Speaker 1: Warning. This podcast contains spoilers for Spider Man Across the
Speaker 1: Spiders and some minor spoilers four Into the Spider Verse. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosie Knight and
Speaker 1: welcome next Revision the crook Good Media Podcast. We dive
Speaker 1: deep to your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
Speaker 2: In this episode, in the Airlock, we're traveling across the
Speaker 2: Spider Us.
Speaker 3: We've seen it, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: We will be talking about it, and in the Hive
Speaker 2: Mind we will be interviewing one of the Across the
Speaker 2: Spider Us co directors, Kemp Powers, in an absolutely delightful chat.
Speaker 2: And our note out comes from Amy on the YA
Speaker 2: series The Lunar Chronicles.
Speaker 1: Coming up a non spoiler and then spoiler discussion of
Speaker 1: Across the Spider Verse. We're setting out of the air
Speaker 1: locked to talk about Spider Man Across the Spider Verse
Speaker 1: reniv R Non spoiler reaction. Then we're going to dig
Speaker 1: into the plot and what we thought of the movie.
Speaker 1: Here we go. Here's the non spoiler reaction. Absolute masterpiece.
Speaker 2: Five modern classic changes the game again. One of the
Speaker 2: things I wrote this on my lab box review was
Speaker 2: like which I usually just write jokes on there, but
Speaker 2: I wrote like a three paragraph review. It's absolutely delicious
Speaker 2: to me that every studio is basically spent in the
Speaker 2: last five years trying to copy what they did and
Speaker 2: into the Spider Verse, and then across the Spider Verse
Speaker 2: came out and did something completely different, Like animation wise,
Speaker 2: it is absolutely mind blowing. From the opening ten minutes,
Speaker 2: you know you're in for something completely special, and then
Speaker 2: you add to it that it introduces characters who I
Speaker 2: would say will become even more iconic than Penny Parker,
Speaker 2: Spider Noir, Spider Ham. These characters we got in the
Speaker 2: first movie. You get Spider Punk, you get you know,
Speaker 2: Spider By, you get Spider Man India. There's so many
Speaker 2: brilliant characters, and all of that happens. It's funny, but
Speaker 2: also it's still about Miles and this journey, and it's
Speaker 2: so emotional and if you love the first movie, I
Speaker 2: feel like you're gonna love this movie, and I just
Speaker 2: it blew my mind. I was not I knew I
Speaker 2: was gonna really love it, but I didn't really know
Speaker 2: how much of an impact it would have on me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you said the exactly the right thing.
Speaker 1: If you loved the first movie, that combination of high
Speaker 1: flying action, really funny, legitimately funny jokes, and a incredibly
Speaker 1: moving story with crazy high stakes. Considering you're looking, you're
Speaker 1: watching an animated Spider Man film. It's all there again,
Speaker 1: just heightened and in a different way. The emotional beats
Speaker 1: are heartbreaking. This film brings Miles to a place where
Speaker 1: he has to make an incredibly almost impossible decision, and
Speaker 1: I didn't think that anything could top for like my
Speaker 1: breath catching in my chest. The moment where into the
Speaker 1: Spider Verse where Miles is, you know, he gets his
Speaker 1: new costume and he's figuring out like how to be
Speaker 1: Spider Man, you know, and he jumps off, of course,
Speaker 1: the Chrysler building and his head pitched all the way
Speaker 1: down and he's just like you know, hurtling towards the
Speaker 1: ground before he swings and like starts careening across the city.
Speaker 1: That moment is jaw dropping, and across the Spider Verse
Speaker 1: is like filled with moments like.
Speaker 3: How crazy is that?
Speaker 2: Like you you bring up such a good point immediately,
Speaker 2: like ten points like jumped to my mind. There are
Speaker 2: visual moments, There are quiet moments that still just absolutely
Speaker 2: change your perception of mad movie can be and what
Speaker 2: a kid's movie can be. This is a movie that
Speaker 2: respects kids so deeply, and respects this audience, and respects
Speaker 2: comic books and comic creators, which is something we talk
Speaker 2: about with Kemp Powers in our chat. It's moving on
Speaker 2: so many levels. This is like, it happens to me
Speaker 2: a lot because I just love I love cinema, you know,
Speaker 2: as well as like trash movies and all the stuff
Speaker 2: I always talk about, but like, sometimes movies are just
Speaker 2: so beautiful they make you cry. I remember the first
Speaker 2: time I saw the Lego movie. I knew nothing about it.
Speaker 2: I had not been living in the world of like trailers,
Speaker 2: and I didn't really comprehend that the movie looked like
Speaker 2: it was made of stop motion lego. And I remember
Speaker 2: when it opened up and showed the screen, I got
Speaker 2: that feeling in my chest of like, oh, I'm gonna cry,
Speaker 2: Like this is making this is beautiful, this is stunning.
Speaker 2: I can't believe it. And this movie did that to
Speaker 2: me so many times. So many different art styles, so
Speaker 2: many different aesthetics, so many different narrative spaces to tell
Speaker 2: these stories.
