Take notes doctor strange

I absolutely loved Spot because he’s the first “scientist turned into a monster during experiment gone wrong” character who actually ACTS like a scientist. He’s constantly experimenting and picking apart the broader applications of his powers over the course of the movie. And unlike every other supervillain (who usually just tolerates having a kryptonite) when he realises he can run out of holes, he quickly brainstorms a way to get rid of the weakness by recreating the accident that transformed him on a much larger scale.

I think how a writer handels a overpowered character is a big sign on how good of a writer they are because it means the writer has to be more creative on how they stop the overpowered character from instantly winning.

“Characters have a tendency to throw their babies into combat” I don’t know why this made me laugh, I think it’s the image of Peter just chucking Mayday at the villains.

Spot launching himself through Mumbhattan is what made me realize the writers are amazing at using portals. Momentum launching is one of my favorite things in the Portal games, and keeping that momentum to repeatedly launch yourself and stay in the air is one of the coolest things portals can do. It basically allows the user to fly

I also wanna highlight how Spot’s motivation stop his ability from breaking the story. We see his portal break some web before he enters the collider, so it’s safe to assume his portals can close in on objects and cut them. So, with that power, he could literally just… decapitate our heroes and win instantly. There’s no external barrier preventing him from doing that. But the reason he doesn’t do that is not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to. Spot is sadistic and wants to watch Miles lose everything he cares about, and that’s the only reason he doesn’t straight up kill Miles from the start. The only thing stopping the Spot from winning is himself, which is just such brilliant writing!

I was super ready for this dude to be a one off filler villain that they only put in the trailers to distract you from figuring out who the actual bad guy is. But not only did the make him the main threat, they made him actually menacing, and really funny. And I kinda felt bad for him when I heard his backstory. They knocked it out of the park with the Spot!!!

They managed to make his powered-up form looks like an eldritch abomination that WILL tear down the universe. I'm honestly impressed how terrifying and powerful looking it is. They seriously managed to take a meme-tier one-off supervillain that nobody cared about for decades and turn him into a genuinely threatening and terrifying multiversal threat.

The Spot does have one single limitation/weak spot (heh), he can run out of spots, and therefore he can run out of portals. Yet after he entered the collider, he became so full of spots, his body is now mostly covered in black, with just some almost washed out white spots. Would be interesting to see how they overcome this villain, but so far he's been fantastic, yet kinda sad he was so absent in the second half of the movie, but the Miguel O'hara issue needed to be adressed i guess (and that's another fantastic plotpoint btw).

That bit around 5:50 where Spot is walking towards Miles, twists around and yeets the other spider-people away with his portals and continues walking towards miles immediately afterwards is chillingly amazing

its about time we've had a character that uses portals in this manner for combat. Ive only ever seen stick figure animations use these type of 'Portal' portals, being able to chain attacks, throw attackers/attacks enemies, increase/decrease kinetic energy, etc etc.

The spot easily has the least limitations for portal creation I’ve ever seen. Here’s a list of the things he can do with his portals that are usually limited. Overlapping Portals, Moving portals while open, closing portals to cut things, can open portals subconsciously anywhere without physical action, opening portals on occupied space, and of course multiversal portals.

The spot is genuinely my favorite character in this he’s just . So good. He’s really damn funny, and it’s cool to see him progress from being kind of an idiot to genuinely terrifying. The fight in Mumbattan is genuinely SO cool he just zips around every which way and i so badly wanna rewatch that scene in slow motion just to get a handle on what’s going on. Also , we must not forget, he’s just a fuckin nerd. He calls the whole collider incident “the creation event” and “the crucible of [him and miles’s] connection.” Nobody talks like that. Nobody but this weirdo scientist with zero regard for lab safety. I love this dude

What really got me about Spot being a villain is; unlike most villains who are very realistic and grounded, this person is unrealistic and definitely crazy. At the start of the movie, my opinion of him was like; okay, comedic relief villain, so an Anti-Protagonist? No, throughout the course of the movie, we see him evolve to a Antagonist, and the main one at that. The more we learned about the Spider Verse, the more fear we grasp on the sense of danger the Spot poses. He isn't King Pin with motives to bring back family, he isn't the Prowler who is the Uncle of our protagonist, he isn't the Gargoyle made to do bidding, or even Doc Oc to do science stuff. Spot has nothing that connects him with any reality, and even if he finds himself into a reality that he still exists as normal, he himself cannot do anything about it because of what changed him. And that's the biggest threat anyone would feel, the threat of knowing someone as powerful as him, has nothing to lose.

