>>37883 I'm not going to go into an essay but I will expand a bit more on my point, since you're asking for it.
>disliking the movie just seems completely contrarian.It's really not, stop trying to position it as such, that only works if something is popular. The first film was enormously popular and liked, so most people went into this one without having negative associations and presupposed notions about it. Many such as myself found it very lack luster and shallow. What made the animation unique and interesting in the first film gets over-done to the point where it's an eyesore, trying to hard to be "unique". The sound-design was terrible too, with loud noise and music making dialogues hard to discern.
All those things you state as "representative of totalitarianism" or other symbolism is just extrapolations you've reached, when it's really not that deep, just pretending to be. The message of people having limited options and conforming under totalitarianism can be a good story, but it doesn't fit with this premise. This same exact concept of a debate over non-interference as a plot point is done much better in Star Trek series like TNG, with the Prime Directive and the reason it exists versus some of the violations of it and justifications of such violations. It doesn't take that long to tell such a story, with the longest I recall being an hour and a half long. The Multiverse argument can't even be used since they're not actively hopping through and exploring each multiverse, almost all of the alternative verses are barely explored or relevant.
What the story theme is really about is the done-to-death American theme that teenagers know better than their parents, which is a de-evolution from stories that were about the overall conflict and rights/wrongs of both parent and child and the reconciliation of both their world-views, which is how Soviet and older Western story-telling discussed the topic (such as Mirror for a Hero). The "They don't know me" schtick is another tired cliche too.
Cutting to the chase of the story and bypassing the immense amount of very bland fanservice for the beginning of the film, Miles realizes that under Miguel's direction, the Spiderman guild is letting people die to preserve the canon of their stories and lore. The thing is that this breaks the entire comic-book setting because its conceptually a paradox, especially since this is essentially 4th-wall self-awareness. The "canon event" doesn't work if the character is aware and actually able to change the event, if things are fated to be, then no action or inaction will change it, if things are not fated to be, then there's no reason for a comic-book hero to not act. There's a difference between not knowing what would happen and knowing someone would die and not protecting them for the sake of a sacrifice to canon when the very existence of multiverses means that there is an infinite number of each reality where different things happened.
The impacts for the story alone are staggering. Saving someone doesn't change the fact that the original timeline where, (for example) Uncle Ben died, and if a Spiderman saves Uncle Ben, then this becomes a new reality and new verse where he was saved, and the timelines split from that point, a la Terminator and Terminator 2, wherein one timeline has Judgement Day happen and another where it's prevented/delayed, which is why you don't have the grandfather paradox with John Connor. Otherwise saving anyone from any verse is impossible because it becomes a paradox, because if one [action] happens then the timeline doesn't continue as it did, which means the events that led up to the timeline being interfered with can't happen, which means that [action] could never have taken place to begin with. So either way the entire plot of the film stops making sense because either way there's no reason to not try to save someone fated to die, as it will either be impossible, or it will split timelines and not change the original canon. It's contradictory to the idea that there is an infinite multiverse with infinite possibilities and either makes every single spiderman story meaningless because it's all predestined. Sure WE the audience know that, by nature of it being written by an author that has an ending in mind, but the characters do not, and within the story itself they can make choices that determine the end result, thus Fate is what we make it. OR we have an Oedipus situation, wherein trying to avoid or change fate, instead brings about the fated outcome.
The authors probably considered NONE of this and just slap-dashed generic time-travel rules to a multiverse without thinking through the consequences.
>Miguel is a poser And that's stupid, it ignores the entire idea of who Spiderman 2099 is supposed to be. His entire story is built around both cynical pragmatism but also a principled idealism for heroism. His character would never abide by the concept of "let them die for the canon", no spiderman would because it fundamentally breaks the Spiderman character. FFS we're shown that there are THOUSANDS of spiderman variants and apparently they're aware of what's going on, yet not a single Peter Parker thinks "Wait a minute, this is wrong."? Only Miles suddenly has an epiphany about this just to make him look better than the rest of them, which is lame, since the idea of spiderverse is that each one brings something to the table unique to them. If you have to have a bad spiderman you can have those that forget the little things of being a hero like with some of the Iron Spider variants who get too caught up in heady power and start to be assholes, or spidermen that are driven to madness by their failures, or whatever, as has been done in other spiderverse stories. This just feels like a "everyone's an NPC but me" movie.
In fact Miguel and everyone that follows him feels like a lazy attempt to caricaturize comic fans that obsess over canon, which is admittedly a fair complaint, but fails to work within the actual story framework given. Either Miguel is right and Miles is essentially ready to sacrifice an entire universe of innocent people to try and prevent something that is fated to happen OR Miguel is wrong, and the entire concept including Miguel's own motivations of lost family are also meaningless sacrifices. There's gonna be some generic twist in the next film to "make it right" but I honestly have no idea how they're going to unfuck this cat-hairball of a mess.
>Think of gwen and her dadI'd rather not, it's by far one of the stupidest parts of the film. Sure you don't choose family, but if your old man will put a gun to your head in a situation where you come to him for help, that man is no father to you. It's beyond unbelievable.
>Spiderpunk Spider-punk is a literal punk in the sense that he talks a big game but in the end he wusses out, and his statement about "capitalism" is some of the most heavy-handed broad-stroke garden-variety childishness. He's an Ultra, same radlib rhetoric, same supposed criticism of capitalism and same shallow inaction at the end of it.
>people having limited choices in systems that dont work for them, but for itself.Which is literally Margaret Thatcher's nonsense about Individuals. Society can be oppressive to individuals and groups, but society is also made up of individuals, You cannot reject one for the other or vice versa. The system is a reflection of the collective of individuals and their actions. All systems work for themselves, but that alone doesn't take away the agency of the people within it, to say otherwise is equivalent to the Nuremburg Defense.
>The next film will make this clear Fuck that, a film, even a 2-parter needs proper pacing and should have a proper conclsion. The first half of the film is filled with lazy reference bait and petty drama. The story is just cliche after cliche, half-a-dozen subplots that remain unexpanded upon and are simply bait for possible future spin-offs to milk the "Spider-multiverse" idea dry. Finally the "Family" theme is heavy-handed, over-used and shallowly done. Lengthy character exposition is relied on to tell story beats rather than showing and implying. The central conflict of the story is poorly built up, which is amazing given that the film is over 2 hours long.
As a side note the diversity of the film is tokenistic as hell. I know a few of my Indian friends who were pissed about the Indian Peter Parker, since they just replaced the American name with similar-sounding Indian names and re-designed villains with shallow aesthetics that are basically racist stereotypes; Manhattan but hindu! He doesn't display anything lifestyle or culture-wise that would be unique to an in-depth version of the setting, something to actually make him his own character and which ought to be an impact as to how he became a hero mentally, since his story has no reason to be the same as the original Peter Parker Spiderman, as the material conditions are different.
I've said my piece as asked of me, I don't wish to continue the conversation, if others wish to, go ahead.. Good Night.