Speaker 3: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I could never believe that they were going to top
Speaker 2: the first movie, but I think they did it.
Speaker 1: It is amazing. See it. We have discovered from our
Speaker 1: from co director Kemp Powers, who we just interviewed and
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear his voice later, that it's only available
Speaker 1: in Imax the first week.
Speaker 2: It's yes, because then we have it's Transformers and then
Speaker 2: the Flash. So if you want to see it in Imax,
Speaker 2: go see a iMX this week and then come back
Speaker 2: and listen to our conversation with all the spoilers.
Speaker 1: Absolutely see it in Imax because it will melt your eyeballs.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: You just feel like you're in the film.
Speaker 2: You feel like you're in the film, you feel like
Speaker 2: you're in a comic book, you feel like you're in
Speaker 2: a computer. You feel like you're in Miles's universe and
Speaker 2: Gwen's universe and everyone else's universe.
Speaker 3: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Go see it.
Speaker 3: Go see it.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for the spoiler film discussion of Across the Spiders. Spoilers.
Speaker 1: Spoiler spoiler spoolers. Okay, wow, oh my god, wow.
Speaker 3: What a film.
Speaker 1: Well, let me so when I saw Into the Spider verse.
Speaker 1: It blew me back in my seat, not necessarily because
Speaker 1: of how incredibly visceral the action was, how high flying,
Speaker 1: how wonderful the character designs of Green Goblin and the
Speaker 1: Scorpion design all of them looked, but because there was
Speaker 1: a richness of emotion that I was not expecting when
Speaker 1: you meet alternate Peter, who is divorced and going through it,
Speaker 1: and you marry that energy with Miles trying to figure
Speaker 1: out his life and what it means to be him
Speaker 1: and what direction he's going to take in his life
Speaker 1: and whether he deserves to go to this elite school
Speaker 1: or not, and trying to balance these new powers and
Speaker 1: being a superhero, this intense secret he has with the
Speaker 1: loves for his family, the lovey as for his uncle,
Speaker 1: and this feeling that he has to bear weight of
Speaker 1: this new responsibility. It's like it is incredible and it
Speaker 1: just really hits you. And Across does that in a
Speaker 1: different way that completely fits what this movie is. It's
Speaker 1: more refocused on Gwen, it's more refocused on Miles. And
Speaker 1: you said something really that I've been that really hit
Speaker 1: me when we were talking in our non spoiler conversation,
Speaker 1: which is like it really respects kids. There is you know,
Speaker 1: I've said this before in different places, but I hate
Speaker 1: when people deride like kids stories and kids materials because
Speaker 1: there are fundamental, existential, huge emotional questions that come up
Speaker 1: when you're a kid that matter to you forever for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. And you know, like do
Speaker 1: you am I love? Does does the people? Does the
Speaker 1: person I love love me? Well?
Speaker 3: What happens when we don't exist anymore? What happens to
Speaker 3: the people I love when they loss on?
Speaker 1: How does my family feel about me? What would it
Speaker 1: feel like if they reject me? Those are like fundamental
Speaker 1: questions that you will think about for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, and this movie lands those questions in a
Speaker 1: way that makes the Steaks so incredibly powerful. You know,
Speaker 1: like the first movie spoiler movie, Yeah, the Miles's Universe,
Speaker 1: Peter Parker, Spider Man dies like in the first ten minutes,
Speaker 1: and that does so much to set up the stakes
Speaker 1: of this movie, Like, you don't know what will happen.
Speaker 1: Spider Man can die.
Speaker 2: It's like Drew Barrymo being killed at the beginning of Scream.
Speaker 2: You never expect it. This is your hero, It's Spider Man.
Speaker 1: There isn't something necessarily like that in this movie, But
Speaker 1: the steaks are so much more powerful one because you
Speaker 1: care about these characters already built in from seeing the
Speaker 1: first movie, and then they just do such a good
Speaker 1: job of fleshing out the interior life of teenage Miles
Speaker 1: Morales and teenage Gwen Stacy and it's magical. And then
Speaker 1: you marry that with some of the most experimental and
Speaker 1: jaw dropping animation that you can see. Yeah, it takes
Speaker 1: all of so many different animation styles for specific characters
Speaker 1: but also for specific universes, and it somehow makes it
Speaker 1: all incredibly energetic but not chaotic now where you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on and I can't focus
Speaker 1: on anything. It just sucks you in. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: It feels like a film that truly understands the possibilities
Speaker 2: of the multiverse. Now we already may feel like we
Speaker 2: are saturated in multiverse storytelling. This is something I was
Speaker 2: thinking about a lot this morning. Even as people who
Speaker 2: love the multiverse, who've been invested in it since we
Speaker 2: first read Crisis on Infinite Earths, right like now, a
Speaker 2: lot of people are like, oh, the multiverse, you know
Speaker 2: this the Flash TV series just finished that was about
Speaker 2: the multiverse. Quantumania was about the multiverse. The Flash movie
Speaker 2: coming out is actually the same plot line the Flash
Speaker 2: TV show just did endgame.
