Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will alter the "Anyone can wear the mask" mantra from its predecessor, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, according to returning franchise star and Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman actor Hailee Steinfeld.
Steinfeld talked about this while speaking to Empire, during which she was asked where Gwen was at the start of the movie. "[Gwen's] at a point in her life where she realizes she can write her own stories," Steinfeld said. "If the first film was about Miles [Morales] learning that anyone can wear the mask, this one is about how you wear the mask. So, Gwen is finding out who she is, at her core. I've loved watching Gwen take ownership over who she is and what she's capable of."
Self-discovery isn't the thing Gwen will experience in Across the Spider-Verse, as she'll also be the focus of a romantic rivalry between Miles and new wall-crawler Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk, with co-director Kemp Powers pointing out Miles' jealousy towards Gwen and Hobie's relationship. "When Miles meets Gwen again, she's not wearing her ballet shoes; she's wearing Converse Chuck Taylors, which Spider-Punk gave her," he added. "Miles starts wondering, 'How close are these two?'"
A More Mature Spider-Verse Movie
Despite the uplifting message, it was hinted by senior animator Ere Santos in 2022 that Across the Spider-Verse won't be for kids, with Santos recalling how hard it was to work on the project. "But what kind of kept us going was we'd be frustrated, or something would change, or a sequence was cut, and then we'd see a new render, and we'd be like, 'Okay, alright? Let's go, let's go,'" Santos noted. "And also, some of the choices characters were making in the story were like, 'What? Okay, all right. This is a kids' movie? I guess it's not a kids' movie. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's good.' So it's very, very, super exciting to me."
Miles will have to fight his fellow web-slingers when they "clash on how to handle a new threat," indicating the darker tone of the plot. Additionally, writer-producer Chris Miller recently commented that Across the Spider-Verse had drawn comparisons to Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back from people who had seen it, going on to further say that the film is "an emotional story that ends in a place where you need to see the third [Spider-Verse movie]."
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens in theaters on June 2.
Source: Empire