No. 64 - Across the Spider-Verse
Season three of a beloved Netflix sketch comedy show and a sequel to one of the greatest Spider-Man movies ever.
This is Actually His Ground
I have voiced my love for I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson before, so I was overjoyed with the announcement of the third season. ITYSL is an oft quoted series in my friend groups, so some new material is exciting. The latest season, released last Tuesday contained the same kind of off beat humor fans of the sketch comedy show are used to, but that wasn’t the only thing that felt familiar. One of ITYSL’s strongest elements is its absurd dynamism. The show’s ability to have skits veer into unexpectedly strange or silly directions was one of the things the show was known and celebrated for. This third season tests that unpredictability with some familiar territory.
Outside of the usual set-ups (office setting, fake commercial, game show, house party), there are also emerging patterns in the structures of the jokes. It becomes clear this season that a common formula is something like “crazy person disrupts a normal situation, but they reveal a deeper more sentimental element to their person before reneging back to insanity.” This developing pattern hurts some of the weaker skits, but there are still many skits that are outright hilarious with or without this conceit.
Possibly of my favorite skits of the season is the “Summer Loving” dating show sequence, a parody of shows like The Bachelor and Love Island, where it is revealed that one of the contestants (Tim Robinson) is only competing so he can have access to the zip line that runs above the villa’s pool. Not only is his obsession with the zip line taken to comedic extremes, but it features brilliant physical comedy by Robinson as it shows him, time and time again, flailing as he rides the zip line into the pool. Even though it resembles the structure outlined earlier, Robinson’s character’s sentimental moment near the end of the skit is nonsense.
Outside of that skit, there were many others that I find myself thinking about long after my initial watch and rewatches. I have listed them below:
“I Really Wanted Two Girlfriends”
The Darmine Doggy Door
Patti Harrison the Rat Mom
The Metaloid Maniac
“That’s not enough time to think of something silly!”
Paying it Forward
Jason Schwartzman
Club Haunted House vs Club Aqua
All three seasons of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson on Netflix.
Every Spider-Man, Everywhere, All at Once
2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse introduced audiences to Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a New York city teenager bit by a radioactive spider who decides to use his powers for good. With some help from Spider-Men and Women from alternate timelines, Miles was able to return them to their home dimensions and stop the dangerous machine that brought them to his New York. Its a simple enough story, but what captured most audience’s attention was its remarkable visual style. As a video essay posted by Vox last year claims, its look was so innovative and interesting that it caused ripples in the animation industry. Films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) were clearly inspired by Spider-Verse’s use of graphic elements, artistic textures, and stuttered animation style. Its whole aesthetic is a remarkable feat, so the next two films that were expected to continue Miles’s story, this year’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and next year’s Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, have been hotly anticipated.
In terms of visual achievements, Across the Spider-Verse pushes the boundaries of a cg animated film even further than the first film. The prologue of the film is centered around Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and you get to see how her timeline is realized. Much like the comic book this incarnation of the character is inspired by, she lives in a world that is awash with painterly washes of color. Background colors and elements change in between shots to enhance the dynamism and emotion of a scene. It was an utterly gorgeous sequence that showed why someone would choose to make art in a style other than realism.
Another impressive element was a new Spider-Man, Hobie Brown AKA Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), who is appropriately anti-establishment, anti-societal norms, and anti-pretty much everything. He is animated to look quite different from the rest of the spider-cast as he looks rough and jagged. Every element of his design looks more like he was collaged onto the screen rather than a cgi character in the space. Not only is he just an exciting character to just look at on screen, but give Hobie a look that makes him stand out amongst all the other Spider-people in the film. And there are a lot of spider-people this time.
The thing about Across the Spider-Verse is that it is much more ambitious than the first film. Rather than the collection of six total Spider-Men and Women in Into the Spider-Verse, Across has an innumerable count because Miles visits the HQ of the Spider Society where hundreds, if not thousands, of Spider-People from across the Spider-Verse operate. Across the Spider-Verse is much more complex than the first film as it features a sprawling story with multiple antagonists, overkill on cameos/references, extended sequences of overly expository dialogue, and a “to be continued” at the end of this two and a half hour movie. Instead of leaving a lot of elements implied like the first one, this Spider-Verse tends to over elaborate story beats, but that’s not the only thing it overly indulges on. I feel as though I’ve reached my limit with movie easter eggs after watching this.
It feels as though this film uses metatextual elements as a crutch. A whole stretch of Across the Spider-Verse is devoted to either making references for Spider-Man fans (awkward cameos and archival footage end up being overused) or explicitly making the “meta” an element of the plot. Miles meets with the leader of the Spider Society, Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), who explains to Miles “canon events.” Apparently, in the multiverse of this film, every Spider-Man must undergo certain hardships like losing a parental figure, Uncle Ben in most Spider-Men’s cases, otherwise their universe will crumble. When Miguel tells Miles that his father is to die in a canon event soon, Miles rebells agains the Spider Society. Its an interesting concept making the idea of a meta be a force to fight against and it makes it so that all these Spider-People are united by their shared traumas, but it is mostly used as an excuse for the film to showcase all the Spider-Man media they can stuff into the film.
Seems like I’m in the minority here though. As of this writing, Across the Spider-Verse is the number one top rated film on Letterboxd, as social media site for film lovers, and currently sits at a near perfect score from audiences and critics on Rotten Tomatoes. While I found the references to be too self-indulgent, most audiences members loved it. Many fans and critics compare the cliffhanger ending to films like The Empire Strikes Back (1980), but it felt more like they just ran out of film and cut it off at an arbitrary point. Still, there is one thing I can agree with; the film is dazzling to look at. Even if the story feels like its going nowhere until the movie ends, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is such a gorgeously art directed film. As I told one of my friends who I saw it with, “That movie is going to make one hell of an art book.”
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is in theaters now.
Stray Observations
I know, I know, normally I release my newsletter on the weekends. I just got caught up in a yearly ritual that I like to call “A Sims Binge.” Usually once a year or so, I end up getting really into The Sims for a week or so. It eats up a lot of my time just designing these characters, building their homes, and guiding them through their lives. With how many expansions that have come out, I can always find new and exciting things to do in the game. It just scratches a certain itch in my brain that I can’t help but find kind of addicting.
Since the last issue, the HBO series Succession ended and it was amazing. The finale included many shocking moments that I will not spoil here, but I was eagerly talking to anyone who would listen to me about it for the following week. If you want to read a good write-up on the last episode, check out this article by Allison Picurro in TV Guide titled “Everyone Died on Succession” (no they don’t, but…)
Thanks for reading! Again, sorry for the weird scheduling. Oh well! Don’t forget to share and subscribe!