Across the Spider-Verse - Rereview: I Love The Spot More Than My Own Family

 This movie has such a weird structure. The biggest oddity with it is how its supposed to be 1 big sequel to ITSV that’s split into 2 parts, and you can really tell. The first act is split between setting up Miles’ and Gwen’s stories, with the former not getting resolved until the next movie and the latter getting a sloppy resolution. I think that first act is genuinely perfect, its everything I wanted from a Spider-verse sequel, it ditches the kiddy stuff from that last movie and replaces it with an actual relatable story of Miles dealing with Spidey issues and how it affects his relationship with his parents, and his rocky relationship with them is contrasted perfectly with Gwen being a trans allegory, the 2 are united with how they hide their Spider-lives but they’re both in different stages of hiding it, it’s really compelling stuff. But unfortunately Sony and Lord/Miller couldn’t help themselves and decided to make this movie a giant circlejerk towards the Spider-Man fandom and trying to reconcile the fact that all Spider-Man stories across the multiverse are loosely based on stuff from 616. It’s such a weird approach and I really don’t like the meta angle of this view on Spider-Man. This movie and NWH are both trying to be big grand reflecting points celebrating Spider-Man’s entire history but they both feel too corporate to celebrate and reflect on that history in a meaningful way. ITSV started like this but it made sense since reflecting on that history was a part of Miles’ origin and I think it worked well in that movie as a contained thing, but this movie has no resolution for Miles, and I think it goes overboard with the crossover nostalgia stuff. Its resolution with Gwen is also sloppy, it starts off as a decent trans teen allegory that I related to a lot when this movie first came out, but it completely falls apart when she says “this mask is like my badge” with the trans flag colors appearing around here, along with rest in power being used for Miles’ cop dad. Like what did they want to say with that??? Lmao. This is an incredibly well made movie with probably the weirdest script ever and I can’t really say it fully works for me unfortunately.