It has been a year and four months. Or maybe, it’s been four years and six months. It depends on which version of reality you inhabit. For Miles Morales, it has been a little more than a year since the events of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, where he worked with Peter B. Parker, Gwen Stacy, Peni Parker, Spider-Ham, and Spider-Man Noir to destroy the reality scrambling quantum tunneling destroyer build by Dr. Olivia Octavius for The Kingpin. After everyone had returned to their parallel realities, Miles thought he’d never see them again. That was until Gwen appeared in his room, offering to take him on an adventure.
For us, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse was a groundbreaking foray into the increasingly predictable superhero genre. It was different from the start. It wasn’t part of the multi-billion dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Disney didn’t produce it. It wasn’t live-action; it was animated. Many people, Eve and myself included, walked into the theater with more than a bit of skepticism. What we found was “very creative,” “felt truly unique and thoroughly entertaining,” and did “an amazing job passing the Spider-Man torch.” We were not alone in our assessment. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, scoring two BAFTAs, a Grammy, a Golden Globe, and no less than seven Annie Awards.
This month we are tackling part two of what is now a three-part series. In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Miles learns how vast the Spider-verse is. Along the way, he discovers that he is unique among all the Spider-people. He is the anomaly, and that is not good.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse brings back the voice talents of Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker, and Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy. It also introduces a host of new voices, including Jason Schwartzman as Spot and Oscar Issac as Miguel O’Hara. It is directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, with Daniel Pemberton returning to score the movie.
Initial Impressions
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had some big shoes to fill, that’s for sure. It may have filled them, but it’d didn’t do it in any spectacular way. The phrase “more of the same” came to both Eve’s and my minds as we watched and discussed the movie. Of course, the “same” was award-winning originality with incredible visuals and a soundtrack that won multiple awards all on its own. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse set a very high bar. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse delivered the same quality of visuals and music; it didn’t exceed it the way that we’d hoped.
Let’s get this out of the way: WE LIKED IT. It would be best if you took any faults we may find with a grain of salt. We saw and heard from more people this time, naysaying the movie. While it did not garner the near-universal acclaim that the first one did, it still sits at a 96% critic score and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The score still fits very well with the movie. Pemberton does a great job mixing the music into the scenes while retaining the personality of each spider-person and the underlying melodies of each. The music may be better than the first, if only because the composer had to provide individual themes for so very many spider-people.
The one thing that caught Eve and me by [unwelcome] surprise was that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ended with a cliffhanger. Neither of us had heard any inkling of the ending. What makes that a negative is that the story didn’t resolve ANY of its plot lines by the movie’s end; it all carries over into the final film, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, with a release date set for March 29th, 2024.
Something else that surprised us was that much of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse focused more on Gwen Stacy than Miles Morales. They did a good job with it, too. By the end of the movie, we have a lot of insight into Gwen’s life and motivations, which play a significant role in her actions in this movie and, presumably, part three.
I was off-put by the sheer number of downright silly spider-variants. While they are all true to the comics, their very existence failed to support the core mechanic of the movie: each spider-person had to share certain canonical events. All had to lose a father figure or a best friend. They all had to learn the lesson common to all spider-people: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Our brief introduction to spider-cat, spider-rex, and spider-buggy gives us no reason to believe they can fulfill the ever-so-important-canon that drives Miquel O’Hara.
The Spider-verse Canon
We go a bit deeper into this idea, including discussing how it is presented in the movie because it is vital to the story.
Canon is a well-known but poorly understood concept among fans of the various franchises. Whenever a new offering of any established franchise, particularly reboots, is put out, emotionally invested fans want to fit this new information into the puzzle they have assembled of the fictional universe. The information that fits into the puzzle is called canon, information that does not start arguments. Star Wars, Star Trek, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are all constructed of “accepted” canon.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, introduces us to Miguel O’Hara. Miguel had figured out dimensional travel and sought to undo one of his canonical tragedies. His success inadvertently led to the destruction of his adopted reality. Now he heads a team of hundreds of Spider-people who have taken responsibility for the multiverses canon—specifically concerning the Spider-men, -women, and -things. He is a zealot. No matter his actions, they are for the greater good–Miguel O’Hara is the GOOD GUY, and don’t tell him any different.
Here is where it gets interesting for those following all the MCU products. Many of the multiversal references throughout Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are directly from other MCU and Sony properties, confirming at least tangential relations. Whether or not they will ever officially cross over is more in the lawyer’s hands than anything else.
It gets murky here. Miguel has seen that the disruption of any of these canon events can lead to the destruction of the individual universes, the same way we saw in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. We may discover that Miguel misinterprets the data, but there is no doubt that Miguel is convinced he and his team are saving trillions of lives.
Miles Morales (Remember him? Our protagonist?) It turns out that he is the anomaly. Every reality only gets one Spider-Man, and his reality already had Peter Parker. When Kingpin’s experiments started mixing up the realities, the spider from another reality came to Miles’s and bit him. As a result, Miles inadvertently violated canon. Not only is he a Spider-Man where there should be none (since Kingpin killed Peter,) but the radioactive spider that bit him was no longer in Reality 42 to bite that reality’s intended spider-person. That leads to Reality 42 having no Spider-man, thus descending into a spiraling dystopia.
