Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers, 2023) (Patreon)

Another of the handful of sequels that actually improves upon its predecessor, Across the Spider-Verse isn't bogged down by 45 minutes of the "normal" world, since Into the Spider-Verse already got that business out of the way. Instead, we are almost immediately plunged into a series of abstract, painterly environments, clarified with a hint of irony by literal comic-book intrusions (see above). The opening set piece, where Spidey / Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has to stop an origami villain from the Renaissance (Jorma Tacone) from destroying the Guggenheim, not only establishes the increasing Fringe-like instability between dimensions. It also serves as a statement of purpose: this film will be a collision among various incommensurate visual styles, a blizzard of art historical possibilities. (The fact that the museum is featuring a Jeff Koons retrospective, which prompts a mid-fight debate about aesthetic value, is just icing on the inverted cupcake.)

Let me get all this out of the way right now. I realize this is a corporate product. I also realize that, as such, it can never seriously undermine its own commercial prospects, or even call undue attention to the way the Marvel machine is scuttling cinematic form and viewers' discernment. However, if we assume that the team behind Into and Across are working under the creative ethos of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, we can perhaps agree that these are blockbuster entertainments that at least make some serious gestures toward self-critique. Like The Lego Movie, that turned a toy commercial into a vociferous plea for spontaneous creation ("play") over by-the-book construction ("work"), these films are about as subversive as possible under the present regime.

As I wrote when discussing Into, I think these films are largely about treating superheroes as myths rather than IP. They are of course different in structure and origin from classical mythology, but if they are all we have for now, these films insist that we afford them the mutability and elasticity that we expect from the oral tradition. Spider-Man is the result of various permutations: different spiders, different "men" (women, pigs, kaijus, etc.). But that was established in the previous film. Here, the writers are following the social logic of this assertion.

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Despite the fact that a trans-dimensional being known as Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is Spidey's self-described nemesis, the real Big Bad in Across is Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), the leader of the "Spider Society" of Spider-Entities from the various multiverses. We discover that he has actually sent Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) back to the prime universe not to visit or help Miles but to vanquish him. SM2099 is charged with maintaining consistent timelines across the various Spider-Verses, making sure specific "canon events" take place. Miles disrupts one, but then we learn that he himself is a non-canonical Spider-Man, bitten by a radioactive spider from a different universe.

In telling Miles he is not a "true" Spider-Man, SM2099 calls him an "anomaly," a "mistake," and a "deviation." This has a number of implications. For one thing, making the villain the representative of "canon" is a way for the film to build in and address the resistance, corporate and otherwise, to Spider-Man as a rewritable text. The fact that this "deviation" is the first Black Spidey is no coincidence. So Lord and Miller are aligning Marvel's conformity to preexisting narratives with the toxic fandom of Twitter and 4chan. "Spider-Man can't be [Black, female, gay, Muslim, etc.] because he's just not."

A crew of Spider-Society renegades, including Gwen, the older Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), and Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), break ranks and try to help Miles. Spider-Punk is particularly interesting here, since he is the first to quit the Society in disgust. Later, he gives Gwen some much needed technical help, slipping her a disc labelled "Operation Bootleg." Spider-Punk is composed of fragments of newspaper images, Xerox art, and ink drawings, the cut-and-paste aesthetic of British punk zines. It's like he walked straight out of Dick Hebdige's Subculture; he exemplifies the street-art ethos of taking dominant narratives and turning them on their head.

This theme of "natural" vs. "deviant" Spider-Folks, of course, brings us to the recent discussion online regarding Gwen Stacy as possibly being trans. I think a lot of people will be more convinced once the film comes out on streaming, since there are quick frames that resolve into the pink/blue/white colors of the trans flag. As with the rest of Across's visual motifs, it is in constant motion and so it flickers across the screen only momentarily. But this is one of those cases where trying to make a firm determination -- is Gwen trans? -- is sort of beside the point.

Gwen's gender identity doesn't need to be "canon" any more than anything else. The driving idea behind Across the Spider-Verse is that our heroes are living, breathing artifacts that continue to be meaningful only because new generations and populations make them relevant to their own lives. Viewers could always produce fan theories regarding Gwen, but the filmmakers are openly inviting it as part of their ethos of broad inclusivity. As Spider-Punk (Gwen's good friend) shows, mass culture only becomes pop culture when its audience feels authorized to rip it up and put it together again in some unexpected new form. (This is a spirit I'm willing to applaud, so much so that I'm willing to overlook the "not all cops" elements.) The only perfect artworks are the ones that never leave our heads.