As a kid Spider-Man my favorite superhero. I liked whatever cartoons he appeared in and, as a teen, loved the Sam Raimi live action movies starring Tobey Maguire. This was indeed partly because he was flawed, a Marvel specialty, instead of an archetypal, near-perfect character like Superman and Batman from DC Comics. This was in the pre-MCU days and I wasn't someone who actually read comic books, so I only knew a handful of superheroes, i.e. the popular ones.
Spidey, back then limited to Peter Parker, is an awkward, smart teenager who happened to be blessed (and cursed) by special powers. He can help people around him ('a friendly neighborhood Spiderman') but can't let even his loved ones know who he is, why he's so frequently late and why he seems such a mess in his personal life. It's intentional of course, people who know end up in harm's way. This element of Spider-Man is crucial, his self-sacrificial nature is why he's nearly always alone. To be honest it might even be more central to his character than his actual abilities. Even if I didn't have his powers or his problems, I connected with Peter. He was the type of hero I'd want to be. Part of this was unconscious, I didn't at the time know Responsibility was my #1 strength. Our mutual general dorkiness contributed too.
The ending of the O.G. Spider-Man (2002) captured this as well as can be done, btw.
So I've liked Spider-Man for a long time. As I get older, however, who I empathize with most in these stories has been changing. Take the newest Spider-Man movie for example.
In 2023 the second 'Spider-Verse' animated film was released, this one called Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (the first was Into the Spider-Verse from 2018). I didn't see it in theaters, like just about everything else, and finally caught it at home on Netflix this week. It truly is a great film (#30 on IMDB currently), with a complex plot (too much so?) further exploring the concept of the multiverse, with its endless iterations of our hero, all within the confines of something that still feels through-and-through like Spider-Man. Each of these Spidey versions has their own issues, though they end up being all too familiar in the end. Not enough can be said about the animation, blending so many characters and styles together, but it should be said this perhaps the flashiest, most visually stimulating movie I've ever seen. It's incredibly funny too, I'm still laughing at the Mumbattan sequence ('tea tea' and 'bread bread'), while hitting hard on the sentimental stuff. If you didn't know, the protagonist here isn't Peter Parker at all (though he does appear), it's a new kid named Miles Morales.
Miles is a half-black, half-Puerto Rican teen who also, naturally, lives in New York. While he looks different and his nuclear family is intact, he's all Spider-Man where it counts. He was bit by a different radioactive spider, he's smart and courageous and has a big heart. But nobody close to him, from his world, can know. One of the cooler aspects of these Spider-Verse films is that Spidey actually gets to interact with others just like him, who get him, who know what he's going through. Many, many others. But that's not actually what I want to talk about. I want to discuss Miles' parents. They're who I keep coming back to when thinking about this movie.
Watch this:
My wife and I are nowhere near close to the teenage years, thankfully. But I can already get frustrated at times by lack from appreciation from our kids. That'll continue to happen, certainly. There will always be a struggle to find the right balance of how much freedom to allow, and how discipline should be applied.
I feel you Miles' dad.
What I'm trying to say here is that these days, as parenting dominates my life, I actually really (most?) connected with the superhero's parents. I'm old now. But in all seriousness, it's great the moviemakers included loving, conflicted parents on top of everything else done so well.
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