Spider-Man: Universe: How you do it is more important than what you do
Author: Ya Ting
Editor: Takushu Kimura
The Douban score is 8.7, the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes is 96%, and the Metacritic website has a comprehensive score of 86. This shows that no matter how tricky film critics and movie audiences taste it, it is difficult to deny the wonderfulness of "Spider-Man: Across the Universe" (hereinafter referred to as "Vertical Universe").
RogerEbert.com The editor-in-chief said that in a certain dimension, "Across the Universe" "is the best movie I have ever seen." This evaluation also represents the shared mood of me and many similar audiences after the end of the film, compared to the unwillingness of the "super long trailer", I even breathed a sigh of relief after watching the movie: when "Spider-Man: Beyond the Universe" is released next spring, we can still see such a good movie again.
"Good-looking" is becoming the keyword and even consensus for evaluating this movie. Most intuitively, "Across the Universe" continues and surpasses the most iconic visual style of the previous work, that is, breaking the "stylized realism paradigm" pioneered by Pixar since "Toy Story" in 1995, and no longer repeating the creative standard of 3D digital animation "making untrustworthy things as real as possible". "Across the Universe" introduces artistic elements such as watercolor, pop, and graffiti, adds comic dividing, dialog and onomatopoeia design, and uses techniques such as frame extraction and delay to restore the look and feel of two-dimensional animation.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Not only the visual style, but also the advantages of the previous work, such as music, information density and plot rhythm, have been further converted into more popular vocabulary in "Across the Universe", which continues to penetrate the emotional field of the audience's heart:
Gwen's universe seems to be composed of watercolor, and the hues of light and shadow match her inner world that longs for acceptance but fears abandonment; Miles' New York is reminiscent of the uptown of the cyberpunk world that has been frequently discussed in recent years, using neon lights and wet ground as a backdrop for jumping; The punk Spider-Man Hobby is made up of collages full of lines, cool people who only exist in popular magazines in the print era. Not to mention the moment when Gwen and Miles are hanging upside down in the urban universe, when these scenes come to the screen one after another, it seems that no amount of rich language can reproduce the sensory shock of our witnessing it.
And it's all about Spider-Man Gwen of Earth 65, who says at the beginning of the film, "Let's tell this story in a different way" - how to do it is never more important than what to do.
And this core of expression not only exists in the unique form of expression of the film, but also runs through the characters and narrative core of the entire film. "Across the Universe" once again reminds the charm of "Spider-Man" in popular culture in the way of integration of content and form, and reconstructs his image, existence and meaning in the present.
What many comic book fans know is that Spider-Man is the first true teen superhero in superhero comics, and before the appearance of Spider-Man, although there were also teenage characters such as Bucky (from "Captain America") and Robin (from "Batman"), they usually played the role and function of "assistant".
It wasn't until the early '60s that Stan Lee brought the life of high school student Peter Parker to the forefront. Immediately, Spider-Man became one of Marvel's most profitable superheroes (around 2015, the profit related to this character was actually greater than that of Iron Man and the Avengers), and comics such as "Fantastic Four" and "X-Men" with teenagers as heroes also began to be popular.
When it comes to why the character of Spider-Man is so popular, many critics believe that it is in line with the evolution of social class in the United States at that time, and the consequent consumer demand.
We explained the origin of the concept of adolescence in Stranger Things: Molotov cocktails of adolescence. That is, "adolescence" is not a naturally occurring ancient concept, and after the Industrial Revolution promoted the progress of social productivity and the increase in the number of middle classes, the so-called self-exploration learning/consumption stage for 13-17-year-old "teenagers" appeared. The popularity of the cultural concept of adolescence is actually related to the history of the Kennedy administration's promotion of the American civil rights movement in the context of the global youth counterculture movement movement in the 60s.
The popularity of "Spider-Man" as a superhero character also began in the 60s of the last century. The emergence of this character not only caters to the consumer demand of the relatively early wave of "baby boomer" teenagers in the United States after World War II, but also provides a solution to the "rigid" dilemma of the super-British and American comics at that time, and younger readers are tired of the "tall and complete" stories such as Captain America and Superman spawned by the Cold War system, and are expecting a more civilian and popular life hero to appear.
Against this backdrop, Peter Parker really "should" be wildly popular. Stan Lee consciously set such a family background for Spider-Man, compared with Team America and Superman, Peter Parker lost his parents and grew up in his aunt's household, and the earliest version of his personality was actually a little shy and introverted. On the surface, although he can get along with his classmates, deep down, he still has to deal with the departure of his parents and the difficulty of expressing his heart to his beloved.
Having obtained superpowers, he not only failed to solve his spiritual troubles, but even used his superpowers to seek windfalls. And even if he decides to use his superpowers to "justice", he still has to go through the daily pull of applying for college and superheroes to save the world, as well as the departure of Uncle Ben, Gwen and Gwen's father. Many times he will be knocked down by the unstoppable "drop", than the question of how to use superpowers, Spider-Man will be more entangled in "why do I have superpowers", and even "self-destruct" willingness and tendency to "self-destruct" because of related events. Regarding the "mask" symbol commonly found in superheroes, Spider-Man's mask will also have the secrets that appear after adolescent self-exploration, and whether relatives can accept their own meaning.
