The other reason is just how abrupt the ending feels. It's not a bad cliffhanger point, but there's a lot of momentum that cuts right off without much denouement. To go back to the Empire Strikes Back comparison, what AtSV does would be like ending that movie right on "I am your father" "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Lando and Leia on their way in the Falcon, cut straight to credits.
See, I think the issue here is again, a misidentification of the climax. The climax of Spiderverse2 is when
Miles escapes the Spider-Society. At which point, there is still like 15 minutes of movie after that, showing the falling action and consequences. Which is waaayyyyyyyy more time than Empire Strikes Back lent for falling action/epilogue. It seems like y'all think the climax is where
Miles confronts the version of himself from Earth-42 which, if that whole segment had been pulled out of the movie and instead inserted in the middle of the credits or post-credits, y'all would have no problem. Because that is more a teaser of/setup for what's next rather than any form of resolution of the plot of this film. A standard Disney/Marvel film would have done so, but I'm glad this one didn't and dispensed with any mid/post-credit scenes because if we're going to criticize films about pacing,
that's something I can get behind. And I will never get mad at a film for having too much falling action/epilogue because modern cinema is more likely to just stop abruptly at the climax and have little-to-none of the stuff that's supposed to come afterwards.
One way of looking at it that helped me come to terms with this movie is to look at it as Gwen's Movie.
I don't see it as one or the other. It's clearly a film about
both of them at the same time, and comparing/contrasting their different yet similar experiences. They connect with one another because "they're the same" and this film goes the extra mile to actually portray that rather than the first film where Gwen was a supporting character with whom we just had to take their word for it because they spent little-to-no time actually developing her. This dynamic I thought worked exquisitely because 1) Gwen is a great character and deserves this amount of screen time and contemplation, 2) splitting the perspective up is a good way of justifying the length of the film because it's always doing something meaningful with one of the two characters rather than artificially padding the story out. And 3) each characters story helps to inform not just their own characters, but supports the central comparison/contrast between the two leads.
The last point of which, really makes everything in the film click thematically. It works really well and is quite frankly inspired. Because Gwen isn't just elevated to the role of a co-star in order to check off diversity boxes, but her story has impact and meaning that reinforces and strengthens the film's central conceites and complements the film's other main character. Getting to see
Gwen's struggles with her father first hand, makes her a sympathetic figure and lends credibility to her assertion that Miles' impulses are wrong. And seeing her
reconcile with him gives us as the audience proof that Miles is actually correct beyond just because he's the main character and things magically work out for him. When Miles pushes her away in this film, the pain of that hits the audience harder because not only do we see Miles's perspective, but we know Gwen's as well and why/how she would be hurt from all of this too.
And to me, this all goes back to the core nature of the films regarding breaking boundaries in cinema, and defying the "usual" way movies unfold. I think on occasion you might see some ensemble films or romcoms engage this sort of spotlight sharing, but it's almost never executed this well. Especially in the superhero genre. You only need to look at Marvel's own films like "Captain America: Civil War" where the title-character plays second fiddle the entire time in what is ostensibly his own movie. Even ensemble films like the X-Men movies or the Avengers films, tend to hover and emphasize the perspective of one central character at the expense of its costars. Spiderverse2 does the best job to date that I can remember, of actually crafting a narrative around two relatively equal characters and making it feel like neither is being lessened at the expense of the other.