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00:00 Welcome back to New Rockstars, I'm Eric Boston.
00:01 Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse's
00:03 most interesting encrypted character
00:05 was Spider-Punk, aka Hobie Brown,
00:08 a Spider-Man who speaks in, you could say, code.
00:10 Or if you're in the UK, you would just say,
00:12 talks like your, I guess your cool cousin talks
00:14 when the family's fighting on Boxing Day.
00:17 I don't know, you guys celebrate weird stuff over there.
00:18 But for the rest of us, I think we can forgive ourselves
00:21 if we missed some of what he was saying when we watched this.
00:24 But hey, now that the movie's on digital 4K
00:26 and we can really take our time
00:27 and decode all this cockney wordplay,
00:29 the more you look into the character of Hobie,
00:31 his design, everything he says and does,
00:34 the more you realize this guy's actually telling us
00:36 everything we really need to know,
00:38 why to distrust the Spider Society
00:40 and everything that he's been through
00:42 before the events of this movie,
00:43 and why we think he'll be the ultimate hero
00:45 of Spider-Man Beyond the Spider-Verse.
00:47 As Hobie says,
00:48 - I was just cool the whole time.
00:49 - And by the way, SAG-AFTRA has informed us
00:51 that entertainment journalists like New Rockstars
00:53 are allowed to continue covering movies this way,
00:54 but we join the unions in calling to the studios
00:57 and streamers to make a fair deal
00:58 with the screenwriters and professional working actors.
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01:02 the all-in-one platform that makes
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01:06 Okay, Hobie Brown, Spider-Punk from Earth 138,
01:09 and that was confirmed by Miguel's wrist device
01:11 in the opening sequence, if you look closely.
01:12 He is voiced by Daniel Kaluuya,
01:14 who's originally from Camden Town in London,
01:16 one of the birthplaces of punk music.
01:18 In an interview with The Voice newspaper,
01:19 Kaluuya said that co-director Kemp Powers told him
01:22 the character should be real and accurate
01:24 to the black British identity and punk way of speaking.
01:27 - I said, "Daniel, bring that, do that, whatever's real."
01:30 I was like, "You sure?"
01:32 He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
01:32 I was like, "Some words you may not understand like that."
01:35 He's like, "No, just, we'll make."
01:37 But it shows that their obsession with authenticity.
01:40 - So you'll notice throughout the film,
01:41 Hobie speaks quickly, and that, plus the accent,
01:44 plus the slang, make him, for anyone outside
01:46 the British Isles, kind of hard to understand,
01:48 which is what Kaluuya planned for the character,
01:50 because at certain points during the movie,
01:51 they do add context on screen.
01:53 - And what's that?
01:54 - I ain't got Scooby-Doo, mate,
01:56 'cause that's what they want.
01:57 - The words Scooby-Doo, Cockney rhyming slang for clue.
02:00 Cockney rhyming slang works by taking a word
02:02 and rhyming it with some other word or series of words
02:04 to get your meaning across.
02:05 Like, I ain't got a Scooby-Doo means I don't have a clue.
02:08 A common British phrase is apples and pears
02:10 when you mean stairs, as in,
02:12 I saw her walk down the apples and pears.
02:13 If a plane is flying overhead,
02:15 you might hear a Londoner say,
02:16 "There's a Tarzan and Jane," because Jane rhymes with plane.
02:19 Sometimes people won't even use
02:20 the word they're rhyming with,
02:21 and you just kind of have to know from context
02:23 what they were going to say
02:24 and figure out what rhymes with that.
02:26 This is often the case with famous names.
02:27 So if you're gonna say someone's having an Arthur J,
02:29 you need to know first off
02:30 that that's a reference to Arthur J. Rank,
02:32 the famous 1940s British industrialist.
02:34 And next, you need to figure out
02:35 what the rhyme is with Rank.
02:37 So he was having an Arthur J goes to
02:39 he was having an Arthur J Rank
02:41 goes to he was having a wank,
02:42 which is British slang for, you know.
02:45 - Oh, God.
02:46 - Is it confusing?
02:47 Yes.
02:48 Is it cool as hell?
02:48 Also yes.
02:49 Therein lies the cultural identity,
02:51 and yeah, a bit of at-arms distance snobbery
02:54 that defines what we love about the Brits.
02:56 Now, to give a bit of historical context,
02:58 Cockney rhyming slang emerged around the 1840s
03:01 when the East Enders of London
03:02 had to make a living through various means,
03:04 some of them illegal,
03:05 and needed a way to communicate with each other in a code
03:08 so that the police wouldn't understand
03:10 what they were actually saying.
