Across the Spider-Verse’s Uncle-Shaped Hole
Beware: Heavy Spoilers for Across the Spider-Verse follow
At the end of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Sony’s dazzling new addition to the Spider-Man canon, Miles Morales comes face to face with a someone he never expected to see again. And well, sure, he says that exact line to Gwen Stacy…and Peter B. Parker… and everyone else he reunites with from the first movie, but this one truly took me by surprise; after being thrown into a parallel universe, Miles is reunited with his Uncle Aaron, the man who Kingpin killed towards the end of the first movie. In this dimension, it’s his brother- Miles father- who is dead, so Aaron has taken his nephew (Miles G. Morales) under his wing. This involves a hefty amount of petty crime- based off a few of Uncle Aaron’s lines- and Miles G. has taken on the Prowler persona in lieu of becoming Spider-Man. With this, the movie makes a clear inference that if Miles hadn’t been bitten by a radioactive spider, he’d have fallen in with his uncle’s seedy underworld.
Putting aside what we learned about Aaron in the first movie- and his reluctance to involve Miles in his criminal habits- this simplification of their story justifies the actions taken by the movie’s actual villains: Miguel O’Hara and his cohorts at the trans dimensional Spider-Society. This lackluster group of Spider-people gave up on changing their narrative long ago, shackling themselves to a series of “canon events” that threaten the stability of their universes when broken. Since it’s absurdly egotistical to believe that one individual- in this case, Spider-Man- holds the fabric of their entire universe together, Miles decides to “do his own thing” and prevent the death of his father, Police Captain Jefferson Davis in his own dimension. Of course, we won’t know if Mile’s is successful until next year’s Beyond the Spider-Verse.
While I have my issues with Across the Spider-Verse, particularly the way it enshrines “good” cops as heroes, the Spider-Society is its strongest asset besides the impossible animation. It takes the core elements of any Spider-Man story, ones that happen across three live-action reboots, and asked the vital question: Why? Why does a police captain have to sacrifice himself for Spider-Man? Why can’t Spider-man have a happy family? Why does Uncle Ben always have to die? The answer, of course, is because these things happen in almost every Spider-man story. With Across the Spider-verse and (hopefully) its sequel, it doesn’t need to.
Miles may be an anomaly in the Spider-verse, but he’s also the purest representation of the Spider-Man in recent years. Uncompromising in his moral compass, he won’t accept the apathy displayed by the other Spider-People because he’s unwilling to abide by fate itself. After all, the famous adage says : with great power, comes great responsibility. Miles Morales, the Spider-Man for our times, won’t give up. He refuses to let tragedy define his story.
Tragedy has been the engine sputtering Spider-Man comics along since Uncle Ben’s first death in 1962. Since then, every major character, including the hero himself, has been dead at some point. From Gwen Stacy to Mary Jane Watson to himsels, death is expected and lampooned by the fan base. Such is the case with many other super-heroes; Batman’s parents were murdered in a Gotham’s crime alley. Both Iron Man or The Flash’s mother’s died under mystery circumstances, depending on the iteration. Superman’s home-world explodes, and his adoptive father Jonathan dies while Superman is a teenager.
Tragedy adds drama, stakes, and pity. A hero becomes relatable when they face the same dilemmas as a normal person, and death looms as a forever, existential threat for everybody.
Except…
Jonathan Kent doesn’t always die.
There are comics where he’s old, but in good health, at the height of Superman’s heroism. That’s because, unlike the vengeful Batman, Superman acts out of moral obligation. Regardless of whether his adoptive father lives or not, Superman always becomes the greatest hero. Whenever Jonathan dies, it’s to impart a lesson on mortality, on letting go. In its most famous depiction, Richard Donner’s 1979 movie, a heart attack gets him, something Superman can’t prevent. That isn’t the case with Uncle Ben’s death; usually, he dies as a consequence of Peter Parker’s actions, so it has a different effect on Spider-Man. By the time Ben dies, Peter’s already burdened with his powers, but he doesn’t understand their implication. Again, with great power, comes great responsibility. In the original 1962 issue, as well as Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, Uncle Ben is killed because Peter failed in that responsibility. It’s not a situation like Batman’s, who had no control over what happens to his parents. Uncle Ben died because Peter refused to stop a burglary.
Despite this, Peter’s a good kid; he made a mistake that got his uncle killed, but his moral compass eventually would’ve pushed him towards heroism like Superman. The same is demonstrably true of Miles in the first Spider-Verse; by the time Uncle Aaron dies, his nephew’s already committed to becoming the new Spider-Man. Miles, in the words of Peter B. Parker, is just “a good kid.” Miguel O’Hara thinks he’s naive, but that cynicism erodes any sense of heroism from Spider-Man 2099 in Across the Spider-Verse. He’s just a bully who gave up a long time ago, rejecting any responsibility for the tragedies in his life. He rejects the whole point of Spider-Man, the entire reason he inspires kids and adults alike regardless of his fictionality. Bad things come, and they will, but Spider-Man can’t believe that; he always has to be optimistic for a better tomorrow.
As it stands right now, I don’t know if this is what this new Spider-Verse duology believes. Across is one half of a movie, and how knows- maybe it’ll reveal that Miguel O’Hara is right, that Miles needs to stand by as the bad guy wins. But doing so would be a disservice to the audience. We live in a capitalistic hell hole, a sentiment that Across’s alternative-cool Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk would probably agree with, and it’s okay to believe that things will someday be okay in the world. At the very least, believe it can be a little better. If even our pop-culture fantasies can’t reflect that, what hope do we have?
