“Across The Spider-Verse”: Gwen’s Story
If you say what I just typed as the title in public, or any Spider-Man-centric spaces, you might get jumped. After all, it’s Miles front and center on the posters. It’s supposed to be a continuation of his story from the first movie. This has led to people claiming that, while ATSV is brilliant, it’s not “complete” because Miles’ story ends on the most nail-biting cliffhanger. Well, I’m here to tell you that the movie is complete. Because it’s not Miles’ story. It’s Gwen’s.
Gwen is, for all practical story purposes, the protagonist of ATSV. In Into the Spider-Verse, after a quick intro from the (soon-to-be-deceased) Spider-Man of Earth-1610, the focus cuts to Miles as we follow him into his world as it exists. He’s the one the camera, and by extension, the audience is interested in. Jump to five years later, and we don’t open with Miles post-Kingpin’s collider. Instead, the very first voice we hear is Gwen’s. From the dark, laying out the events of the first movie. That opening sequence doesn’t just recount ITSV, but it draws parallels between what Miles went through and other Spiders. But importantly, it’s Gwen telling the story.
What follows that excellently scored sequence is, similar to Miles in ITSV, a stage-setting. We’re not in Earth-1610. We’re in Earth-65. Gwen’s home dimension. We witness Gwen’s unresolved inner turmoil from the death of her own Peter Parker, and her unsteady relationship with her father who is (unknown to him) hunting her. We see her resolve, even in the face of a manhunt, to go out and face down whatever disturbance is going down at the museum (which she does with impeccable style).
After the fight with an alternate dimension Vulture, she’s face-to-face with her father, sans webs. And here is the first major emotional moment of the movie. She unmasks, revealing her identity to her father, who doesn’t take it well, and she is forced to run away from her home dimension with Miguel and Jess.
It’s only after all this, after we the audience have been put through an emotional wringer, that we pick up with Miles. And even then, Gwen is the catalyst for his story progressing as it does. She “sneaks” into his room after his grounding and convinces him to sneak out. They swing, they bond, they talk about the important and not important things (I wrote about that scene here). He only gets sucked into the main plot because he follows Gwen. First to Spot’s “lair”, then to Mumbattan.
When it all comes crashing down, she’s pulled into focus talking about how the Spider Society’s plan doesn’t feel right in her gut. It’s the realization that Gwen knew about Miles’ anomaly status and didn’t tell him that “breaks him”. His friend, someone he thought he was close to, someone he was ready to commit his life to figuring out how to see again. Miles escapes Miguel’s claws (literally) and is sent to where he thinks is home. Pissed off, Miguel aims his annoyance at Gwen, claiming she didn’t try hard enough to stop him. He sends her home, and she gets in one final stinger.
The movie ends with Gwen having patched things up with her dad, resolved to find Miles (after realizing he got shot to the wrong dimension), and recruiting her own “Spider Society” of sorts. The final words spoken in the movie are by her. The last face we see in the movie is hers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here saying that Miles has no impact the plot at all (a la Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark). He’s the first one who meets Spot. If you believe Spot’s retelling, he hit Spot with a bagel. Most importantly, Spot levels up so that he can be a worthy opponent for Miles and not just a “villain of the week.” Miles is important and the choices he makes do have plot relevance. That being said, Gwen is the one with emotional conflict. The pull of loyalty to a friend vs conformity to an organization that “saved her” from a bad situation. The arc of her relationship with her father. Hell, even the conflict within herself. At the start of the movie she says, “I always wanted to be in a band. Guess I just never found the right one.” She feels alone, cut off from everyone. Her civilian friends who don’t understand what it is to wear the mask, and her Spider friends who exist in different dimensions. That’s why she joins up with the Spider Society in the first place. She’s searching for a place to be, and a gaggle of Spiders seems like the best choice.
By the end of the movie, after 2 hours and 12 minutes of intense and (sometimes) painful character development, that mood has shifted. “I never found the right band to join. So, I started my own.” She has found the belonging that she craved at the start of the movie in what is an incredibly emotional full-circle moment (again accompanied by a banging score. Daniel Pemberton was robbed).
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is brilliant and beautiful. In my (not-so) humble opinion, the best superhero movie ever made. Part of the reason for this is that it manages to tell, not one, but two simultaneously gripping and emotionally engaging stories with its two main leads at the same time.