II can tell guardian hq was traumatized by how terribly they used the portals in hgs

I think another OP thing about Spot is he also has control over how his portals work. When Miles goes through one he falls for a couple of seconds through this dark void, where he can build momentum and can move and adjust how he'll come out the other side (I'm also assuming this is kind of how he redirected the force from Miles' kick after the "I think he means me" bit). But sometimes his portals work more like they do in the portal games, where the portal just makes something appear out the other side and you're still connected (like when someone tries to punch him and their fist comes out another portal). Or he can make his portals take you to that inter-dimensional white void place. Point is that's another OP thing, you can't always predict how his portals will work so you can't always plan to use them to your advantage/he seems to have total control of the space between his portals as well.

The villains in across the spider-verse are fantastic. Miguel is a super interesting antagonist and the spot is a nice twist on the "superhero starts out weak and pathetic, becomes powerful."

My biggest problem with portals is when they give them to a protagonist like Dr. Strange, and then they BARELY use them! Or they use them in the most basic and rudimentary ways possible! The way they handled the Spot was perfect!

Its amazing how after the spot escapes miles into the dimension inside of his portals he realises what he can truely do, and the spider people never land a hit on him again

I love how perfect The Spot is for Spiderman, like most spiderman fights you often see him webbing up the villains or surrounding areas to attack the villain. The Spot completely nullifies all of that and pretty much makes spiderman a sitting duck if he wanted.

Finally, someone who appreciates just how op and creative Spot's use of his portals are. I was particularly flabbergasted at how he was playing ring around the rosie with Miles at the indian market and how before he entered alchemax, he dived into two perfectly vertical portals to accelerate and then launch himself like a bullet

I think the genre of "joke character turning into an unstoppable force" is something far too slept on, but when done right, can make for the most interesting and exciting characters when on-screen.

Spoilers Even the first fight has him escaping Miles trap within minutes of being there, and thesecond only ends when he (literally) kick his own butt means that Mikes never really beat the spot even before his power up. And it done in such a way that both times i was "cool fight representing how Miles relationsips are falling appart (not seeing Gwen in over year, not talking to his parents, exetrera), but who the main antagonistic is" only for him to be one of the two (with the other also being quite fascinating do their motives) is so good.

I've always thought the Spot had one of the most amazing and OP abilities ever since first seeing him in the animated series. I was surprised that he was looked at as a joke character. I always thought, "do you know what someone could do with those powers?!"

Super glad to se they've made Spot great again, always thought his power set was underappreciated. DC in particular is pretty bad at making their heroes so overpowered it becomes absurd every time they are put up against anything lower than a universal threat. Like the Flash can move several hundred times faster than the speed of light, has femtosecond level reflexes, can vibrate through things, land several gazillion punches per second, each of them having the force of a supernova, absorb the speed of others around him via Speed Force bullshittery, travel between dimensions... and yet we're supposed to take it seriously when he has trouble defeating losers like Captain Cold or Captain Boomerang.

I absolutely love this, the feeling that all the different Main Characters are all serious, have a backstory, and always "save the day!". And then you have the Spot. Random dude who got hit by a bagel and is now a multi dimensional being with unlimited power. It feels so good for a story to actually have a overpowered villian while keeping the story good

i love the scene where he stack momentum to jump to Alchemax 5:24. It's so smart.

Guardian HQ not comparing anything to HGS challenge (impossible):

The little portal to push the button to turn on the force field is such a small but incredible detail to show just how little effort he has to use now

Through out the movie you can see how much better The Spot gets at using his portal's like when we first see him he couldn't use it right away especially when he tried to get the money from the ATM and by the time we see him in universe 50101 he's more competent when he uses his portal's, he most likely got a training montage when he was hopping from universe to universe

Also the limitation that he needs more and more dark matter to keep sustaining his powers is such a fun one and potentially the way they'll defeat him, which would be super explosive and interesting

thought you were gonna talk more about the clip shown at 5:58 where it shows their their inertia preserved RELATIVE TO THE PORTAL - he rapidly moves a portal to envelop them, and they come out WITH THAT SPEED! lots of things show inertia preserved when the portals are stationary, but showing how the moving portals impose their reference frame onto objects passing through them? gorgeous.

