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Throughout his legendary career, Stan Lee, Spider-Man’s iconic co-creator, frequently cited the character’s ability to transcend race and culture as the primary key to his enduring global popularity. “What I like about the costume is that anybody reading Spider-Man, in any part of the world, can imagine that they themselves are under the costume,” said Lee. “And that’s a good thing.”
With 2018’s groundbreaking feature film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony Pictures Animation and the accomplished writing team of Chris Miller and Phil Lord sought to put the quote to the test by making Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino variant of Spider-Man, the film’s protagonist and transitioning Peter Parker into the role of a mentor. For the sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, co-directors Kemp Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson aim to double down on Lee’s theory by enveloping even more cultures and perspectives into Spider-Man’s massive and ever-expanding web. “I think one thing this film will do is show that what it means to be a hero is a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” says Dos Santos.
With Great Power
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse follows the continuing adventures of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as he struggles to balance his responsibilities as a student, son and superhero. Complicating matters even further is the return of Miles’ crush, Gwen “Spider-Woman” Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), who enlists our hero’s aid to combat The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) — a villain who poses a threat to every Spider-Person in the multiverse. As the duo delves deeper into the eponymous Spider-Verse, they encounter an array of beloved and obscure characters from Spider-Man’s complex comic book mythology that are guaranteed to delight die-hard fans of the Web Head.
Among the legions of comic-book loyalists Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse seeks to satiate are the directors helming the film, as all three men are avid fans of the medium. Director Justin K. Thompson, the production designer for the first film, credits an unconventional job at a local comic shop for stoking his youthful passion for illustration. “I was only 14, so the owner couldn’t actually hire me,” says Thompson. “So, he finally agreed to pay me under the table in free comics.”
After his “shifts,” Thompson would spend hours redrawing his comics in the pursuit of mastery. “In that very real sense, comic books taught me how to draw and tell stories,” he says. “So, to be going full circle, making films about one of my favorite comic-book characters of all time, Miles Morales, is all a little bit surreal.”
Like Thompson, it was Dos Santos’ affinity for the character of Miles Morales that initially enticed him to join the franchise. “I had met [with Sony] really, really early on, before the first film started, about if I would be interested in being a part of a Spider-Man anything,” says Dos Santos. “Of course, the answer was yes, but look, I’ll be the first to say it, there’s a lot of Spider-Man material out in the world.”
During a meeting with Phil Lord, who is one of the film’s producers and writers, Dos Santos discovered the hook that eventually drew him into the Spider-Verse. “I was midway through the meeting with Phil, and he was like, ‘What if it was Miles Morales?’” says Dos Santos. “Now I’m interested, because this feels fresh; it feels like something different.”
Despite his desire to be on the project, timing prohibited Dos Santos from joining Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which coincidentally mirrored the experience of director Kemp Powers. “I was still at Pixar working on Soul,” recounts Powers. “People would bring movies to screen at Pixar, so during one of our lunch breaks, it was the Spider-Verse crew bringing Into the Spider-Verse.”
The quality of the then-unreleased footage impressed Powers so significantly that he couldn’t shake the urge to collaborate with Sony in the future. Fortunately for Powers, the unique COVID protocols imposed during his time on Soul allowed him to work remotely, return to L.A. early and eventually meet with Miller and Lord. “So, they were just like, ‘Yeah, we’re doing a sequel to Spider-Verse, and would you have any interest coming on board?’” says Powers, who jumped at the chance. “We wrapped on Soul on a Friday, and that Monday I was on Spider-Verse. So, I was actually working on this sequel before Soul was released.”
Great Responsibility
Creating an animated feature is already a taxing endeavor, but aiming to follow up on one of the most successful Spider-Man films of all time carries a specific pressure. “I do animation and live action, and there are unique challenges to animation born of things that make animation so special, and that’s the iterative process,” says Powers. “You’re creating then recreating, you make it and then you blow it up. Then you start over again, and again, and again, and again.”
For Dos Santos, Across the Spider-Verse helped dispel his long-standing misperceptions about feature filmmaking. “I came from TV, where once that faucet is turned on, those episodes are going, and if you didn’t get it on episode three, you’ll make up for it on episode seven,” says Dos Santos. “The grass always seemed greener in features, where it was like, ‘Man, they get to sharpen every idea into this razor-thin thing.’ And then you get in it, and you get it pretty dang sharp, and everyone goes, ‘Wow, it’s great. Let’s destroy it and try something completely different.”
