Let’s get this out of the way: I loved Across The Spider-Verse. The animation blending alone is worth the price of admission, the story and the characters are fleshed out very well, the comedy lands, and the details with which the worlds are built make it obvious the creatives care about this project a lot. Of all the movies I’ve watched so far in 2023, this is up alongside ‘John Wick 4’ as easily my favourites. It will be re-watched as soon as it’s available on streaming.
Setting all that side, there is one colossal nitpick I have and that’s the ending. Before we talk about that ending, let’s provide some context.
Back in May, there was a podcast released from The Ringer’s ‘The Big Picture’ where hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins discussed the role movies and television in our current culture. It was a very interesting conversation, and I would recommend listening to the whole thing, but there were two points raised that are worth highlighting:
- Television is now the subversive medium, a title once held by the movie industry.
- Movies are now being serialized as if they’re television series.
The first point isn’t overly relevant here, but I did find it intriguing. Twenty years ago, network television had to appeal to a wide range of audiences to survive; being subversive was a quick way to a cancelled show unless you were on cable. That is now the case for movies: the top-5 in domestic box office for 2022 were Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Jurassic World: Dominion. The most subversive movie in there is Wakanda Forever, and that is more of a cultural touchstone than it is a subversive piece of art. I just don’t feel comfortable putting Wakanda Forever and Taxi Driver in the same column.
The second point was a lot more interesting for this discussion. It goes beyond simply having sequels to keep cashing in on a singular idea. It is the method in which the story is advanced. Those methods are not the same for television and movies, but the latter is starting to blur that line. A very recent example is Fast X where the movie cuts off literally in the middle of an action scene. It is supposed to leave us with a cliffhanger of “will they survive?” but given the star of the movie is in the scene, and because it’s a scene whose mechanics necessitate that it is immediately resolved in the next movie, we have a pretty good idea of how that movie will open. Even if different characters were involved, leaving their fate murky, they still cut off the movie in the middle of a scene. It isn’t a cliffhanger leading to a sequel; it’s a mid-season finale. The Better Call Saul Season 6 mid-season finale involved a longtime character getting murdered in an apartment, and the murderer turning to the two main characters. The scene then cuts to black, and we had to wait two months to see how that scene was resolved, not just the entire story itself. That is a mid-season cliffhanger, and it’s exactly what Fast X did.
That brings us to Across The Spider-Verse. Again, it’s a movie I love, but it did the exact same thing that Fast X did, and it was end the movie in the middle of the climactic scene. Spider-Gwen has assembled all the various Spider-People, Miles is tied up and needs rescuing, and the heroes take off to go get him. ‘To Be Continued’.
Fucking, what?
Before dissecting that, let’s talk about two comparisons I’ve heard most often as to how this movie finished: The Empire Strikes Back, and Infinity War.
As for Empire, lol no. Yes, there is the big reveal that Miles is in the wrong universe, and it’s one where his alternate self is The Prowler and not Spider-Man. It seems similar to Luke and Darth Vader, and it is, to a point. The difference is that Lando and Leia manage to rescue Luke, evade TIE fighters, escape Vader’s ship, and reunite with the rebel fleet. At that point, Luke gets his hand prosthetic, and the team, sans Han Solo, assembles in preparation for the third movie. Cut to black.
See the difference? In Empire, most of the friends unite, rescue the protagonist, get him to safety, and start preparations for their next steps. That clearly resolves the physical conflict at the end of Empire – Luke being trapped on Cloud City with Vader – while also setting up the events of the third movie. It doesn’t resolve the emotional conflict, but that’s the point of the sequel – to wrap up the Vader/Luke story. The second movie itself is resolved but the entire story has not. That is what movies with sequels do.
The comparison with Infinity War is equally inadequate. This is why: Thanos wins. Yes, we, as an audience, knew that a lot of the heroes that got snapped would be coming back because future MCU movies with those characters had already been announced. We knew Thanos would eventually lose. That has nothing to do with the movie, though. The movie itself assembles all our characters in Wakanda for a gigantic battle with Thanos’s army, a battle they lose and results in half of all life being snapped away by the Mad Titan. There is a cliffhanger – how will they get their friends back? – but the difference is the movie itself has resolved. The characters went on their respective journeys, found each other again, teamed up, and lost their big battle. That there is more to come has no bearing on this movie. You could sit anyone down and Infinity War makes sense as a contained story from start to finish, even if they don’t know any of the characters. It is the first part of what is effectively a two-part movie, but that part is, in itself, a full movie. Because they’re comic book movies and studios like making money, Endgame was always following Infinity War, but it’s possible to watch Infinity War and watch a complete movie (even if the ending would be depressing, but that would be a nice subversion). The heroes lose and Thanos goes to his farm to look out on a grateful universe. The story could have logically finished there.
That is why Empire and Infinity War are not the same as Spider-Verse. Each of those movies could be watched, from start to finish, and they’re a complete story. People may miss Han Solo, but he’s also not the main protagonist. Everyone in Empire is assembled because of Luke, not because of Han. Everyone at the end of Spider-Verse assembles because of Miles, not because of anyone else. Gwen brings the group itself together, but it’s for Miles, for the protagonist. Throwing up a ‘To Be Continued’ as the heroes are leaving to save Miles is not the same as Thanos looking out over his fields, or Luke looking out of his Rebellion cruiser. It cannot be a full, contained movie if your main protagonist’s fate is uncertain. Could you imagine if Empire finished not with Luke looking out of the cruiser after his rescue/surgery, but literally as he’s falling down the air shaft after he got his hand cut off? Could you imagine if Infinity War finished not with Thanos sitting on his steps after snapping away half of all life, but right as Thor was about to land in Wakanda?
I am going to see the third Spider-Verse movie next year when it’s released, and probably on opening night. That is because the first two movies (second ending aside) were so good that I really want to see the third. In that sense, they could have finished Across The Spider-Verse in any manner they deemed fit simply because the first 139 minutes of the movie were so damn good. The point is that the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of movies are not good enough to pull that off. Sure as fuck Fast X isn’t.
One reason this is concerning is one of the hallmarks of Across The Spider-Verse is that it is, itself, a subversion of comic book movies, and just movies in general. It has non-traditional (read: non-white, non-male) heroes at the centre of the story, they go to great lengths to skewer existing canon, and the animation means they can take greater risks with how they present characters than with practical effects. But in all that subversion, they’re following in the footsteps of Fast X with how they’re telling their story. That isn’t subversion, but rather just adopting what is becoming a more popular cinematic trope. They didn’t recreate the ending of Infinity War; they recreated the ending of episode 8 in season 5 of Breaking Bad.
Creatives are welcome to do whatever they want; it’s their vision and their (or their boss’s) money. But wrapping up a movie as if it were a television show just falls flat for me. The Spider-Verse team windmill-dunked on their competition all throughout the second movie and then stepped on the sideline while heaving a last-second three pointer. Hopefully this is a blip in Hollywood, rather than a trend, because a contained story is the strength of movies. If more and more movie creatives start veering into this ‘To Be Continued’ path, movie-goers will be much worse off for it.
Cliffy's hell-hole 