Multiverse Cinema: A Postmodern Manifestation
Originality is inherent to an idea as expansive as the multiverse, and yet, Hollywood finds a way…
A portal opens, and anything could exit. It’s yourself from another universe, one that is a cowboy that encapsulates the spirit of adventure needed to conquer the unknown, and your homework. No, a grizzled detective, one as much crippled by his deteriorating mind as his cyborg leg and an obsession with the truth. What about a knight in shining armor? Except this one is as tempted by the evils of a perilous magic as he is headstrong in his fight for freedom? All or none of these iterations could exist within the infinitely sprawling multiverse. Forever creating stories within stories due to the sheer expansiveness of the idea, the concept of a multiverse is ripe with creative potential for any story one could imagine. It does not take much to test the undying imagination within each dimension, and would require everything to meet its limits. And yet, in recent years, it seems as though the forever imaginative Hollywood has managed to do just that.
Chip n’ Dale, The Flash, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum-Mania, all deeply entrenched in the idea of the multiverse, all released within the past few years, and all universally panned. While multiverse stories are by no means a creation of the 2020s, it might as well be, as the biggest cinematic trend of the decade is to put a main character alongside other versions of themselves, or adventuring through cgi “landscapes” of whatever studios can muster up as quickly as possible. At least, that’s one end of the spectrum. On the other exists tales of heart, passion, and heroics with revolutionary aesthetics and narratives; the recent Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Everything Everywhere All at Once prove as much. Meaning, a lack of quality and cohesion is not inherent to the concept, but the opposite is neither guaranteed. Homogeneity and creative spontaneity both define the multiverse trend, but what separates the two? In actuality, the reason is so blatant a question isn’t even required: profit. What’s more exciting than a hodgepodge of pop culture icons playing pretend they exist in a film with meaningful themes? Intertextuality and self-referentiality are two key components of the recent multiverse movement because nothing brings in box office numbers more than nonsensical action, to the point where it seems impossible to avoid. A confused Flash movie halts its narrative to present projections of actors, some forgotten, some even dead, because nothing excites the modern moviegoer more than seeing their favorite characters on screen, regardless of how little sense it makes.
In this way, the commodification of infinite potential into multiple of the same product with a different coat of scientific exposition explaining the presence of the now narrative cliche releasing within months of each other, constrained by references to previous works, represents postmodernism better than Baudrillard quoting himself. Meaning, not only is the multiverse a trope that in itself invites postmodern stories, but the mass implementation of the device has created a postmodern cinematic landscape.
At the risk of sounding idiotic, full of himself, or both, I’ll try to keep my explanation of postmodernism contained to the boundaries of my thesis. A key component of the theoretical framework is not just a character commenting on themselves for the sake of it, but as the result of quite a cynical outlook on the production of art. Postmodernism came as a response to an age of rampant progress and development. The modernism of the early 1900s spawned an aspirational attitude directly related to the era’s innovative industrial and cultural production. However, this came as a result of faith in science, knowledge and our governing institutions that didn’t last, with the response being suspicion of the output that defined the modernist movement. Suddenly, entertainment was homogenized, progress was halted, and, according to postmodernists, it became near impossible to find any work with even a crumb of creativity or originality. Intertextuality was therefore almost impossible to avoid. As every work becomes the same, every piece references the other in some way, shape or form. Simply put, in a culture defined by production for profit, why would anyone create anything that brought them the opposite? As a result of the cynical motivations behind cultural output, the innovation that inspired modernists faded into the all consuming fog of economic opportunity and control.
From this understanding, it is clear to see how the current state of mainstream entertainment with the multiverse trend is reflective of postmodern thought. Once creatively used to tell stories of fragmentation and provide innovative forms of reflexivity for its character’s, the multiverse as a narrative device has lost its meaning through the stripping of its originality. Some movies have used the trope not for inspired thematic purposes, but financial ones. It is purely profitable to reproduce the same successful story over and over until it has deteriorated into a messy slog of characters with no relation “existing” within the same frame, as very rarely are these films shot with any tangibility. The potential for monetary gain has led to studios rushing their production with lazy cgi, opting to skip out on the heart and humanity behind meaningful narratives to capitalize on the “next big thing.” This only works to strip the resulting content of its artistic merit, hence my decision to call these films “content.” Meaning, the multiverse is an idea that is open to postmodern thought, allowing characters and stories to reach into other sects of their own history or referencing their very existence as cultural products, but when commodified, creates a cinematic landscape that too can be described as postmodern. Visiting the cinema, it is clear that we have a current lineup of films that is pessimistically postmodern in its existence: a seemingly endless lineup of movies replicating one another, referencing elements of a shared history or universe, or reaching into its franchises own past due to our for profit system treating art as a product.
However, not all hope is lost. As previously mentioned, the multiverse story is not inherently unoriginal. The fact I even have to point this out is reflective of how stagnant cinematic development has become…at least, that’s what I would have said save for the recent disdain for the very normativity audiences once craved. The aforementioned multiverse stories did bomb, but so have many other products that have led to the proliferation of the trend in the first place. It seems as though even mainstream audiences have grown somewhat tired of the poorly produced products for profit. The MCU, a giant in the entertainment industry, has even its greatest fans disappointed with its latest content, an output that helped solidify the multiverse as a commercially viable narrative device in the first place. Outside of stories directly related to the multiverse, films that reflect the postmodernism of the modern day have also flopped. The legacy sequel was once original and praised, but not even Indiana Jones can make a desperate grasp for the past a successful one. Finally, it seems like audiences want to see quality films instead of ones that are the equivalent of action figures being forcibly slammed against each other, and the recent successes of original blockbusters help prove as such. “Barbenheimer” was a success not because it was the coincidence of two opposing films premiering on the same day as Hollywood believes it to be. Instead, these movies were successful because they were just both fantastic movies. In many ways, there is hope for cinema once again, and I believe no other better demonstrates the recent shift from postmodernism to optimistic metamodernism than a multiverse story itself.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse comments on the current state of the comic book industry that exists outside of the film’s contexts. Cynicism for the modern also permeates the film with its harsh critiques on that very industry. The protagonist, Miles Morales, meets countless versions of the same mantle he takes on; intertextuality and self referentiality are core to his story. In many ways, the sequel to one of the films that pioneered the multiverse trend is postmodern, but existing alongside the pessimism of postmodernity is a story of unwavering hope in the face of evil due to our hero’s inherent individuality. Miles learns that in order to be a hero, he need not fit into the strict mold of Spider-Man, one crafted by a list of rules that distills every Spider-Man in his countless iterations to the same role, but to distance himself from that rigidity. Only by being himself, by being original, can Miles be a successful Spider-Man. Escaping the bottomless bit of postmodern cynicism while maintaining the insightful critiques the movement provides alongside strands of modernity and a return to originality, ATSV demonstrates how metamodernity acts as a response to decades of shifting theoretical frameworks. By combining the best of both postmodernism and modernism, ASTV gives a much needed breath of optimism in a cinematic world that seems destined for homogeneity. With audiences favoring original films, and the multiverse once again being used for creative stories that use the trope for a purpose outside of monetary gain, there is hope for a new trend in modern cinema: originality!