Speaker 3: Strangely, Multiverse Man is.
Speaker 2: Arguably this Masma movie from the story that we have
Speaker 2: heard about. The Flash also has similar storylines to what
Speaker 2: the Flash would be doing.
Speaker 3: But I will tell you something.
Speaker 2: This makes you feel like millions of universes exist and
Speaker 2: you are visiting them. It understands every single universe would
Speaker 2: look different, People would look different in each universe. There
Speaker 2: are infinite possibilities, which means one universe can be hand drawn,
Speaker 2: one universe is watercolored. One universe looks just kind of
Speaker 2: exactly the same, but it's animated a slightly different frame rate.
Speaker 2: And now is I'm not even teasing the visual impact
Speaker 2: that these things will have on you. This is a
Speaker 2: movie that understands the possibility of the multiverse, and it
Speaker 2: is just absolutely astounding it.
Speaker 1: You know, it strikes me listening to you say that.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that makes the multiverse
Speaker 1: so lived in in this movie is that very smartly,
Speaker 1: this film makes the multiverse a thing that's keeping miles
Speaker 1: away from his friend Gwen missus Miles, Miles missus Gwen,
Speaker 1: and they can't be in the same place because of
Speaker 1: the multiverse and all these canonical rules around how Spider
Speaker 1: Men evolved in their particular universes. But basically, it's the
Speaker 1: multiverse as the longest long distance relationship like you've ever had.
Speaker 2: And not just with somebody who you might have a
Speaker 2: crush on, like Gwen, but somebody who was your mentor,
Speaker 2: like Peter Where's Peter b Parker Bin Miles has had
Speaker 2: to do this himself.
Speaker 3: But we meet Miles here some one of the things
Speaker 3: I know people will be really excited to see.
Speaker 2: He's competent, he can do it. He is Brooklyn Spider Man.
Speaker 2: There is no question anymore. He's not a scrawny kid,
Speaker 2: you know, he's a teenager. And I mean, the funniest
Speaker 2: thing is I think if we did our classic recap
Speaker 2: style thing where we really it, actually this is what happens.
Speaker 2: Miles Morales is in Brooklyn in his universe. Gwen Stacy
Speaker 2: comes to visit him from her universe, but she's not
Speaker 2: in her universe anymore because she's joined like an elite
Speaker 2: team of.
Speaker 1: Spider people and she's on a mission. She's keeping that she.
Speaker 2: Can't stay in her universe because her dad has rejected
Speaker 2: her right. And then you go to Nueva York. You
Speaker 2: meet Miguel uh you know O'Hara, Spider Man twenty ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and there he leads this elite force of Spider people,
Speaker 2: and they want Miles to do something unthinkable, so unthinkable.
Speaker 3: I don't even think it's worth us mentioning in the
Speaker 3: spoiler conversation, you know.
Speaker 2: And the funniest thing is that's really the plot of
Speaker 2: the movie, but actually there's just so much more to it.
Speaker 2: Like this is a movie if you love Easter eggs
Speaker 2: and you love crossovers, and you've been wondering when will
Speaker 2: Miles Morale is Animated crossover with the MCU, when will
Speaker 2: it cross over with the Sony Verus. You are going
Speaker 2: to get those joyous moments here that make you feel
Speaker 2: like all these universes exist. I will also say, now,
Speaker 2: this is a spoiler, but it's just a nerdy spoiler.
Speaker 3: That we love.
Speaker 2: They reference the MCU directly here, and they call it
Speaker 2: a correct name, the nineteen ninety nine to nine Universe
Speaker 2: one nine nine ninety nine Kevin Faggey. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 2: that's the truth. And they complain about Stephen Strange, they
Speaker 2: can plain about him messing with the multiverse. You know,
Speaker 2: there is a connectivity here that feels exciting, but it
Speaker 2: never takes away or dampens from the story. It's as see,
Speaker 2: it's an emotional story about people coming together, about friendship,
Speaker 2: about destiny, and it also introduces us to these characters
Speaker 2: like Spider Punk, you know, played by Daniel Kalua, just
Speaker 2: so brilliant and infinitely iconic.
Speaker 1: I mean, you want him to be in the whole
Speaker 1: movie when he leaves, for it's the perfect time for
Speaker 1: him to leave the movie and the perfect time he
Speaker 1: waves in a moral the perfect way for him to
Speaker 1: leave because he is a total rebel, punk against the
Speaker 1: Green kind of character who like looks at every kind
Speaker 1: of rule sideways. And you get that because this movie
Speaker 1: is and its predecessor is so brilliant at show don't
Speaker 1: tell storytelling, but you just get that in the moment
Speaker 1: you meet him, and it's like, man, I wanted him
Speaker 1: in the whole movie. Yeah, not to mention the fact
Speaker 1: that he acts as one kind of spoke in the
Speaker 1: burgeoning love triangle between Miles and Gwen. It's that is
Speaker 1: such a really powerful emotional driver. Yeah, those little things
Speaker 1: of like oh you left your sweater?