Both canon and zealot have religious origins and overtones. Zealot, in particular, is used by groups to malign their opponents, particularly when they subscribe to things like tradition or “out dated” beliefs. As evangelical Christians who oppose the LGBT agenda, we see this frequently. Our opponents call us homophobes and accuse us of senseless hate. We have to remember two things:
1) Our identity is in Christ, first and foremost. Everything else we are is secondary. Faith is not something that comes easily.
Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
We must not be afraid to invest our entire selves into the reality of the Word of God. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, yes, but God inspired it:
All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
We don’t have all the answers, but what we know can be trusted with our lives and deaths. We will face this abuse for our faith, but we can rejoice in it!
2) The people who belittle us for our crazy faith are literally unable to see the truth. These mysteries of God are hidden from any but those inhabited by the Holy Spirit.
The emphasis on the canon of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse reminded Eve of Mercedes Lackey‘s Five Hundred Kingdoms series. In it, the fairy tale Tradition can force a person to live out the fairy tale that matches that person’s circumstances. For example, if your father dies and leaves you in the care of a stepmother, you might end up being a Cinderella. It’s worth checking out. Fair warning, though, Ms. Lackey is very pagan.
Saving One Person vs. Saving the World
In our discussion of Stowaway , we discussed the Trolley Problem (and the lifeboat dilemma.) As a reminder, the trolley problem is this: is it ethical to intentionally kill one person to save the lives of multiple people?
That is the ethical question that Miguel O’Hara faces in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. If he and his team do not ensure canonical events happen as they must, then entire realities will be destroyed. Most often, those events that must happen are formative yet adverse events for the Spider-man of any given world, such as the death of a father figure.
As we discussed in episode 116, we, as Christians, believe in the utter sovereignty of God. We don’t have to choose between what is right now verse what is right later. God tells us to trust in Him and always do what is right.
Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before him. God is our refuge. Selah (Psalm 62:8)
Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:34)
God has told us he is in control, and we don’t need to worry about such things.
Of course, God’s sovereignty doesn’t mean we have no responsibilities. God does not call us to replace Him but to work within His creation to be proper stewards.
Parenting Fledglings
While I saw the entire canon issue as the most significant theme, Eve (much to my surprise) felt that raising kids (particularly teenagers) was a central theme, if not the main theme. I completely missed it!
Both Miles and Gwen are struggling with their relationship with their parents. Keeping the secret of their superhero identities has ruined Gwen’s relationship with her father and is well on the way to ruining Miles’s. With the wisdom of age and 20/20 hindsight, Eve and I look back and say, “if that happened to me, the first person I’d tell would be my parents!” But keeping something like this from your parents is a bad idea. Not only do you not get to benefit from their wisdom, but you are neither honoring nor respecting them:
Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12)
In Across the Spider-Verse, Miles’s parents call out the disrespect of his friends, calling them by their first names. This is part of a theme highlighting the child and parent gap. As is typical, Miles’s misadventures result in his parents disciplining him. The Word speaks to discipline many times, some of which are here:
The one who will not use the rod hates his son, but the one who loves him disciplines him diligently. (Proverbs 13:24)
A rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a youth left to himself is a disgrace to his mother. (Proverbs 29:15)
Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline—which all receive—then you are illegitimate children and not sons. (Hebrews 12:7-8)
It would be nice if the heavy-handed hammering of the parental theme that Eve noticed in this movie were a foreshadowing of the importance of an elder’s wisdom playing a critical role in the third movie of the Spider-verse trilogy.
Who is the Villain?
There is a solid argument to be made that we live in a post-truth society, where entire groups of people refuse to believe a documented truth because it conflicts with their desires. Consequently, everyone’s “personal” truth is valid, regardless of if it contradicts another person’s truth.
In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, we see a conflict of these personal truths. In this case, we see Miguel believing that Miles is the threat, while Miles believes Spot is the villain.
In fact, the truth is that they are all villains (if they were real, anyway.) We all are villains. Without the saving grace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, we cannot be anything but villains. Only through our triune God can we rise up and become heroes. Through Him, we become princes and princesses of Heaven, brothers and sisters in Christ, made perfect—super even—in Him. Our truth, that Christ died for our sins and offered us eternal life through his blood, is not just our truth—it is THE TRUTH.
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:6-7)
This is not just OUR truth; this is EVERYONE’S truth. The only one that matters.
Are You Just Watching? is listener supported. Special thanks to our current patrons: Isaias Santillano, Craig Hardee, Stephen Brown II, David Lefton, and Peter Chapman for their generous support. We can't continue to share critical thinking for the entertained Christian without your financial help, so please head on over to our Patreon page and become one of our supporting patrons! What did you think of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? We would like to know, even if just your reactions to the trailer or the topics we shared in this episode. Or what general critical-thinking and entertainment thoughts or questions do you have? Would you like to suggest a movie or TV show for us to give a Christian movie review with critical thinking?Please support the podcast!
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