One of the differences that Thompson implemented to help distinguish Across the Spider-Verse from its predecessor is the project’s breathtaking visual vocabulary.
“While I was making the first film, I leaned on classic comic-book techniques to describe Miles Morales’ world,” says Thompson. “When he travels across the Spider-Verse, I wanted the look of each dimension he visits to emulate the comic-book origins of different characters he meets.”
When discussing Thompson’s decision to create contrasting aesthetics for each Spider-Person, Powers couldn’t suppress his enthusiasm for one character in particular. “I think Spider-Punk’s design is probably one of the most bold designs we’ve got of a character,” says Powers. “He’s basically a living punk rock poster that, even when he’s standing still, is constantly in motion.”
Does Whatever a Spider Can
As the trio ventured deeper into Across the Spider-Verse, it became clear that the film needed to be split into two halves. “Even when I came on board, it was always the idea that it was going to be a trilogy,” says Powers. “As the breaking and rebreaking of this film happened, we realized what was initially conceived as one film was actually two films.”
“It wasn’t for lack of trying to make it one film, though,” jokes Dos Santos. “We screened a version of this that had so many ideas in it that by the end, people were just sitting in their seats bewildered, like “Did that all just happen in front of our eyeballs right now?’”
To wrangle all the concepts tucked in the film, Thompson and a crew of over 900 animators worked tirelessly to create several new literal and figurative dimensions for Across the Spider-Verse. “The team at Imageworks created hundreds of new tools to bring the different worlds and characters to life,” says Thompson. “They developed a way to make it seem like an artist was painting the picture in real-time, moving their brushes and dripping paint across the screen behind the characters.”
Through innovative animation techniques, Thompson paid tribute to the comic artists who helped create the inspiration for the film’s characters. “My favorite tools they developed were the ones that were based on the work of individual comic-book artists, like Rick Leonardi for Miguel’s [Spider-Man 2099] look, or Brian Stelfreeze for Jessica Drew’s [Spider-Woman] look,” says Thompson. “We worked closely with those artists to develop tools that could translate the way they did their linework and their textures so that it could be applied to the 3D look of the characters.”
Beyond emulating the style of comic artists, the directors aimed for authenticity regarding cultural nuance. “We had an early version of the first scene with Pavitr (Spider-Man from India), and it just didn’t land, and we assembled a special room of various Indian voices — writers, comedians, artists — to rebreak the whole scene,” says Powers. “And what was once one of the scenes that didn’t work, in my opinion, turned into one of the most awesome moments and characters in the movie.”
The team’s dedication to Pavitr’s scene serves as a microcosm for the franchise’s working thesis that anyone can be Spider-Man. “I know this is like an arrogant, hopeful, boastful thing, but you want everyone in the world to leave the movie theater and imagine that they live in a world where they have a Spider-Man in their neighborhood,” says Powers. “Whether they’re in a city or the country, America or India … I want people to feel like this is a world where they’re all a part of it.”
Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, June 2.
Some Fun Spidey Facts
- The work of futurist designer Syd Mead, who contributed to the designs of Star Trek the Movie, Blade Runner and TRON, was a big inspiration for the look of Miguel O’Hara’s city of Nueva York on Earth-928.
- Director Justin K. Thompson first worked with producer Phil Lord and Chris Miller on their feature directorial debut, Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
- The worlds of the haves and have-nots in Earth-928 are separated visually and physically. The above-ground population live in an idealized world of blues and clean lines, while the underground world is darker and brutalist in nature.
- The visual artists behind the hybridized world of Mumbattan had to empty out the East River in order to create a giant chasm where the city is built, level upon level — which creates a visually stunning backdrop for the Spider folks to move through.
- The filmmakers pay homage to some of the movies that have inspired them visually throughout the movie. Fans of great cinema will be able to find subtle nods to classics from Blade Runner and TRON to Akira and Heat in this visit to the Spider-Verse.
- You’re never too young to know your Spidey Villains! Look for cute plush versions of Doc Ock and Green Goblin in Baby Mayday’s crib.
- The look of the Vulture was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s insightful illustrations of winged flying machines from the late 15th century.
- The visuals for Ben Reilly (a.k.a. Scarlet Spider) were inspired by comic books from the 1990s.