Miles Morales: Across the Reference-Verse

Here's the paradoxical nature of Miles Morales as written by hack Leftoids, whether in comics, games, movies or otherwise: If Miles truly was his own character and could do his own thing, they'd have done so after Brian Micheal Bendis killed Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man (I know he's alive again because of the Oz stuff, but we're ignoring that). All this posturing from the first and most recent trailers for Across the Spider-Verse about Miles belonging, that nobody has the right to tell him otherwise and that he's gonna "be himself" rings hollow to me. You could've went and made a proper Miles solo film and instead you have him embark with the other Spider-Peepoles to REFERENCE-LAND.

I liked the first film. I still do. What Lord and Miller and Co. accomplished in the first film was take what BMB had pinched out haphazardly, and put the work into making Miles a more distinct character from Peter Parker. You gave him a nice character arc and it worked. From there you had two options:

1) Focus on Miles's own adventures completely separated from Peter Parker and his world. Give him new challenges, flesh out his rogues gallery with new villains or put a new spin on some classics, tell the kind of stories that are unique to him. The biggest one being Miles's relationship with his father. His father Jefferson is a police officer, who at the start of the first Spider-Verse movie views Spider-Man as a vigilante and prefers to handle things according to the law. Even pursuing Miles for the murder of his brother Aaron, aka The Prowler - before the film drops that plotline like a bad habit. The first film has flaws, yes. But imagine the conflict you could've mined from that in later installments. Miles secretly being a super-vigilante and his father either pursuing because orders from his superiors, or acting as his lone advocate against detractors ala Flash Thomspon.

Or...

2) Learn all the wrong lessons for why first film was popular and won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature - despite being a box office flop. And just rehash everything from the first film and hit the copy/paste button repeatedly for the Easter Eggs and cameos.

Guess which movie they decided to make...

This new film is just repeating the same beats but adding in the additional meta of Leftoids needing Miles not just to be popular, but even moreso than the OG Spider-Man. Despite how much he isn't and never will be. Sorry, ain't gonna happen. Peter Parker is Spider-Man and Miles Morales is Miles Morales. Not because I say so, but because Marvel itself says so. They know the truth as much as we do.

I believe the writers have unintentionally created a similar flaw that the character shares with his namesake: He's stagnant. He can't evolve or get out from under Peter's shadow because none of the people writing him are creative or talented enough to take that risk. Miles HAS to be joined at the hip with Peter Parker and his world. Or surrounded by a field of Memberberries to make him more palatable to the normies. Someday Miles will be left by the wayside in the same way Ben Riley was. A failed experiment that had its day and is just played out and tired. So he'll be tossed into the box and left to collect dust until someone decides to do something interesting with him.

Writers of old didn't have to gaslight or guilt people into loving John Stewart Green Lantern. Neither did they have to with Steel, or Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle. They did what BMB and all his contemporaries failed to do. Rather than start from the premise of [insert identity here] and create a shallow pallet-swap designed to bogart the rights from the original creators and their estates, they did the work and made those characters popular purely on merit alone. BMB took the quick and easy route. In the twelve years since his debut, why hasn't Miles gotten his own Master Planner Saga? Or his own version of The Night Gwen Stacy Died? Amazing Spider-Man #50, Kraven's Last Hunt, I could go on. But I repeat myself. Miles Morales doesn't have his own stories. Because no one at Marvel are willing to take that chance with him the way Stan and Steve did with Peter decades ago. Peter didn't get to where he is today on name alone.

I'm not someone who wants to just toss the character aside. The creative part of my brain sees potential in Miles Morales. I see him as the Wally West to Peter's Barry Allen. In fact, DC Comics's approach to legacy characters is something I always felt Marvel could take a page or two from. Unfortunately, no one as of yet has figured that out. And given the current state of the comics industry it may be well and truly too late.

But back to the trailer...

Then there's my boi, Miguel O'Hara. This ain't Spider-Man 2099. It's Superior Spider-Man (Otto Octavius). For the uninitiated, Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099, is the sardonic and abrassive Web-Head of Nueva York. Debuting in Amazing Spider-Man #365 in 1992 before later getting his own solo title written by his co-creator Peter David. Not only is he the first bi-racial Spider-man (even Miles can't claim that), what makes him stand out is the stark contrast to Peter Parker that he represents. Unlike Peter who became a superhero out of guilt for the death of his Uncle Ben, Migs is an abrassive, arrogant geneticist who fell into the role after a failed murder-attempt by a jealous co-worker. Over time, Migs learns to accept his role as the Web-Slinger of the Future. Fighting against the hyper-corporatism that plagues his time. Other than their shared affinity for science, Miguel O'Hara is a radically different character from Peter Parker. Migs will even kill his enemies if left no other choice. It's why I feel that Beenox's Spider-Man: Edge of Time deserves more love, because that game's story actually dealt with that personality clash between him and Peter. Peter's personal philosophy of helping those in immediate danger based on his own experience with loss versus Migs's more utilitarian approach.

Here, he's just an authoritarian tosspot. This is what Otto Octavius would be doing, not Migs. As someone who read the original Spider-Verse event comic, which was a hot mess in its own right, it really feels like in lieu of invoking Superior Spider-Man the writers went for Migs as the "darker" Spider-Man. When he's really not that at all.

Oh, and Sony? Don't make the mistake of referencing No Way Home. You cannot handle the mess of canon the MCU has become. Because Doctor Strange: MOM is the follow-up to NWH, and last I checked, it's established that being outside your native universe can cause incursions (don't think too hard about it because the writers clearly didn't). Meaning every single one of these jackasses swinging around are wiping out BILLIONS OF WORLDS. And no amount of special bracelets are gonna fix that. Cute reference or not, this is a thermonuclear plot issue. Nobody thinks about the narrative implications these kind of references can have in-universe because at the end of the day nobody cares. Based on the trailer for Across the Spider-Verse, this is comes off like a cash-grab. A cynical, key-jangling, bloated mess designed to cash-in before the capeshit craze dies out completely.

Despite all my issues, I'll likely still watch it. But I'm leaning heavily towards the high seas on this one. I was worried enough when the WW84 writer got hired onto this. Now you add all the aforementioned shit on top of the sore-ass thumbs of the Leftoid virtue signals, it's just too much.

Yoo ho ho, mates.