Speaker 3: It is in his world, right do you sleep over there?
Speaker 2: And I love the way that again, like we talk
Speaker 2: about this respecting kids, respecting your audience. A kid who
Speaker 2: was ten when Into the Spider Verse came out is fifteen.
Speaker 3: Now can you imagine getting to watch Into the.
Speaker 2: Spider Verse and then grow up and see Miles maturing
Speaker 2: Sea Miles in these situations and who doesn't love a
Speaker 2: love triangle?
Speaker 3: And you know, kem Powers was talking.
Speaker 2: In our chat about this, this great idea of Spider
Speaker 2: Punk needs to be so cool that he makes Miles
Speaker 2: look uncol which is like an almost impossible feet after
Speaker 2: the first movie. But the way that they represent him again,
Speaker 2: this is something that's so exciting and comes to life
Speaker 2: so deeply on screen. But Spider Punk is brought to
Speaker 2: life essentially as a zine. He's constantly collarge. She changes color.
Speaker 2: He goes from black and white to full color to
Speaker 2: almost like a rizzo print where he's different three different colors.
Speaker 1: The way that his guitarist sits on his back is
Speaker 1: like someone cut a guitar out of an advertise and.
Speaker 3: It didn't cut around the edges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and didn't cut around the edges and glued it
Speaker 1: onto it.
Speaker 2: And sometimes he's got newsprint over his face. That's just
Speaker 2: one example of the ambition that they are telling this
Speaker 2: story with, and it never takes away from it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that for some people.
Speaker 2: It will feel overwhelming or it won't necessarily feel as
Speaker 2: clean as the original, But to me, it was such
Speaker 2: an unbelievable experience to see.
Speaker 3: These characters brought to life.
Speaker 2: And obviously the funniest thing about this movie is one
Speaker 2: of the things people most excited about is all these
Speaker 2: different Spider people, right, and that is great, And they
Speaker 2: have some really truly weird Spider people in this movie.
Speaker 2: You have like Spider, you have a werewolf Spider Man,
Speaker 2: you have Websling, a Spider Man and his whore. You
Speaker 2: have one of the coolest newer Spider people, a Spider
Speaker 2: Uk who's like a young Muslim woman. There's all different
Speaker 2: Spider people and you get to experience them.
Speaker 1: PlayStation four, PlayStation multiple.
Speaker 3: Honors, May I just say, and like, it is such
Speaker 3: a cool.
Speaker 2: Space to experience all these little easter eggs and fun stuff,
Speaker 2: but it never it only is ever additive.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's just the right amount. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that's just incredible about this movie, and I'll say this again.
Speaker 1: You'll hear me say this to camp is it's two
Speaker 1: hours plus two ten to twenty to twenty. It feels
Speaker 1: like a ninety minute movie.
Speaker 3: So it goes past so quickly, it never lags. You
Speaker 3: are thrown into this world wholesale.
Speaker 2: And you speak about this on the when they chat,
Speaker 2: but it's so true, like even as you know, a
Speaker 2: thirty four year old woman watching this movie whose job
Speaker 2: it is to know about this stuff, this is part one,
Speaker 2: this is a this is going into this we knew,
Speaker 2: but like you get to the end and it leaves
Speaker 2: you on this unbelievable cliffhanger, unbelieve unbelievable, and you get
Speaker 2: this great soaring moment of Gwen kind of putting together
Speaker 2: this band of heroes, and I went, oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's it's gonna finish.
Speaker 1: When it's when it ended, When the when the credits
Speaker 1: came on, right after that scene, people were like, come on.
Speaker 1: There was like multiple people in the theater just went on
Speaker 1: and it was like, that doesn't happen in assigning.
Speaker 3: It keeps you wanting more.
Speaker 2: And it's a classic old school serialized style Cliff I
Speaker 2: had too, like the old Batman and Robin episodes where
Speaker 2: they would show one after the other. This is not
Speaker 2: a like, oh, there's a post credit scene that teases
Speaker 2: what happened next.
Speaker 3: This is a oh, you were going to want more?
Speaker 3: And the first thing.
Speaker 1: Every five minutes, me and Chris.
Speaker 2: It was me and Chris, my friend Joel, Valerie Nick,
Speaker 2: we were all there and the first thing everyone does
Speaker 2: get out the phone, like when does it come out?
Speaker 3: Like when is it? When is it? Is it April?
Speaker 3: Is it March?
Speaker 2: I believe it's March the next one, but like, it
Speaker 2: is that great? And there is so much here that
Speaker 2: will inspire people, that will get people excited, that will
Speaker 2: make another generation of people want to become comic book fans,
Speaker 2: want to become Spider Man fans. And it also is
Speaker 2: this incredibly complex meta text on the nature of comic
Speaker 2: book can.