03:11 So it has always been an anti-establishment code speak,
03:14 and Hubie in this film uses it the same way
03:17 to openly defy and contradict
03:19 the Spider Society authority in their presence.
03:21 Now, whereas Miguel O'Hara is presented in this film
03:24 as being all about control and order,
03:26 Hubie Brown is the opposite.
03:28 He's pure chaos in the way that he fights,
03:30 what he does, what he says.
03:32 He is sowing disorder, but unlike Miguel,
03:34 he actually is doing it for good,
03:36 and stealing tech from the Spider Society's
03:38 base of operations is something he's doing for Miles
03:41 and for Gwen so that Hubie can create
03:43 an off-the-grid interdimensional travel watch
03:45 and get to where he needs to go.
03:47 While it seems at first
03:47 that he was just stealing just for the hell of it,
03:49 there is a deeper intention behind it,
03:51 just like everything he says has a deeper layer of meaning.
03:54 Like the other Spider people we've seen,
03:55 Hubie launches into an explanation of who he is
03:57 and how he got there,
03:58 although he starts off a bit differently
04:00 because he doesn't fit in with the establishment
04:02 or follow any of the rules.
04:03 - Hi, my name's Obie Brown.
04:06 I was bitten by--
04:06 - What did you like to know, young man?
04:08 - And for the last three years, I've been the one and only--
04:10 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
04:12 You think I'm gonna show you my secret identity?
04:13 Come out of it.
04:14 - Actually, when he first arrives, he says--
04:16 - Is this the younger from 1610?
04:17 - Now, younger is pretty easy to understand,
04:19 even if you're not from across the pond.
04:20 In British slang, it just means anyone younger than you,
04:22 and sometimes can be used to mean a younger sibling.
04:25 Foreshadowing the brotherly protectiveness
04:26 Hubie will feel toward Miles later on,
04:28 causing him to help Miles on more than one occasion.
04:30 He talks to him like a little brother.
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05:22 And perhaps the coolest thing about the character,
05:24 supervising animator Chelsea Gordon-Ratzlaff
05:26 tweeted that Hobie's body was animated in threes,
05:28 but his guitar, vest, and outline
05:30 were on different frame rates, twos and fours.
05:33 Collectively, this gives him
05:34 an overall anarchic punk rock aesthetic.
05:37 He is out of step with himself
05:38 and out of step with the other spider people.
05:40 Different parts of his body
05:42 are rebelling against other parts of his body.
05:44 Now, Hobie's speaking double entendres
05:46 complicate things even further
05:47 because they add more depth to everything he says.
05:49 For example.
05:50 - Staging unpermitted political action
05:52 slash performing art pieces
05:53 or having a laugh at the pub with Amanda.
05:55 I hate the AM, I hate the PM, I hate Ables.
05:58 I'm not a hero.
05:59 Calling yourself a hero
06:00 makes you a self-apologizing narcissistic autocrat.
06:03 - Yeah, having a laugh at the pub with Amanda
06:05 means going to the bar with friends or his crew.
06:07 And when he says he hates the AM and hates the PM,
06:10 it's a wordplay meaning both the time of day
06:11 and hating the PM, the prime minister.
06:14 And as he says this,
06:15 he drags his boot across an image of Kingpin,
06:17 which might be a clue that in Earth 138,
06:19 Kingpin was the prime minister of that universe.
06:23 Now in the comics,
06:23 Spider-Punk is an anti-fascist, anti-racist,
06:25 anti-establishment, and at one point,
06:27 he even led a revolution
06:28 against a tyrannical US government led by President Osborn.
06:31 So there's also a ton of nods to these character traits
06:33 in his dialogue if you listen closely.
06:35 - Y'all make a heck of a team.
06:36 - I don't believe in teams.
06:37 - Aren't you in a band?
06:39 - I don't believe in consistency.
06:40 - Kit's an anarchist.
06:42 Taking a crap on the establishment, I salute you.
06:44 Giving a movie a rewatch just laser focused on Hobie Brown
06:47 makes you realize that everything with him
06:48 is just layers upon layers,
06:50 just like how the character was animated.
06:51 But just like stealing the text
06:53 seemed purposeless and erratic,
06:54 his language is designed to be off-putting
06:56 so that no one can really understand what he's saying
06:59 until they think about it a bit later.
