Opinion on Spider-Man (2002) and related work
- Same source material: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Spider-Man (2002
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References here: The O.C. (2003).
‣ Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Seen in 2025.
Easily the funniest shot in this movie is from Peter B. Parker’s wedding, where he and his bride break a chuppah glass. This shot means that, on top of all the “important” things that happen in this multi-universe epic, that particular alternative Spider-Man (or his corresponding Mary Jane, or both) is Jewish. That detail has no impact on the plot whatsoever. Its functional irrelevance as a detail, not its intertextuality with Stan Lee’s Jewish upbringing, is the joke.
A joke like that can work regardless of how straight the rest of the story is played, and it does work. However, Into the Spider-Verse has the same problem as Deadpool (2016). It’s ultimately built around a rehash. In this case, it’s a rehash to such an extreme extent that its central narrative conceit is a metaphor for how commonplace every part of the movie is. The superpowered action, the MacGuffin here called a “goober”, the superhero’s coming of age through tragedy and confident self-realization, and the metafictional jokes: It’s all deeply familiar, but it does not have the emotional power it’s meant to have as an example of The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).