Speaker 1: And rules of comic conventions and the way character.
Speaker 3: It can be.
Speaker 2: And I actually hilariously think it's coming at a really
Speaker 2: incredible time. If you've been an incredible timing, I should
Speaker 2: say if you've been keeping up with comic book news recently,
Speaker 2: there has been a huge amount of controversy about the
Speaker 2: choice to kill Kamala Khan in the current Amazing Spider
Speaker 2: Man comic book. Now, as we Know and as Kemp powers,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about characters come back, and there are many reasons.
Speaker 1: They'll be on the bench for a year, if six months, because.
Speaker 3: She's got a movie coming out. Yeah, let's be real.
Speaker 2: In the movies, she's a mutant. In the comic, she's
Speaker 2: an inhuman. We could imagine something might change there. But
Speaker 2: something very interesting about that choice is it happens in
Speaker 2: the pages of Amazing Spider Man. And some people have
Speaker 2: gone through and they've looked Kamala's barely on fifteen pages
Speaker 2: through the whole series. But that is a book where
Speaker 2: historically they kill people for emotional impact. They kill a woman,
Speaker 2: a young woman, they kill Gwen Stacy, or they kill
Speaker 2: a parental figure, they kill Uncle Ben. That is almost
Speaker 2: a trap for a Spider Man book. No matter what happens,
Speaker 2: you have to kill someone to push Peter's story forward.
Speaker 2: It is unbelievable that we now have a movie that
Speaker 2: looks at that history and says this is actually wrong.
Speaker 2: You know, what if you didn't have to do that, well,
Speaker 2: if you could say no to that rule. What if
Speaker 2: you were the person who said, I'm not gonna do that.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna kill someone for this reason. I'm actually
Speaker 2: gonna push back against that and say, what if I
Speaker 2: changed the cannon. And obviously Miles changed the cannon and
Speaker 2: changed comics forever when he became Spider Man. But it's
Speaker 2: just that timing is so wild, and that moment you're
Speaker 2: already invested in the movie, you love the movie already.
Speaker 2: If you're me, you're watching it, you're like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is InCred I'm seeing comic book characters, I'm seeing Sam
Speaker 2: fa Green's name, I'm seeing comic books drawn by Rick Leonardi.
Speaker 3: This is incredible.
Speaker 2: And then they put that in and you go, oh,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, this is like, this isn't even you
Speaker 2: haven't even gotten to the meat of what this story
Speaker 2: is actually trying to say.
Speaker 3: Is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I think it's I mean, I thought that uh Into
Speaker 1: the Spider Verse was the best Spider period, but there's
Speaker 1: no question I think you have to Across is better
Speaker 1: in the way that a sequel should be better.
Speaker 2: In the rare way I'm saying, look, I put this,
Speaker 2: I put this out there, ready, masterpiece.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: I think this movie is so good I have to
Speaker 2: see it a few more times. I think it's in
Speaker 2: contention for like one of the best superhero movies ever.
Speaker 3: It's clearly not the best.
Speaker 1: I think it's clearly I think these two movies are
Speaker 1: clearly among the very very very best, like in the
Speaker 1: top echelon of comic book movies ever made easily easily
Speaker 1: and normally.
Speaker 2: The movies that feel most like they were adapted from
Speaker 2: a comic Boo, this is not oh, this is a
Speaker 2: character who was in a comic book. How do we
Speaker 2: make it grounded? Let's militarize the suit, Let's give them
Speaker 2: like an army background.
Speaker 3: This is oh. You like comics? Do you want to
Speaker 3: see a movie that feels like you're reading a comic book.
Speaker 1: It translates what for me was the magic of comics
Speaker 1: when I first started picking them up, which is like,
Speaker 1: anything can happen. You can see any Yes, you can
Speaker 1: see a guy a planet, you know, you could see
Speaker 1: a planet that you could just see anything. And this
Speaker 1: movie conveys that kind of energy, that magical moment of like,
Speaker 1: I know story, I don't know what I'm gonna see next. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, this movie is so good that we haven't
Speaker 2: even talked about one of the standout sequences, which is
Speaker 2: the introduction of Pav like Spider Man India and when
Speaker 2: they go to his universe and you get to see
Speaker 2: him and he's this incredible charming He's the happy, go
Speaker 2: lucky everything goes right for him, and it is so
Speaker 2: much fun. The animation is so brilliant, Like if you
Speaker 2: want to show someone a ten minute sequence of what
Speaker 2: makes Spider Verse movies, it's that.
Speaker 1: And it's the feeling of scale too, Like it's epic
Speaker 1: in scale. You know, we saw it on Imax, so
Speaker 1: I think that helps. But you feel like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: these characters are swinging in front of massive skyscrapers, trying.
Speaker 3: To in front of thousands of people in traffic.
