opponent consists exclusively of holes – and at some point all characters move back and forth between subworlds that know nothing about each other, although the same motifs are repeated in them in modifications.
What motives?
The classic Spider-Man motifs that run through all Spider-Man comics, series, computer games and films: derailing subways, collapsing bridges, chases through urban canyons and – this plot element plays a special role – unfortunately also dying family members . After all, in the original version of “Spider-Man” Uncle Ben, Peter Parker’s uncle, died tragically.
So this is a Meta Spider-Man movie?
On the one hand yes. On the other hand, the web has always been Spider-Man’s very own element. Here he quite literally penetrates the network of storytelling, in which everything is interwoven with everything else. There he encounters the nodes of his own story. Just as the super villain falls into the hole he has dug himself, the super hero gets entangled in his own net – a net from which, of course, only he can free himself.
Well connected: Spider-Man aka Miles Morales (Shameik Moore)
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
Very self-referential! This is certainly all first-class material for film studies homework, but is it fun to watch?
Very much so, after all, being funny is also part of the job profile of “Spider-Man”, albeit mostly involuntarily, which sets him apart from many more serious superheroes, as one representative of the species once observed. In fact, the film does not consist of empty theory, but of sensual observation.
Again, that sounds abstract.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a spectacle. Like the first part, this one also dispenses with any feature film photorealism. The viewer moves through a comic-like universe again, but here it fragments like a kaleidoscope image into thousands of styles. Each thing brings its own aesthetics, often the most contradictory forms coexist in the same picture. For example, in a scene characteristically set in New York’s Guggenheim Museum, the main female heroine, a manga version of Spider-Woman, chases after a Renaissance version of the villain Vulture. She herself is designed in an anime style, while the vulture is designed in the style of Leonardo da Vinci’s drab sketches.
Stilbruch: Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) Gegen Vulture (Jorma Taccone)
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
Many scenes are kept in the screen-printed aesthetic of early comics, often underlaid with misprint-like magenta tones and slightly blurred. You could print out almost any setting in large format and hang it framed on the wall.
Nice, but we still don’t really get what the story is until now.
The plot is very classySch, the search for identity – using the example of a lonely teenager who is looking for his role in the multiverse of life. Mike Morales, who hides his spider-bite-induced superhero existence from his own parents, is sentenced to house arrest for his mysterious absences – and drawn into an adventure along the way by his Spider-Woman friend Gwen, who harbors the same secret he has to realize that he is by no means as unique as he thought he was – but in the confrontation with all the other versions of himself he becomes an individual. Actually, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is a Bildungsroman in comic book form, through the pages of which a movie flips, jumping back and forth again and again.
Kippfiguren: Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) und Miles Morales (Shameik Moore)
Quelle: Sony Pictures Animation
Which is the most beautifule Picture?
The teenage hero sits with his girlfriend on a weathered ledge high above the city, albeit upside down, on the underside, as only spiders can. But the camera has also turned. So you see the two heads from behind, their ponytails hanging up in the air, and in the background the twilight skyline of Manhattan looms overhead. The world is upside down: this feeling has rarely been seen so clearly.
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