Spot really does parallels miles well. Both became something by accident and despite that, they became good at it.

They writing team and the animation team made this man "spot on"

Thank you! THANK YOU!! I've written whole stories about how overpowered portals are! They're insane! *EDIT* Not only that, but he can _move_ portals. That's not common, and takes things to a whole new level.

I would’ve loved to see you go in depth into more specific ways he uses the portals early in the film, but this was a great analysis either way. I was laughing and cheering when he sent the scientists out, because it was just such a solid use of his portals

Honestly the scene BEFORE is what got me, because the way spot walked through the portals was so well animated, I LOVED IT!!!

He reminds me of Joni Topaki from Everything Everywhere All At Once. He’s trying to gain more power by enhancing his portal powers to reach the multiverse. Which makes him more and more chaotic. So,I think he’s great!

As I was saying all over ATSV videos. Its really impossible for Miles and Spider-society to stop him considering he is fully covered by his own portals/spots. And the fact that he can use a lot of it and yet still be fully covered just makes him over-overpowered. Its like cutting air. The only way to defeat him is to make him use all his spots/portal. Which i think the Spider-society numbers will come handy. And if Spot has contingency plan, something like bringing all villains to Miles universe just to make Spider-society busy. I wouldn't be surprised

I love the way the spot fights cause it’s exactly how someone irl would try to fight and move with portal powers, like when he’s going through Spider-Man indias and in order to build more momentum he had himself go back and forth between two super short range portals to go super fast

The best part is, the Spot really WAS a joke character. Even in the comics, he never gets a serious or major role; at best, he's part of a larger group of badguys. Typically, he's used for his heist-type powers and not much else. I think the most serious thing he ever got into was the Marvel Zombies universe (though I'm not a comics connoseuir so correct me if I'm wrong). The Spots writing in ATSV is basically a direct jab at the comic writers for not realizing the *insane* potential of The Spot when the stakes are upped. It becomes apparent very quickly that a character with instantaneous portals and his own pocket dimension should be considered more of a threat than just a filler goof.

his limitation is that he needs to get more spots

I appreciate that the writers decided to take an incredibly underrepresented “joke villain” and allow his powers to be fully realized. Even in his original appearance he kicks Spider-Man’s butt, then they just had no clue what to do with him. Allowing the potential of your villains powers to be fully realized makes them that much more intimidating and interesting to watch. And now with his power boost, the dude might as well be a god.

Yess The Spot as a character and the way they utilized his portals were absolutely fantastic in this movie!

this made me realize how underutilized doctor strange's portals were throughout the marvel movies

I've never heard of The Spot before this, but I love characters who have means of teleporting and warping because it instantly makes them insane. Minato and Obito from Naruto, Mirio Togata (Not warping but him phasing through the ground gives him mega speed and you can't really stop him)...It's just so cool and I haven't seen the movie yet but I know I'm going to love it.

I also love the commentary on the common "joke villain" in comics and the subversion of the trope as story progresses. Reminded me of the 1hr long video of the Wall and i cant imagine how pleased the author will be with this character

the DnD movie portals well to. Their portals had a hard limit of site to site, so they had to get creative getting in and that still fail because the portal could not be move after it fell over.

he's got mild bill cypher energy, you know a being of chaos who doesnt take things too seriously because they know they are just that powerful that they dont have to even try.

I love how they didn’t weaken him (the spot) for plot armor and whatnot, that’s exact what a normal person would do if they had all that power. That person wouldn’t hold back lol. I’m glad that the animators didn’t hold back spot’s potential.

I saw the trailers and desperately hoped they would actually do portals justice. I was not disappointed in the slightest.

I think its neat that the Spot can clearly control how exactly the portal function. Some of them have travel time, to build up momentum, while most of the others are direct connection from point A to B

Across the Spiderverse is already Movie of The Year, hands down.