Speaker 1: It just is incredible the scale. The other scene that
Speaker 1: just took my breath away was, you know, Gwena rives
Speaker 1: in Miles's universe, unbknownst to him on a secret mission
Speaker 1: and is like, let's see what you got. How have
Speaker 1: you leveled up your powers? And they just go on
Speaker 1: this run across the city, and it's like it makes
Speaker 1: you It's that feeling again of being a kid and
Speaker 1: picking up a comic book and being like, I wish
Speaker 1: I could do that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you feel like you're getting to do it.
Speaker 2: And that also leads to one of the moments that
Speaker 2: I think is so astounding visually where they end up
Speaker 2: on the top of a toll.
Speaker 1: Building, yeah, the Williamsburg Life Insurance Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then essentially walks around the side of the building
Speaker 2: to the underneath and webs herself so she can sit
Speaker 2: on the bottom of the building upside down. But the
Speaker 2: scope and scale it gives you like wobbly knees when
Speaker 2: you're watching it, you feel like you're up there with her.
Speaker 2: The way that they use camera angles in this movie
Speaker 2: to showcase the landscapes, the work, like Kemp said, the
Speaker 2: thousand plus people who worked on this movie for four
Speaker 2: years to make it come to life, you feel every
Speaker 2: single second of that work on the screen. Because there
Speaker 2: are so many different personalities who obviously brought this to life.
Speaker 2: There's so many different jokes. You know, whoever put Spider
Speaker 2: Cat in there, I know that was a very specific
Speaker 2: person who wanted that joke in. But I also know
Speaker 2: that whoever did a certain shot of you know, the
Speaker 2: bodego or the guy who's running the bodego who Miles
Speaker 2: helps save from the villain of the movie, ostensibly the
Speaker 2: villain of the movie the Spot, who is just totally wild,
Speaker 2: and I did not see the way that they took
Speaker 2: that character.
Speaker 1: I love we talk about this with camp, how this
Speaker 1: movie and its predecessor poked fun at its characters in
Speaker 1: really great ways. It does that with the Spot, where
Speaker 1: it's like, this guy's a villain of the week. I
Speaker 1: mean in the comics, literally literally, this is a throwaway
Speaker 1: first three pages.
Speaker 4: Of it.
Speaker 2: Weird, like you know, that is a character where you're
Speaker 2: just like, who came up with that? Oh no, And
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, two of the greatest, like al
Speaker 2: Milgrim and Herb Trimpy, like, but it's this weird, negative space, fun, strange,
Speaker 2: throwaway character and that is exactly what the movie knows.
Speaker 2: So Miles treats him that way and that ends up.
Speaker 3: Causing more chaos than you can imagine.
Speaker 2: I also love that the movie is so in conversation
Speaker 2: with the audience, not just as comic book readers but
Speaker 2: say you've never read.
Speaker 3: A comic, which I don't believe.
Speaker 2: If you watched the first movie, I assume you probably
Speaker 2: were inspired to read a comic, But say you didn't.
Speaker 2: There will be moments you remember, Remember when Miles hit
Speaker 2: a guy with a bagel and they put a sound effect,
Speaker 2: but you just said iconic became like a huge meme, became
Speaker 2: such a memorable moment that ends up becoming a cannon
Speaker 2: altering event for Miles and for the spot and for
Speaker 2: the people involved. There is so much fun to be
Speaker 2: had with the film. Reacting to what the audience loved
Speaker 2: about the first film, it's absolutely delightful.
Speaker 1: One more emotional beat that really stuck with me because
Speaker 1: it just rang so true, and it's part of why
Speaker 1: this movie's just great and it feels so lived in
Speaker 1: and real is. It gave you a depiction of that
Speaker 1: really like landmark life event that I think everybody has,
Speaker 1: which is the moment that a parent lets you break
Speaker 1: the rules. That is the moment when a parent is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I see that you really want this thing, and I
Speaker 1: understand who you are I think as a person.
Speaker 3: And I feel like we've had a connection.
Speaker 1: And you know what, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I'm going to show you the trust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead. Like, I know I grounded you, but
Speaker 1: you're ungrounded, right. I know, I know your dad or
Speaker 1: your mom said this, but I'm saying this, go do it.
Speaker 1: And that is like such a huge moment in every
Speaker 1: kid's life. And it gives you that moment in this
Speaker 1: movie and it just gives you chills.
Speaker 2: It's so good that ability to balance the family aspects
Speaker 2: that made this movie so beloved in the first film,
Speaker 2: and to extrapolate and expand the universe in this completely
Speaker 2: wild way. I mean, we get an entire lego sequence
Speaker 2: that you will learn a very cool fact about from
Speaker 2: Kemp when you listen.
Speaker 3: So stay tuned. But like, that is one of the
Speaker 3: funniest moments in the movie.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even in it until after the trailer was out.
Speaker 3: I'm going to posit this.
Speaker 2: I know we have a lot of people who listen
Speaker 2: to this podcast who even if they haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: they still listen to the spoilers. I'm going to say,
Speaker 2: don't listen to this next book.
