The Spiderverse and the metamodern mythos

It might be the most important movie of the decade. Maybe longer.

This post presents the full text of my recent video essay on Spiderman : Across the Spiderverse. It’s a movie many people will miss because it’s an animated feature “for kids”…

…which is a shame, because I think it might be the most important movie of the decade. Maybe longer.

Read on for why. Or watch the video essay.

Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse…

…is a meta modern masterpiece.

From the opening credits, the Spider-Verse movies tell us this isn’t reality as we know it.

Some people will miss the Spider-Verse because it’s an animated kids movie. But it’s a movie for kids growing up in a new reality.

A reality that can be rendered, skinned and modded to look however you want. A digital, augmented, virtual reality.

A meta reality.

That doesn’t exist just inside your computer anymore, but is projected out over the real reality…whatever that is.

A reality that only twelve to fifteen year olds ever really understand.

And a new reality that needs new stories.

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The story of Miles Morales feels familiar. Ancient, even. A boy-hero saves the city by defeating the monster.

It’s David and Goliath, Theseus and the Minotaur, Jack and his Beanstalk. It’s a story we’ve been telling since stories began.

Miles Morales is torn between two father figures, the good father of order and responsibility and the dangerous uncle of chaos and rebellion.

It’s the Lion King all over again. Which was Hamlet all over again. Which was Oedipus all over again.

But every era tells the story in a new way.

In the modern era we retold the old hero stories in the brightly coloured costumes of superheroes, with monstrous super-villains and powers coming, not from the gods, but from science.

Miles has to master his superhero powers, to defeat the villains masterplan and learn that with those great powers, comes great responsibility.

Then this ancient hero story, retold in modern superhero costumes, is torn apart by the postmodern multiverse.

Miles Morales meets the alternate world versions of himself and, by learning from them, deconstructs his own narrative to become a better hero.

By now we’re all used to the postmodern deconstruction of the superhero, how Watchmen, The Dark Knight and The Boys show us the darkside of our archetypal heroes.

But we’re also sick of having our heroes torn down.

Miles Morales is a hero who combines the best of our ancient and modern heroes, then deconstructs both in the most postmodern way.

But then the Spider-Verse movies take a step beyond the postmodern to go meta on the modern hero.

And become a metamodern masterpiece.

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The word “meta” comes from ancient Greek and means “to go beyond”.

We all know what it means to go meta. If I made a video essay about making video essays — that’s meta.

Spider-Man : Across The Spider-Verse is a spiderman story about spiderman stories.

But it’s even more meta than that. From the new technologies of digital animation that it harnesses, to its complex storytelling and subtle meaning, Across the Spider-Verse is a new kind of story.

That goes beyond the ancient, the modern and the postmodern, into the new aesthetics of the metamodern.

Style & Aesthetics

130 main animators worked on Across the Spider-Verse. That’s a lot. But also not.

Autodesk Maya and machine learning allow individual digital animators to replace entire teams, and wield much more control.

The outcome is an explosion of experimental and avant-garde animation that calls back to psychedelic classics like The Beatles Yellow Submarine and Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

In the ancient world art styles lasted forever. Egyptian artists painted the same style for centuries because that’s the only style they knew.

In the modern era new styles came faster. 30s Art-Deco. 60s Psychedelia. Every decade had its own style and aesthetics.

Postmodernism made fun of these artificial styles to deconstruct their parts and remake them in ironic new ways.

Now in the metamodern era artists, with machine learning and AI, can use every style of art there has ever been.

The same character can be cartoon, live-action, anime, noir, punk…pork…all in the same camera shot.

Metamodern style and aesthetics fuse the entire history of art into our present moment.

Story & Narrative

Miles Morales is the metamodern hero. His story collides every kind of narrative hero and he is torn between the potential to become any one of them.

Ancient heroes were violent men who defeated monsters to achieve the valour and glory they hungered for.

Modern heroes serve a higher cause, the city or the state, and use only non-lethal violence wherever possible to defeat the monstrous criminals.

Postmodern heroes are liars, cheats and delusional fantasists. They protect the rich, and create our monsters only so they can kill them to gain fame and riches.

Metamodern stories are told by continually stepping beyond the narrative frame into a meta-narrative perspective.

First Miles is the new Spiderman. Step beyond. Now he’s one of multiple spider…people. Step beyond. Now there’s an entire army of Spider heros. Step beyond. Now the hero’s attempts to control events makes them the Spider villains. Step beyond. Go meta. Go meta on your meta.

Metamodern storytelling can go beyond forever. But it can also come back to the here and now. Across The Spiderverse dedicates most of its screentime to intimate relationships between a handful of characters.

Because metamodernism is all about the reconstruction of the narratives postmodernism deconstructed. Yes, we live in a multiverse of infinite potential narratives.

But to be in that multiverse we must choose the stories and the people that most matter to us, and hold to them.

Meaning, Message…Metaverse

In Across The Spiderverse Miles Morales is torn apart by the paradox of meaning.

Ancient myths, stories of heroes and gods, gave people meaning. But the stories weren’t real, and when believers in different stories clashed they fought and killed each other.

Sickened by the religious wars we made the modern world without myths.

Stories became just entertainment. But we still hunger for meaning. So we dress up like Yoda, go to ComiCon and argue to the death about Star Wars vs Star Trek.

Postmodern thinkers believe stories have meaning. Infinite meanings. An endless multiverse of possible interpretations. There can be no Grand Narratives because to choose any one story for yourself is to impose that story on others.

Metamodernism recognises that meaning is a paradox. We must have a story. But our stories are never true.

As Miles parents wait for him to show for his career guidance meeting, they are told to exploit their story of ethnic diversity. But Puerto Ricans are American and I own a Brooklyn walkup, we’re doing great.

Sure. But the fake story has more power.

The Spot confronts Miles with his own terrible story. You made me Miles! So however monstrous I am, you are the one to blame. Well, nope, sorry. Even if my story did harm your story, that doesn’t give you the right to become a monster.

Miles is pushed to the ultimate paradox of meaning in his confrontation with Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara. If Miles lives his own story, it will doom his entire reality. Every Spiderman in the multiverse tells Miles to sacrifice his story.

But Miles chooses to live his story instead.

Reality and Metamodernism

Spider-Man : Across The Spider-Verse is a masterpiece of a new kind of storytelling that we’re starting to call metamodern.

Thomas Flight’s excellent video essay identified the metamodern trend emerging in cinema, as a new kind of story going beyond the modern and the postmodern.

The metamodern also goes beyond storytelling. Meta-philosophers like Hanzi Freinacht, Jason Josephson Storm and Tomas Bjorkman are shaping our understanding of metamodernism today.

If ancients believed one story, moderns believed in none and postmoderns believed too many

metamodernism understands that we choose our stories, so we should choose a good one.