07:01 So the characters who just brush him off
07:02 don't appreciate what he's communicating
07:04 to other people he's trying to connect with.
07:06 He does not agree with what Miguel O'Hara
07:08 and the Spider Society are doing,
07:09 and he says the quiet part out loud,
07:11 but no one gives a shit enough about him
07:13 to actually hear him,
07:15 because with this chaotic look and his language,
07:16 no one is paying too much attention to him.
07:18 They just cannot process him.
07:19 Again, like Daniel Kaluuya said,
07:21 you might not understand him,
07:22 but there's an authenticity to that,
07:24 an authenticity that I think will pay off in the third film
07:27 when I believe he will come back
07:28 to fight alongside Miles and the others
07:29 to take down Miguel and the Spider Society.
07:31 - All right.
07:32 - Squashed.
07:33 - Just don't enlist until you know what war you're fighting.
07:37 - Hobie helps Gwen come to that same realization
07:39 about the Spider Society not being on the up and up,
07:41 and he even knew before she did
07:42 how everything would go down.
07:43 - I don't know what it is you gotta do,
07:45 but I think that this thing is supposed to help.
07:48 The guy who left, it was a real piece of work.
07:51 - Gwen takes out the watch,
07:52 and in it is a side note from Hobie that reads,
07:54 "In case it don't work out."
07:56 So Gwen makes her choice.
07:57 She's putting a band together,
07:59 and she wants Hobie to be part of that band.
08:01 This whole movie, she's been looking for a new band,
08:03 and right here is a lead guitarist
08:04 to compliment her chaotic drumming
08:06 in the final solo of the movie.
08:07 I wanna close out with three more important lines from Hobie
08:09 that we have to single out.
08:11 - You're not a joke, right gang?
08:12 - Absolutely, I'm completely on the music.
08:14 - I don't believe in comedy.
08:16 Just kidding.
08:17 - I love this because really, the joke here
08:18 is in the dry pause before "I'm just kidding,"
08:21 which is hilarious because Hobie is really the first one
08:23 at the top of that chain,
08:24 so no one could turn around and see his face,
08:26 and that face would be masked anyway,
08:27 so it'd just be impossible for anyone to tell
08:29 if he's being sarcastic or not,
08:30 which is just so true for the Brits.
08:32 They love their dry comedy.
08:34 They all understand their dry comedy.
08:35 The rest of the world is like,
08:36 "Are you kidding or are you not?"
08:38 That's really the widest point of the gulf
08:39 in our language barrier.
08:40 Another important line.
08:41 - Guys, what's that?
08:43 - It's a metaphor for capitalism.
08:46 - I love this because the common hatred
08:48 for British imperialism and Western capitalism
08:50 is something that Hobie Brown and Pov have in common.
08:53 These are the kind of buildings
08:54 that Pov earlier pointed to when he said
08:55 this is where the British stole all of our stuff.
08:57 He's not referring to Hobie Brown,
08:58 he's referring to the PM.
08:59 And lastly, this moment.
09:01 - How many missions have you been on together?
09:02 - Oh, not that many. - A couple dozen.
09:04 - The fact that Miguel had Earth-138 on his wrist,
09:06 that Gwen had already had those green chucks
09:08 at the start of the movie that she got from Hobie,
09:10 tells us that there is a history with these characters.
09:13 One where Gwen and Hobie
09:14 caught Donald Glover Prowler together,
09:16 and Hobie is the authentic hero
09:17 that Miguel, as a pretender who has to use technology,
09:20 who doesn't have Spidey sense,
09:21 Miguel can never understand,
09:23 and Hobie Brown is gonna be the hero
09:25 that Miles and Gwen can actually
09:26 authentically follow in the footsteps of.
09:28 Now, if you'll excuse me,
09:29 I'll head to the Rub-a-Dub for a pig's ear
09:31 because I'm Adam and Son.
09:32 Yeah, it doesn't really work as well
09:34 when I'm not actually saying it in the accent.
09:35 But I wanna thank Gina Ippolito for writing this analysis,
09:37 researching the history behind Hobie's little word plays,
09:40 and I also wanna thank Paul from Heavy Spoilers
09:42 for his guidance on this whole video project.
09:44 As our nerd movie analyzer across the pond,
09:46 please subscribe to Heavy Spoilers,
09:47 doing great stuff over there.
09:48 Also, please subscribe to all the channels
09:50 in the new Rockstars Network.
09:51 You can follow me on all social platforms at EAVOS.
09:53 Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time, bye.
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