Because Spider-Man was created as the spokesperson of the post-war baby boomer generation in the 60s and was popular among young people, this image cannot appear "mature"/"aging" in the social sense (that is, abandoning "youth" as he grows old and fully integrating into mainstream social standards), and can only constantly raise the "adolescent problem" experienced by Spider-Man in different eras.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
Maguire, Garfield and Dutch brother different versions of Spider-Man, will appear sunshine/cheerful/humorous/technical hands-on and other "iterations" because of teenagers' requirements for ideal self / social media requirements for ideal teenagers. But even in the Dutch version of the Spider-Man series of movies that seems to have less mental internal consumption, and even the family is so enlightened that he does not have to hide his personal identity from "Aunt May" and does not worry about exposing his "stupidity" to the least Spider-Man version of the Spider-Man series of movies, its relatively concerned and discussed parts actually involve the cultural genes that Spider-Man has carried since its emergence - reflecting on and questioning "natural" heroism ("Spider-Man: Far From Home"), honing the ability and courage to bear irreparable mistakes, Choose between controlling fate or being manipulated by fate when your loved ones are gone.
In this dimension, "Across the Universe" may have created the best Spider-Man of the moment, and the "resistance squads" such as Miles, Gwen and Hobby, who will appear in the lower part, have given different answers from the previous Spider-Man, but more current.
Trying to talk about the significance of "Across the Universe" to Spider-Man's teenage culture/group answer, it is actually difficult to avoid the advice that Uncle Ben left to Peter before his death, "The greater the ability, the greater the responsibility", although audiences have heard it less and less in formal settings. Disney and the entire Marvel studios industry are of course consciously downplaying the impact of this line, and "Across the Universe" only lightly ridicules it as an outdated old meme. This is because "the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility" is indeed an arrogant and outdated declaration, which cannot be applied to today's "decentralized" and cultural consumption atmosphere that emphasizes diversity and mutual assistance. But perhaps even more because, this sentence also seems like a motto for the future of cultural consumption of the entire Marvel and even the superhero genre.
What is "ability"? Whether the fictional narrative is wrapped in brilliant technological, class, racial, or gender issues, the capacity is actually violence, but the seemingly just purpose justifies it, and incidentally obscures the countless nameless people who have been harmed in the exercise of violence. What is "responsibility"? Is it the scope of power to use ability, or is it to arbitrarily shape the life style of the weak (without superpowers) from the perspective of those who already have power?
The "Avengers" series and even the entire superhero genre cultural works are not without attempts to explore this issue. The Avengers' brief "infighting" began here, but Marvel Studios warmed these issues with the timing of alien crises, the fusion of racial genders that fell out of thin air, and the sacrifice of Iron Man and the aging of Captain America. The answer given is that enduring temporary loss and sacrifice is the cost of a more equal future, or dealing with a stronger crisis.
Of course, ignoring and prevaricating this answer does not mean that superhero movies are not worth watching. It's just that for this world where there are always more weak people, and the superhero can reasonably exist because it can help more weak people. Sacrificing other weak people for the sake of the weak cannot always be a satisfactory answer.
The climax of the whole film, starting from Miles entering the Spider-Man headquarters of the 2099 Spider-Man Organization, Miles who entered the headquarters saw Spider-Man with different styles, genders, races and even species, that is, when he was shocked by such an "equal" and "diverse" working atmosphere, 2099 Spider-Man immediately proposed to let him accept two things.
One is that in the seemingly diverse headquarters, he is actually no different from others, and he has to accept his fate of "small sacrifice" for "great justice", and the other is that he was excluded from the entire Spider-Man headquarters structure due to unconscious mistakes, and compared with Miles' personal family happiness, the project that the headquarters is working on is the basis for future existence, so he has little room to bargain for his "sacrifice".
Miles' rebellion against these two issues ostensibly was an effort to save his family, but in a more practical way, Miles did not accept the logic that the strong imposed on the weak. As a weak person excluded from the entire structure, seemingly unable to take responsibility for his actions, and must be sacrificed for various reasons, Miles does not decide the value of his father and family without accidents. Out of the weak with superpowers, he will never stand on the side of the strong, rationalizing and even adapting the perspective and way the strong view the weak. If violence (destructive forces) can always be justified and justified in the name of justice, the liberation of the weak is far away.
Because violence never ends with good/evil in place, the horror of violence is that it is first and foremost a multitude of constantly functioning structures/systems in which there is a victim and a victim who has been bullied is likely to become a perpetrator in a system that he has access to. For example, in the plot of "Parallel Universe", the spot in Yu Jinhe Company lost everything due to a quantum collision.
In such a system, it is difficult to solve the problem of violence by disposing of one/several perpetrators, and arguments over positions often lead to more violence. If a superhero can really do something, it is to treat all life equally, fight for every liberation he can fight for from the present, and no longer be willing to be violently rewritten by the fantasy of the future.
This is also a powerful echo of "Across the Universe" to the psychological dilemma of young people today. We have witnessed the reality of too many scales of sacrifice in life, calling people to give up their immediate happiness. The employment of ordinary people has become a victim of new technologies and new efficiencies, the current life of individuals and the enthusiasm for chasing have become victims of "what will you do in the future if you don't xxx", and various marginal voices have become victims of building mainstream values together.
What "Across the Universe" tries to express is that for the dominated weak, without the immediate and present liberation, the so-called patience has always been just sacrifice. Further, what should be monitored by "superheroes" is not only the problem of "violence" falling into the hands of good people or bad people, but also how "violence" itself is formed, whether the weak who cannot participate in the violent confrontation system can protect the happiness and priceless treasures defined by him as the posture and existence of the weak, without worrying about the risk of their lives being "macro" disintegrated in the name of progress/justice/nobility.
And this is the reason why we expect superheroes from different race/gender/cultural backgrounds to appear. He needs the "superpower" of Miles' rebel squad, the real experience of living in society as a weakling, and the rebellion, distrust, and determination of teenagers to resist the essence of "elders" and "adult world life".