Central Theme / Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

• Choice. Characters constantly ruminate on seemingly binary choices or their lack of an ability to choose their own path for themselves. Reveal your identity or don't, save the multiverse or save one person, stay in Brooklyn or go to New Jersey, etc, with many characters seeing certain choices as catastrophically bad and to be avoided at all costs. While Miles is framed as a moral center, i.e. he consistently fights against the idea of an all-or-nothing binary of "catastrophe or no catastrophe" throughout the movie, Gwen is the one who actually develops past this mindset, and the movie's structure is actually framed more around her arc while Miles' is split between this film and Beyond.
• Acceptance and Conformity. The prologue focusing on Gwen has her recap Miles' origin in the previous movie, punctuating most of the details that are common to every Spider-Person's origin with, "and he's not the only one." This emphasizes Gwen's abject loneliness because she can't share her secret identity with anyone in her home universe, and thus can't open up to them about the issues being Spider-Woman brings her, least of all to clarify that she's suffering from Peter's death as well since everyone blames her for it. Like Miles, this strains her relationship with her family. The Spot is driven to make himself Miles' Arch-Enemy because he knows that their origins are connected, and he has no one else to be connected to. The Spider-Society would be a healthy support group for Spider-People but it's made toxic by the belief that they have to suffer the loss of those closest to them to do the greatest good. This brings them into conflict with Miles who firmly disagrees that this is necessary, which Miguel has particular disdain for because he believes Miles is an imposter to being Spider-Man, but in spite of this wants to enforce his "Canon Event" of his police captain father dying anyway; simultaneously rejecting and strengthening Miles' connection to the other Spiders.
• Consequences. Characters are used to comment on how certain actions have, or will have, effects on those around them. Miles' decision to not tell his parents about his identity as Spider-Man starts to alienate him from them. His choice to treat Spot as nothing more than a nuisance results in him becoming exponentially more powerful, and a serious threat to the Multiverse. Gwen on the other hand actively avoids consequences for the majority of the film, refusing to face her father out of fear that he will despise her; and similarly avoids telling Miles the truth to spare herself from the possibility of him hating her. Miguel is focused on grand-scale consequences, such as the effects that the erasure of Canon events will have on certain worlds, and how his choice to take over an alternate version of himself resulted in an entire dimension being destroyed; however, this guilt blinds him to the true consequences of his actions, i.e. that his single-minded pursuit of/contempt for Miles and paranoia about disrupting the status quo is alienating his allies who dare to question his dogma, threatening to fracture the Spider-Society he's worked so hard to build, and distracting him from the true threat to the Multiverse: an empowered Spot set on destroying Miles and everything he loves.
• Fate. All the Spider-Mans accept the fate that they can't save everyone because of the anomaly of being Spider-Man. Though, individual Spiders accept this in different ways.
  • Miguel sees these fates as deterministic to the point of passively allowing them to happen, embodying a hardline You Can't Fight Fate approach. He even notes himself that he's not like the others, though perhaps not in the way he is talking about. He's seemingly the only Spider that tried to jump universes to solve his issues rather than pushing forward in life in his own world, implying that he literally saw no path of growth.
  • Gwen, at the start, has a passive acceptance of fate and the choice involved. It's just something that happens to you; though you can choose to change things and slight outcomes, it's still "going to happen". Fate is flexible, but still deterministic. Fitting for a teen who's struggling to find her own way of being and exploring the boundaries of what the adults around her are saying.
  • Peter B. sees these fates as part of the responsibility of life and part of how individuals grow. While he doesn't like suffering and pain, he is optimistic in the face of it even as he prepares for it. It's an adult version of Gwen's passive acceptance.
  • Lastly, Miles refuses to accept that and proclaims he can both save one person and every universe. He sees fate as presenting choices of character — even if fate says someone must die, that does not negate the responsibility of trying to save them anyway. It's hard and it's challenging and it's painful... but you still try — which is key to reading between Spider-Ham's line about being the hardest part of the job and why Ham shows up on Gwen's team.
• Multiple characters seem to be okay with "Canon Events" because "sometimes good things come from bad events". Miles wasn't supposed to be bitten by the glitched spider, but this has created a replacement Spider-Man to protect his version of New York, and is powerful, agile, and able to go toe-to-toe in a chase against veterans. Pavitr's Captain Stacy wasn't supposed to survive because Miles wasn't supposed to be there, but showed some of the alternate Spiders that canon events can be averted. Miles himself still existing without his world falling into glitched destruction and the survival of Earth-42, grim as it is, also proves to others that Canon Events don't necessarily cause the destruction of realities. Simultaneously, frequently the inverse is also true: "sometimes bad things come from good intentions". Gwen likes Miles, but her decision to see him for a bit on a mission leads to Miles finding out about the Spider-Society and puts him through a hell of a lot more trauma, not to mention also distracts Gwen from monitoring Spot when he's accidentally Depowered himself and is vulnerable, allowing him to build a mini-collider, regain a dark matter hole and start using that as the starting point to exponentially level up his abilities and threat level. Miguel's rules over Spider-Society are well-meaning over preventing multiversal collapse but results in many Spider-People allowing the death of their loved ones, and potentially for naught since the story implies that preventing Canon Events won't cause any such destruction. And Miguel trying to teach Miles about Spider-Man's Canon Events and the potential for them to glitch reality leads to a period where no iteration is out hunting down The Spot and allows him to grow into the Transhuman Abomination he is at the end of the film.
• Parenthood. Earth-65's George Stacy, Peter B. Parker, and Jefferson Morales all have moments questioning whether they're really fit to be parents. For Peter, this becomes heartbreaking after he confesses that Miles was the reason he decided to give it another shot with MJ and have Mayday, but the chasing Spider-People use Peter's location to find Miles, leading Miles to believe that Peter betrayed him. All three of them ruminate on how their children have so much potential, but worry about how those kids might mess it up. Meanwhile Rio Morales confesses to Miles how hard it is to see her child potentially leave the nest and how worried she is that the world will hurt them, and extracts a promise from Miles to keep the son she raised intact no matter what happens. This is also contrasted in the appearance of the hardened Earth-42 Miles, who has become the Prowler in a world with no Spider-Man, where his father died and he's been raised by his uncle.
  • The theme of parenthood features prominently with the other two topmost figures of the Spider Society as well. While Peter B. has recently become a father, Jessica is pregnant and is going to be a mother, while Miguel was a father. They all have issues consolidating their worldview with the younger generation's: specifically Gwen's, Pav's, Hobie's, and especially Miles'.
• Art. The movie is a love letter to the arts, with multiple Spider-People using their passion for art to inspire them in their quest and actively shaping how and why they fight for a better world. Art is inspiration and can build a better world.