spiderverse's (missed?) potential.
original title: me when I take 17 benadryl and start seeing The Spider
(wherein I rant about the 'Spider Within' short and tangential thoughts. I wrote this two hours before my lecture)
The animated short ‘The Spider Within’ released in March of 2024 as a companion to the June 2023 film ‘Across the Spider Verse’ dips its toes into the horror genre in a way that I found truly refreshing. The movie franchise is no stranger to creativity; The dynamic and sharp animation style of both Spider Verse films combines with an unconventional score by Daniel Pemberton to create a glitchy, fast-paced landscape that damn near makes me dizzy. But in between the brightly-colored action scenes, the films sometimes allow shadows of the unsettling to gather in its corners. The first time I saw The Prowler shrouded in darkness, underscored by a menacing instrumental that takes sampled elephant sounds and distorts them into horrifying shrieks, 14-year-old me was terrified. I held my breath as Miles Morales hid from the villain’s heat sensors, trying desperately not to be detected behind a piece of furniture. Despite its generally upbeat tone and vibrancy, the artists behind Spider Verse understand tension. They understand fear.
So it felt fitting to see them take Miles’ shadow, separate it from its owner’s inner psyche, and have it float menacingly over his bed, slowly but surely drawing closer to his cowering figure. It begins to grow in size and muscle, perhaps feeding off of his fear, until out from its body bursts a long, spindly leg.
And another.
And another.
And another.
What now towers above Miles is a monstrous manifestation of the creature he now shares DNA with: a venomous spider.
And what an idea, the iconic Spider-Man as monstrous. Spider powers as a curse bestowed upon its victim, morphing them into something unrecognizable against their will. A sentiment that is touched on in Miles’ origin story as it appears in the comics but hardly at all in the animated films is that upon gaining his powers, Miles initially thinks himself a mutant. A ‘freak’. It terrifies him to no end, and without a Peter B. to help him, he’s largely left to flounder on his own. The experience of one’s own body becoming a site of fear is the defining feature of the body horror genre, and I can’t help but feel that ‘The Spider Within’ begins to touch on some of that with its imagery. It opens up the potential for spider powers to be its own sort of nightmare, both physically and mentally.
Speaking to the mental health side of things, isn’t it kind of strange that Miles’ psychological state doesn’t get explored until we’re two movies deep into this version of his story? As much as I understand that Spider Verse’s primary theme and slogan is that “anyone can wear the mask” and thus will focus on introducing all the other Spideys, the first film also doubled as a coming-of-age story for Miles, something that we rarely get for black teens in mainstream media unless they’re Zendaya’s shade, if that. But in massively expanding both the scale of the story and size of its cast, Miles kind of gets…lost in the sauce? We are so busy swinging rapidly through various worlds, backstories, and fight scenes that there are few moments left to allow any of the characters to really breathe between the beginning of the film and the moment Miles is sent hurtling through Earth-42. Of course we do see him struggling to balance family, school, and being Spider-Man, but only after we spend the first ten minutes in Gwen Stacy’s point of view…a character that had relatively little impact on Miles’ development in ‘Into The Spider Verse’ but is now suddenly a secondary protagonist.
(Spider-Man with a Gwen variant as his love interest? How creative. Don’t give me that look, I know you've thought about it too.)
Love her down, but it’s an odd choice. Why is an exploration of Miles’ interiority relegated to bonus content, while the beginning of the second movie is dedicated to his white friend expressing how guilty she feels about betraying him? In any other scenario, the TSW short and the first ten minutes of ATSV likely would’ve switched places. The fact that these plotlines occupy the spaces that they do within the larger narrative of Spider Verse sends the message that there has been a shift in focus away from its titular character in favor of the ever-growing, intricate web of parallel universes. And I don’t know if I like that.
‘The Spider Within’ also does something very interesting with regards to representing Miles’ mental health struggles: it materializes them. I read some of Cody Ziglar’s Miles Morales comics last summer and found myself the tiniest bit dissatisfied with the way they go about discussing the character’s battle with anxiety, which has negatively impacted the accuracy of his Spidey Senses to a point where it throws him off mid-fight. His girlfriend Tianna Toomes (we love you Tianna!!) tells him to talk to someone and go to therapy. He does, starts writing in a journal, and then…that’s sort of it? It felt more like a PSA than anything.
Should we be explicitly encouraging black men and boys to go to therapy? Absolutely! While I do think that an out-of-whack Spidey Sense is an excellent way to depict Miles’ deteriorating mental state, I can’t help but feel as if TSW does a better job at showing the reality of what it’s like to live with trauma and anxiety in a way that is relevant to Miles’ character and the world of Spider Verse.
Despite all of the traumatic battles and events from ITSV, the embodiment of Miles’ fears and insecurities doesn’t take the shape of Kingpin (who killed his dimension’s Peter Parker in front of him), it’s not his well-meaning but overbearing parents, nor is it even The Prowler (his literal uncle who also died in front of him after trying to kill him not moments before). It’s himself.
Miles’ greatest fear, above all else, is that he isn’t as good as he thinks he is. That he’s an imposter that doesn’t belong (a thematic thread that moves quite cleanly through both films). That he’s not really the hero. The short film adds onto the motif of evil doppelgangers that starts with ATSV: the movie ends with Miles meeting Miles G, the version of himself that he would’ve become if he was never bitten who is now the new Prowler. Though we know now through commentary from the creators that Miles G is a heroic vigilante like his bitten counterpart, our Miles doesn’t. As far as he’s concerned, he’s staring into the eyes of everything both he feared: that he’s just like his uncle, destined to go down the same villainous path if not for the mantle of Spider-Man being his saving grace. (Little does he know, Miles G is about to show him that heroism is in his blood, whether he’s got radioactive spider venom in it or not.) In TSW, he’s quite literally battling the shadow version of himself. It’s an interesting parallel.
To that point, I’m intrigued by how relatively de-emphasized the typical Spider-Man villains are in Spider Verse. After the first film, Miles has become more than capable of tackling bad guys on his own (he even manages to briefly outsmart The Spot after a few minutes of fumbling), so his physical capabilities as a superhero aren’t the main issue here. Normally in Marvel films as of recent, the emphasis is on how much firepower you have, and which powerful people you have on your side that are willing to help you defeat the big bad. While Spider Verse does have its own big bad in the form of The Spot, he takes a bit of a backseat to Miguel O’Hara in the second act. O’Hara and Spider Society serve to emphasize and continuously poke at Miles’ growing imposter syndrome throughout the film, once again making his insecurities and others’ lack of belief in him into an arguably more important antagonistic force in that moment than the main villain. How’s he meant to take the bad guy out when there’s an army of Spider-People trying to convince him that he can’t?
I’ve said this already on one of my Tumblr rants, but what makes Spider Verse such a unique take on Miles Morales’ character is that they aren’t (to me at least) truly about whether or not he’ll be able to kick the villain’s ass; that’s already kind of a given. They’re about whether his fears and anxieties about who he really is will devour him from the inside out before he ever gets a chance to. I hope the third movie gives us enough to continue building on that theme.
Great read, I personally I’m a fan of the opening of ATSV because of the different art style and the way it shows that Miles isn’t the only one suffering from inter-dimensional loneliness. The themes you touched on I think will resonate much more in the third film as Miles’ fear of inadequacy has been finally verbalised by Miguel O’Hara and potentially realised in the alternate, anti-heroic version of himself. My prediction is that Miles will finally overcome these feelings late in the third film in order to save the day or understand that these feelings will always be there but it’s the way he tackles them that counts