Speaker 3: I need to get it out there. I need to
Speaker 3: get out there extra spoilers. Do not listen. This is
Speaker 3: about the last five minutes of the movie.
Speaker 2: People who haven't seen the movie in the room, put
Speaker 2: your fingers, earmuffs your ears.
Speaker 3: But like I have to say it, so the movie.
Speaker 2: The movie ends by Miles attempting to get back to
Speaker 2: his own universe, and I think it's going to be
Speaker 2: an empire level ending for a lot of kids because
Speaker 2: he ends up in the wrong universe because of a
Speaker 2: spider that bit him. He meets an oult universe version
Speaker 2: of himself who is in that universe the Prower. It
Speaker 2: is one of the most heart wrenching, incredible, brilliant choices
Speaker 2: that absolutely gut punched me. They did a great job,
Speaker 2: but the trailers and did't see it coming. I have
Speaker 2: to posit a theory.
Speaker 3: This is what I mean.
Speaker 2: I'm here to reassure your kids. I'm here to reassure you,
Speaker 2: and I'm here to tell you that that is not
Speaker 2: what you think it's going to be. I think in
Speaker 2: that universe, Spider Man was never supposed to exist because
Speaker 2: Miles would always have been the Prower, and the Prowler
Speaker 2: is not a villain. The Parallel is a vigilante that
Speaker 2: they need, and I think that that is not going
Speaker 2: to be the villainous expectation. In the comics, the Prowler
Speaker 2: is more of an anti hero vigilante who has a
Speaker 2: brutal twist. And I think in that universe that is
Speaker 2: the hero that they need, and that is what Miles
Speaker 2: was always supposed to be. I believe that it is
Speaker 2: not the villainous turn people think, and I think that's
Speaker 2: that's my theory.
Speaker 3: But I had to put it out there because I know.
Speaker 2: I had to text my sister and I said, warn
Speaker 2: my nephew that the ending's going to scare him. But
Speaker 2: I can explain what's going to happen because I don't
Speaker 2: believe it's as clear cut as people.
Speaker 1: I love that take, and we're gonna have to wait
Speaker 1: till March to find out if you're right. Up next,
Speaker 1: stay tuned for Kemp Powers.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Hive Mind, where we explore a topic
Speaker 2: in more detail with an expert guest. This episode we
Speaker 2: are thrilled to welcome are truly great Across the Spider
Speaker 2: Verse expert co director Kemp Powers, playwright, writer, and as
Speaker 2: we just mentioned, co director of the unbelievable New Across
Speaker 2: the Spider Verse. Now warning, this does contain spoilers. I
Speaker 2: would say they are quite vague, but if you want
Speaker 2: to stay fully spoiler free, I would skip this until
Speaker 2: you've seen the movie.
Speaker 3: Go see it. Go see it on the biggest screen possible.
Speaker 1: Kemp Power's welcome next re Vision.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me. Good to be here. I'm
Speaker 5: a little tired, but I'm going to give it my best.
Speaker 1: So the premiere was last night.
Speaker 5: It was, and then there was the after party.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Well, so I hope y'all really parted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because across the Spider Verse is a masterpiece.
Speaker 3: I know, it was absolutely no question. We would just
Speaker 3: it blew our minds.
Speaker 5: I'm so happy to hear that.
Speaker 6: I mean, we you work in these bubbles for so
Speaker 6: many years and you kind of come out of your cave.
Speaker 6: And I was talking to another one of the I
Speaker 6: was talking to the to the writer, like we got
Speaker 6: we were getting drunk, and it was just like at
Speaker 6: a certain point, you don't even know what's good or bad. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I just hope that it is, but you just you're
Speaker 6: you're so passionate about it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: So it was such a relief to finally just like
Speaker 6: see it with an audience and hear people's real time
Speaker 6: reaction actions it was it meant a lot.
Speaker 1: It is incredible, and I mean, and so in the
Speaker 1: in the most positive way. People were like not mad
Speaker 1: when it was over, but like it had propelled everyone
Speaker 1: to the end with such rapidity. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: how much time it's passed. And when it gets to
Speaker 1: the break where you realize it's over, it was just like, what,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to sit here for another couple hours. It's
Speaker 1: so energetic, so visceral. It shouldn't be as funny and
Speaker 1: as an emotion as emotional as it is, and it's
Speaker 1: just fantastic. It's wonderful. It really conveys the visceral feeling
Speaker 1: of what it must be like to watch people have
Speaker 1: these powers and to use them in such a masterful way.
Speaker 6: It's beautiful, and I mean, of course, I mean, I
Speaker 6: know when you have a I mean, even though we
Speaker 6: told everyone in your first yeah three, you know when
Speaker 6: you when you decide to have a cliffhanger, it's going
Speaker 6: to be divisive, and that's okay. It's okay for some
Speaker 6: people to love it, it's okay for some people to
Speaker 6: not be cool about it, but without spoiling the ending,
Speaker 6: I was a big believer in that ending because of
Speaker 6: the idea of introducing a new problem.
