#atsv analysis

Beginning with Miles' line 'My dad is about to be captain.'

The group - Gwen, Jess, Peter, and Hobie are all standing behind Miles as he faces Miguel.

But from this point forward, every time Hobie is portrayed, he is shown as separate from the other characters, always being divided from the group - with Miles as the divider.

Even as the camera moves and more Spider-people join the scene, Hobie visually remains - quite literally - as the only person in Miles' corner. And as the scene goes on, he moves farther and farther into that corner.

Until finally the scene comes to a climax, and Hobie gets two shots to himself - delivering his final lines.

"Here we go." - "Hobie, You're not helping." - "Good."

This is Hobie seeing his work pay off. This is him knowing that he got through to Miles and that it was worth it. He's proud of him.

When he says ‘Good,’ he’s not looking at Jess. Because he’s not talking to her, not really. He’s looking to Miles. He’s telling him this is good.

For the entirety of the scene leading up to Miles being trapped, Hobie is shown as the only one literally on Miles' side, until finally in the last moments he is the only one to help Miles escape when he truly needs it.

I was rewatching Into the Spider-Verse for the 1610th 😉 time (as one does), and I realized that this detail completely went over my head in Across the Spider-Verse as well.

Does Aunt May know that Gwen is Spider-Woman?

When I watched ITSV the first 1609 times, I had always assumed that they visited Aunt May to fix the goober because it was Peter B. Parker's idea. Made sense; she is his aunt and mother figure. But when I was rewatching the bus scene with Miles and Gwen, I realized that Gwen says...

So it was more likely her idea to go to Aunt May first.

But THEN I realized another hint that Aunt May and Gwen were in cahoots. I had always thought about the scene in ATSV when Aunt May shuts down Captain Stacy's Spider-Woman slander as avoiding another "politics" debate. But now the "Thank you, May" comment and Aunt May's wink seem to be a little deeper than that. Peter was watching them, so that could be how he started to figure out Gwen was Spider-Woman as well.

It certainly does raise the question of where the heck Aunt May is after E-65 Peter's death when Captain Stacy leads the hunt for Spider-Woman. Or did Aunt May blame her after Peter's death, too? Ouch. Even worse.

It seems to be a little too in-depth and irrelevant for the amount of detail we can get into in the span of a few movies, but it is an interesting thought.

specifically: the color theory

earth-42 is obviously striking on a whole nother level

we tend to automatically think of red as the color of danger, but that's loud and passionate and angry. this haunting, sickening green feels more conniving and threatening and apocalyptic.

(if you think of color in disney movies, all the scariest, most cunning villains--maleficent, scar, ursula, evil queen, facilier, gothel--have either palettes or grand moments or motifs heavily utilizing green)

and something i always notice is that rio 42 looks just a little off, and it's because they reflect so much green in her eyes they look almost entirely green

and, if this is your first time watching, you have no idea why the environment is made to be so deeply unsettling. let's look at gwen's dimension for a sec

being home is a really bad thing to gwen. while miles was doing everything he could to get home, gwen was literally dragged there--because gwen views her dimension as unsafe (ignore the trans parallels ignore the trans parallels ingore the tra

it's dark. it has the same ominous rain. but you can tell it's 65. that bisexual lighting is unmistakable

i can't even go into the colors of gwen and george's argument because there is an image limit and i am lazy. but we know it's insane. the emotional peak of the scene is also where we see the colors most vibrant and changing the most abruptly

and when they have their beautiful lil moment, this is what happens

not only is it blindingly bright and trans colored all of a sudden, but the characters don their "true" coloring

and even after gwen leaves, the scene is still bright, and familiar

miles should be safe in his dimension. but we know he's not.

back to earth-42. well i mean we have these absolute visual bangers what do i need to say u get it

and then there's this absolutely incredible moment where i would say miles is at his emotional peak (manic peak as well; i mean spot's hands and the infamous revenge line...yoikes.) and just like with gwen, the emotional high is where we see the most dynamic colors so coincidence i think not

this next sequence is just one of the coolest fuckin chase-esq scenes i've ever seen. like the mumbattan one slapped but the pacing and direction and elements and epicness together here are just immaculate

another thing--miguel/ben's post is heavily shrouded in red. he's supposed to be ominously looming over exactly where miles is headed. buttttttttt~ when miles first crash lands, there is quite a bit of red, and as he gets closer to home, the city gets bluer and bluer with less and less red, bc yk he's not actually headed towards miguel/ben. woah. i make sense guys. i am a fart smella. i mean smart smella. i mean fart fella. i mean fart smella. i mea

He doesn't have the same origin story. His origin story on how he got his powers are more traumatic than everyone else's. And he has to keep injecting himself to maintain his spider powers.

from @benio on TikTok ⬆️

During Miguel's speech, we see some of the spiders looking at either their past or future events, and we see Peter's wedding (past), Gwen digging herself out of her grave (future), Jess escaping rubble (unknown) and we also see Hobie looking at his canon event, which was giving up his mask and his identity as Spider-punk.

