Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Turns An Infamous Spidey Vehicle Into An Actual Character
This post contains spoilers for "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse."
"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" is a film that fully explores the ramifications of having endless alternate versions of a character, examining both the thematic and story opportunities of having hundreds of Spider-People with mostly the same origin meet up, resulting in a movie that interrogates the very idea of canon and asks what exactly constitutes Spider-Man.
Despite how big the scope of "Across the Spider-Verse" is, it never forgets it is still a movie about Miles, and also about Gwen. Their coming-of-age stories continue, with Gwen fully coming to her own and getting her own "Spider-Man 2" moment as she is at her lowest point emotionally, while Miles is trying to reject the idea that Spider-Man can't always save everyone. This helps ground the film as it doesn't matter how much spectacle there is as long as things return to the emotion of the main characters.
On top of that, this movie has visuals so stunning it breaks the brain (this is a good thing). "Across the Spider-Verse" best encapsulates the opportunity that comes with exploring the multiverse, examining vastly different worlds and characters that look completely different from one another. In a movie full of crazy cameos, however, one of the weirdest is a character that redeems an infamous toy-like character, a spider vehicle like no other. Yes, we're talking about Peter Parkedcar, aka the Spider-Mobile.
Vroom-vroom
You would be forgiven for asking the question, "Why would Spider-Man ever need a car?" Because this makes no sense. The Spider-Mobile was created in-universe and debuted in "Amazing Spider-Man" #130. In the issue, an advertising company tries to promote a company's new car by making a collab with a superhero, and because Peter Parker is not exactly rich, he eventually accepts the sponsorship.
The walking toy commercial had a few appearances before a new iteration joined the 2015 "Spider-Verse" comic crossover as a fully-fledged alternate universe version of Peter Parker. This version, named Peter Parkedcar and created by Dan Slott, came from a world full of talking cars like Pixar's "Cars." He lives in, where else, Vanhattan, and can transform from a regular car into a superhero's vehicle.
Peter Parkedcar's appearance in "Across the Spider-Verse" works because of how normalized it is. There is no Marvel Cinematic Universe-like parade of jokes about ridiculous superhero names and costumes. Instead, everyone takes the existence of vastly different Spider-People at face value. Animated Miles doesn't freak out when he sees live-action Prowler, though he does think the Spider-Rex is amusing (and who wouldn't). This helps sell the idea of a multiverse much better than any other film, because the characters embrace it, and interact with one another as Spider-People, while still presenting completely alien visuals and designs for each one, including a sentient car.