5:24 The spot couldn't resist and did what we all did when we played portal. Blink-and-miss-it details like that make this movie extremely rewatchable

The second he started talking about his holes I knew I'd go apeshit over him, he's the silliest creature on earth and I genuinely cannot get over his design, voice and how amazingly well he was written. The writers could've easily fucked his character up but they made him the most awkward spadoinkly batutsi in the history of cinema 🙏😔 I love my wife

One media (anime in this case) does Portals ABSOLUTELY well. Black Clover has brothers with Portal Magic and one of the things they can do was send a small circular wisp-like portal straight to an opponent and if any of them touch any part of their body, the projectile will go pass them, cleanly cutting the body off in the shape of the projectile. Its really cool and opens up a bunch of creative ways of using portals as an offensive attack, not just for support.

5:57 When I saw this I thought “Oh yeah, the writers know exactly what they got themselves into, and are absolutely nailing it.” Hell, I rewatched that part of the video again and again because it’s that good. My only question now is: will they show what happens when a portal is opened up in the middle of someone’s body? Will they fall into two halves? They showed Spot can sever a web using that technique. I don’t have high hopes for Miles’ dad surviving. *ahem* now they’re thinking with portals

In the comics, they sort of balance Spot by having his durability be next to nothing. In his original appearance, Spiderman only landed one punch on him, but that one punch took him out

so glad the film/people are finally appreciating the spot and seeing how great a villain he can be used. Like even back at his first appearance where his joke was that despite how powerful he is spiderman could take him out in one punch because he was still just a nerdy scientist before the accident could make for a really cool concept. a villain who is both extremely powerful & dangerous but weak at the same time (a glass canon but with a level of power it's more accurate to call him a glass rail gun) (SPOILERS) also 5:45 I feel part of that is due to the great voice they had for him and how the unassuming nature of the voice works. when the spot is starting out as a villain the voice makes him sound geeky and in over his head, then when his powers grow greater the relaxed tone makes it come off he is so powerful he doesn't need to take anyone seriously then finally when he fully changes the calmness makes him sound eerie and terrifying contrasted with the pure chaos of his body

Damn I never thought about how epileptic people can’t watch movies like this that’s so tragic 😭

Marvel still kind off didn't redeem themselves as a whole, but this seriously was so good. Like the super villain of the movie had such a weird reason to become a villain, like just because of a piece of bread? I love it.😊

Actually a literal heist in the recent dnd movie revolves around the portal staff thing. They handled its uses pretty damn well with the right kind of limits and how it works.

This was more well spoken and intuitive then i would have expected going in. Take my like!

Portals are one of the most fun powers. Just getting someone to punch themselves with them is enough for me. If you want a fun way to use portals with a character, an idea I like is the portals being stuck to certain points on the characters body. And they can pick where the portals come out in a small like 10 metre radius around them. So say they’re in a fist fight with someone and they have a portal on their left palm. They have to move their hand to catch the punch to send it through a portal so the person punches themself. Or if the portals are in a really inconvenient spot that they can’t change. Like your armpit. Imagine trying to fight someone but whenever you would expect someone to block or dodge they try and get you to punch their armpit. I think that’s a fun gimmicky way to have a character with portal powers but who’s not ridiculously OP.

Another series that is mostly clever with portals is Kid Cosmic, it’s an underrated gem. There’s even a spider man reference

The only limit shown so far for the portals is that they use up dark matter and the spot has to grab more from colliders across the spider-verse, they might do something with that in the next movie.

i love how the spot even uses the classic portal tactic of falling from one into the other over and over and fling himself upwards.

Imagine accidently making someone turn out as a far above thanos level threat by accidently throwing a bagel at them.

The spot definitely steals all his scenes my fav is when he's being chased he goes so fast and shows how quickly he adapted to his powers

Its doubly impressive how ell they handled the spot given the spot's history in the comics is like a greatest hits album of how not to write this power well.

It’s not like Peter brought Mayday to a fight, he brought Mayday to probably the only place in the multiverse where spider people can be safe. A fight just happened to break out there

even his theme is terrifying

2:11 oh hey i have that one

I wasnt too interested in seeing this movie but.. now i might have to go just for him lol. Tho i need to know how tf did a bagel turn him into that?

I really like the guy. He's a dweeb who's been given great powers and he spends the film learning to use them better and eliminate his weaknesses

when I saw this movie I knew that you would be satisfied with the portals

I’m willing to bet that his weakness ends up being having too many holes, and when 100% of his body is consumed by portals he just becomes antimatter and then ceases to exist

Not gonna act like I was a fan of the spot before this movie, but whenever I did hear about the spot I never understood why he wasn't a main villain or more powerful, his abilities are literally stupid powerful.