So its completely plausible that like Gwen's canon event, this is one of Hobie's upcoming canon events, where he'll end up giving up his mask later on. However, I like to think that he had given up his mask prior to ATSV for the following reason:

Hobie wasn't supposed to be in Mumbattan during ATSV

The scene in ATSV where Miles was invisibly watching Gwen talking to Jess and Lyla actually has a second deleted version. This deleted scene was similar, except instead of talking to Jess and Lyla, Gwen was talking to Miguel and various other high-level spider people.

A/N: I know this scene was deleted so it can't really be considered canon, but JUST HEAR ME OUT

While they're talking about Gwen's mistake and Spot's presence in Mumbattan, Hobie's name is mentioned (1:58).

Gwen: "He took time off"

Miguel: "Yeah because he doesn't believe in institutions, or teams. Lyla can't even find him"

Gwen: "He gave me a way to contact him"

At this part in time, prior to his introduction to ATSV, Hobie was not technically a part of the Spider Society. Nobody except for Gwen, not even Lyla, had any way to contact him.

So we've already established that people in the Spider Society usually catch anomalies or are assigned missions to do so, as being a part of the Spider Society would probably mean being willing to work as a team and contribute to the community. If you want to look more into this, @the-cat-and-the-birdie has a really cool post where they explain their views on how the Spider Society works, and I'm kind of going off on that.

If Hobie left, it would mean that he wasn't completing these missions anymore, didn't want to be a part of the community and didn't want anyone to be able to contact him about these missions or anything Spider-man related, unless it was Gwen, who he probably only gave contact information to because she's homeless and doesn't have anywhere to stay, and its been established that she stays with him sometimes.

So why did he leave?

My guess? He experienced an extremely traumatic canon event that led to him deciding to give up his mask. He was so angry at Miguel and the Spider Society for allowing this canon event to happen, that he cut off ties from the community, severed all connections with other spider-people and stayed put in his own universe, only giving Gwen his contact information.

And in this time he "took off", he began to devise his plan to wreak havoc in the Spider Society, and create his own watch. This would explain why he was so quick to help and support Miles, and why he already had watches available for both Gwen and the rest of the Spider-team to use.

The watch he gives Gwen also has the writing "Project Bootleg" written on it.

Bootleg:

the illegal manufacture, distribution, or sale of goods, especially alcohol or recordings.

Hobie already had a plan for what he was going to do. He had already created Project Bootleg to infiltrate the Spider Society himself, and Miles' interjection became Hobie's reveal.

Now to tie back to the first point I made, that Hobie wasn't supposed to be in Mumbattan during ATSV:

The rest of the Spiders were shown coming in through portals, whether it was Miguel's entrance in the beginning of the movie, Gwen's entrance to Miles' room, or even Jess's entrance in Mumbattan where the giant spider-ship came through a portal in the sky. Hobie, Gwen, Miles and Jess were even shown using a portal to get into the Spider Society after leaving Mumbattan. However...we never see Hobie enter Mumbattan through a portal.

He just appeared. But Pavitr was surprised, so there was no way that Hobie had already been in Mumbattan before, and since Jess and Lyla didn't have his location, there was no way that they could have contacted Hobie to come help Gwen fight Spot. So how did he get there?

We have a LOT of unanswered questions about Hobie. He's a complete mystery, from his backstory, to his universe, and to his place in the Spider Society. While the other members are shown as contributors to the Spider Society who all know each other, i.e. Gwen and Jess greeting the Peters in HQ while Hobie doesn't acknowledge any of them and vice versa, Hobie isn't shown having any kind of interaction with any of the Spider Society members except for Gwen and Pav. We know that he knows the other members, because Jess, Peter and Miguel know him by name, but we don't know his place in the Spider Society and we don't know what he does. This is why I think he left the Spider Society. Because if he was still a part of it, the interactions he had with the people in it would've been different. The way he acted in the HQ, his attitude, everything, would've probably been different if he actually was a part of it or even helped out in some way.

