One of the reasons Everything Everywhere All At Once made multiverses work is that they understood the idea that multiverses are kinda intrinsically connected to nihilism as a concept. In a multiverse, it's either nothing matters or everything matters. The best multiverses i've seen have broached the idea with this in mind. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, the predominanting mindset of the movie is that, even in the joke universes, everything matters. Evelyn doesn't beat the characters she's fighting by extending kindness to them in only one universe, she does it in all of them. The universe we end in at the end of the movie doesn't matter because they all matter just as much as the one Evelyn started in.
I don't know enough about the Into the Spiderverse movies to commentate on that but the Honkai games can also be a good example. The whole reason why Otto doing the thing he did worked at all was because all the possibilities matter, even the one he sacrifices himself to make. If the ones with Kallen's death matter, so must the one with her survival. Acheron as a character is an Emanator of the Aeon of Nihility and it's hammered in that everything she does do has a purpose. We know what she did for Tiernan mattered because it helped save Penacony. Self-Annihilators exist to resist IX and part of doing that is rejecting the idea nothing matters because embracing it leads to you being devoured. She is aware of the concept of multiple worlds and versions of a person and acknowledges that, while she is not the same Raiden Mei HI3 players know and love, she is still a Raiden Mei and and if HI3's Raiden Mei matters, so does she.
It's all or nothing. If nothing matters, there's no reason to get invested. If everything matters, everything is something worth love and attention. A multiverse narrative cannot survive on the idea your actions don't matter when the whole idea of a multiverse is built on the premise that your actions have the power to split existence to accommodate their impact.
The spiderverse definitely broaches this topic, though in a slightly different way!!
So, in the SpiderVerse, the general consensus is that everyone believes everything matters, but the how and what matters is different.
For Miguel, he believes in not interfering with the ‘cannon events,’ or in other words, the traumatic events that shape who a person becomes. This is because he believes the entire multiverse will collapse if the main plot of the story isn’t followed. I also believe he thinks this way because of the trauma he endured. He tried to take the place of a different version of himself and get back the family he lost, but doing so, for whatever reason, made the world fall apart. It’s much, much easier to accept bad things WILL happen rather than consider the possibility that those bad things could’ve been stopped, had you just tried hard enough.
Miles, on the other hand, believes the world is what you make it. He’s under the impression that yeah, bad things happen, but you are in control of your own reality. Rather than run away or accept impending doom, he chooses to look for a solution to a dark situation, no matter how impossible it seems.
Miguel’s mindset is ‘everything matters, and thus we cannot change it,’ while Miles’ mindset is ‘everything matters, and thus we should never give up no matter how hopeless a situation may seem.’
I could do a whole rant on how their experiences and upbringing shaped the way these mindsets formed, but I don’t want to make this post too long and lose the original prompt lol. If anyone wants one though, just ask and I’ll do a deep dive.