What I really love that in a lot of media it's the hero who needs to learn to use their power while the villain is already competent, but in this movie, since Miles has already been spidey for a while, it's the villain who still needs to learn to use his powers.

Its truly a relief to see some at least slightly creative use of complex power, not just "uuuh, portals? Its for fast travel between story locations"

I've been saying The Spot is one of the most dangerous Spider-Man villains for years, I'm glad he finally got the respect he deserves.

The way he wants to be the main villain to miles is incredible eerie with how much he fascinated over being the main villain. He realised that if he is going to have these powers and become the spot he might as well ruin miles life and destroy his world. Great villian

4:20 i also want to talk about _that_ though. the spot ISN'T dumb! he's really not! he literally helped create the collider and had a WHOLE hand in allowing for itsv to happen. he isn't super powerful becauae of his portals, but because of how smart he _is_ and how easily he learned to _utilize_ his portals!

That's a very good video. Me, with my next to nothing attention span, was hooked throughout the whole time span right after I decided that I can't actually be more spoiled than I already am.

I love how the animators didn’t hold back spot’s potential to do harm. They made it realistic, made the portals quick. They didn’t make it dramatic when the people fell through, they didn’t give the protagonists plot armor. In other movies, the director would purposely weaken the villain because easy plot easy money.

I will say that when I watched it, he ended up running out of dark matter to make any new portals during the first fight. So I’m thinking that either using the machines that they used when the cannon event was interrupted and avoided in order to trap all of his dark matter, or by just enduring the spot long enough for him to run out of the dark matter.

"especially if the portals have no solid limitations" That means you yukari yakumo

honestly that fight between him and miles really showed how over power spider sense is

kinda disappointed you didnt mention much how clever the fight scenes with the portals were theyre REALLY understand how portals work and the first couple fights with him are just so darn geniusely choreographed

It’s funny cause I’m one of the scenes I thought he was genuinely destroying matter, so I thought his portals could do so much more than he thinks they can, even at the end of the movie

The Spot made stuff with Portal's that I already said would be possible to do myself. Building and Stopping momentum by being able to angle the portal, redirect attacks back to someone else, the Spot showed why Portal's are so cool. And that by being an absolute goofball that you just cannot hate and you got yourself a fantastic villain

When rewatching the film, i noticed how the spot makes thid dramatic pose, leaning on one hip with uneven shoulders, while introducing himself to Spider-man: "I am spot". When we see him transformed at the end he movie, in all black spottness, he assumrs the same pose. Its such a great nod to "i am spot" but reaffirming his identity and proving us - the audience, and spider ppl wrong: Not the villain of the week, he is nemesis

Thank GOD I am not the only one who loved him. You can't usually respect portals as a threat in shows, because its up to the writer to make them threatening and they are rarely consistent enough to be strong, but the only time he doesn't just wipe the floor with them is when he doesn't care or he's messing with someone. also he's smart, he acts adaptively and nerdily. He also never gets cocky. instead of just beating up miles he keeps collecting power instead. He has a greater goal and will NOT be stopped. Not all of his solutions(especially on the fly) are strategic masterpieces but you can see him working it out.

It wasn’t mentioned in the video, but Spot manages to open a portal in order to cut one of Miles’s webs. This implies that Spot can instakill someone by opening a portal halfway through their body, since he can clearly do the same thing to inanimate objects.

"Im going to take everything from you. Just like you took everything from me." Actual CHILLS man.

For the scene where Spot was sending scientists out of the control room, the editors used Portal Gun sound effects for when they dropped through.

What strikes me the most about the Spot is how petty his motivations are. He wants revenge on one guy for “ruining” his life. This coupled with his overpowered ability creates a terrifying combination. I’m really worried about Miles’s parents in the next one.

Best part about bagels being used in relation to portals and multiversal travel? Most black holes are actually basically just massive bagels with an infinitesimally small hole in the center, the ringularity.

I'm surprised it took THIS long for the spot to get a chance to reveal just how OP he is. He's existed since 1985 and has worked for a Villain that opposes TWO separate Heroes (Kingpin is both a Villain to Spiderman and Daredevil), and this has been how his powers worked since the start.

Probably the best example of teleportation powers is a villain from Mob Psycho 100 who really demonstrates how powerful that ability can be. There's just so much creativity on display