Summary, because this analysis was kind of all over the place:

I think that Hobie quit being spider-man before the events of ATSV because of a traumatic canon event. I think he lost someone or something very close to him, and because of that he cut himself off from the Spider Society. I think he blamed the idea of canon events for what happened and that he wants to help Miles save his dad and break his canon because he thinks that by doing this, he's making up for not being able to break his own canon. I think he's been planning this Project Bootleg for a while before Miles showed up and he decided Miles would be the perfect reveal for his plan and he'd use it to prove that canon events can be broken, and that what happened was wrong.

Poor guy.

A/N:

I had a thought about Hobie while I was writing, have been thinking about Jess for a while and then this post about Miguel came out and it made me kind of want to yap. I'll only talk about Hobie and Jessica here because I'm biased + Peter & Gwen have been talked about a lot + I linked a post about Miguel + Miles & Pav have simpler, more obvious flaws that basically come down to youthful naivety.

I also find it really interesting that their flaws are basically opposites, Hobie's comes from "inconsistency" whilst Jessica's comes from stubbornness. And again, both these flaws come from their greatest strengths.

TL;dr

Jess' defining strength is her resolve when it comes to fighting for what's right and tussling with destiny but it causes her to have a one-track mind, even if it comes to dedicating herself to something wrong (from being misguided).

Hobie's defining strength is his optimism (e.g. anarcho-communism) but the extreme difficulty of pursuing those ideals and the struggle against systems can bring that optimism to a breaking point, causing him to be inconsistent or, more directly, to give up.

I really don’t care that she’s race swapped and whatever, that has nothing to do with this essay.

What we will talk about is how she’s an asshole, and doesn’t really deserved praise or recognition for her actions.

She fights crime while pregnant, presumably keeping the crime fighting a secret from her husband, which is a red flag on its own. She’d rather risk her own baby’s safety and wellbeing, just to be a superhero, not really caring of its health. You guys say that the baby is resilient, when literally Spider People take major damage and wince throughout the films. If people really praise her and call her “badass” and “supercool” for this selfish action, but criticize Peter B. for taking Mayday into danger when, MIND YOU, he chooses to stay away from danger, while Jess puts herself out in the danger, its saying something.

She’s also an asshole character to everyone but Miguel. A complete bitch towards Miles, asshole to Hobie, the worst mentor Gwen could ever ask for and she definitely regrets looking up to Jess, sassing Ben as if Miguel isn’t anymore broodier, sarcastically ignoring the Hijabi spider woman’s joke but gleefully making jokes with Miguel, and was down for Jeff’s death for protecting the canon.. And the kicker is that she knows that Miguel is wrong for what he does, but she’s too afraid to say anything against him. But she’s quick as fuck to yell or shut Gwen down for making mistakes.

Reminder that at the end of the film where Miguel tries to get Miles from the Go Home Machine, he rips through space and time and that almost caused all of them to die, thanks to the science of the frabic of reality being distributed. And she still stayed by that man’s side, when he almost killed everyone in that room.

And there are those who say she’s better than Miguel and Peter B. when WRONG! If anything, she’s just as bad as Miguel. She was also down for people to die for the canon, she showed no empathy or sympathy for Miles and hated him as well, and treated everyone there like soldiers with no respect or empathy whatsoever. Not to mention, she’s not afraid to get physical. Miles spider sense went off when she attacked him, meaning that she posed a threat. She meant to do harm to him. And her dumb fans will either glaze that or ignore that, but justify her behavior with Gwen.

And hot take, every Jess Drew fan that criticizes the fuck out of Gwen, but make her and Miguel look innocent, are definitely just Gwen haters in disguise because they don’t like her being white or for “betraying” Miles. And it’s funny because their fav treated Miles like absolute dog shit, and is a 30+ pregnant woman, a grown adult, treating 15-16 year olds like crap just because she can.

And I don’t if it’s just me, but she’s kind of anti-black. Every black character she was just not nice, welcoming, or even an ally too. Hated Miles, was against Hobie, was down for Jeff to die, and ignored Margo.

Even a little anti-feminist, seeing her relationship with Gwen shift. An absolute bitch of a mentor, telling Gwen to shut up when Gwen thanks her (Jess’ big ego mind you) but allow Miguel to rant to her whenever they’re alone probably.