Speaker 5: Yes, so as opposed to like, this is all that's.
Speaker 6: Happened, and now we're going to go into It's like, no,
Speaker 6: at the last minute, let's introduce a new problem so
Speaker 6: that the audience doesn't necessarily know how it's all going
Speaker 6: to be figured out. It's not as simple as this
Speaker 6: person is in a jail cell. So the next movie,
Speaker 6: we're going to break that person out of a jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I wanted to compl you know, I think it's important
Speaker 6: to kind of complicate it a little bit. Audiences are
Speaker 6: incredibly smart. We do what we can to try to
Speaker 6: stay at least a step ahead if we can. And
Speaker 6: I'm the worst audience member, Like I can't watch movies
Speaker 6: with family members because I'm so used to story math
Speaker 6: that I'll sit there and watch a movie and say
Speaker 6: everything that's going to happen.
Speaker 5: Just so, and it's like I'm trying to outsmart me.
Speaker 3: I will say I did not.
Speaker 2: I have that very same problem because we watched so
Speaker 2: many movies we write stories ourselves.
Speaker 3: I did not see that big new problem coming.
Speaker 2: And I actually I loved the Cliffanger, and I think
Speaker 2: it was more of a case definitely an our screening
Speaker 2: of people being left wanting more.
Speaker 3: Which is a good thing. Like nobody felt cheated. It
Speaker 3: was more. Everyone I spoke to was like I could
Speaker 3: have watched another two hours, like I was ready.
Speaker 1: So I was.
Speaker 2: Speaking outside to a friend of mine, Eric, who's so great.
Speaker 2: He also loved the movie rights over it noticed and
Speaker 2: he made a great comparison that made me get thinking.
Speaker 2: He was like, for a generation of kids, this is
Speaker 2: going to be their Empire, Like, not only did you
Speaker 2: come out and you topped the first movie, but it
Speaker 2: leaves it on this kind of not a downer note,
Speaker 2: but there's a complex problem that needs to be solved,
Speaker 2: and you've learned something shocking and new. Was that something
Speaker 2: that you were purposefully going into with this movie that
Speaker 2: it was going to be more mature, that was going
Speaker 2: to end and leave we.
Speaker 5: Knew, we knew it was going to be darker, and that's.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, no, kids can kids have grown up with this.
Speaker 6: First Star Wars film I saw in a movie theater
Speaker 6: because the first Star Wars I was too young, and
Speaker 6: so Empire was the first time I saw a Star
Speaker 6: Wars film and like, news flash, Luke got his fucking
Speaker 6: arm collage. I was just like, oh ship, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm a little kid, like what's going on?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 6: And I'm talking in the very beginning when his tantong
Speaker 6: gets killed and they hang them upside down and Han
Speaker 6: cuts the thing open and pulls the guts out. This
Speaker 6: is I'm horrified, and this is the most awesome thing ever.
Speaker 6: But there were real steaks. And the interesting thing is
Speaker 6: our film is so much darker to a lot of people,
Speaker 6: but the first film, like a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Got killed, Spider Man dies.
Speaker 6: Because the darkness comes from I think real steaks in
Speaker 6: real menace. I really think that that's and that's a
Speaker 6: that's a difficult thing I think to accomplish these days,
Speaker 6: a real sense of steaks. I mean, the wonderful thing
Speaker 6: that the very comics that inspire us to do this.
Speaker 6: One of the problems with comics is that there's no stakes.
Speaker 3: In nobody you know.
Speaker 5: The canon.
Speaker 6: So you find out a care and you know it's
Speaker 6: news now, like the death of Superman. I was one
Speaker 6: of those people who best selling comic of all I
Speaker 6: got so many different and three months later, guess Who's Back. So,
Speaker 6: you know, we were inspired by comics, but this is cinema,
Speaker 6: and I think we have a different goal. We we
Speaker 6: we were comic fans ourselves. We want comic fans to
Speaker 6: to be excited and love it. But we also were filmmakers.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 6: We want to try to tell a cinematic story that
Speaker 6: feels emotional, that feels personal and human and and has
Speaker 6: real stakes, and we feel as they can only be
Speaker 6: told through cinema. So yeah, we always knew it was
Speaker 6: going to be more mature. I mean one of the
Speaker 6: first decisions that was made was aging Miles up, you know,
Speaker 6: making him less of an adolescent more of a young adult,
Speaker 6: making Miles competent. You know, he ends the first film
Speaker 6: just barely getting his sea legs, and we were all
Speaker 6: excited by the idea of seeing Miles as the Spider
Speaker 6: Man who is responsible for protecting his city and doing
Speaker 6: it really well. But then with that maturity, you know,
Speaker 6: comes more mature problems. And I think it's I think
Speaker 6: it's natural. Plus, you know, kids grew the same kids
Speaker 6: who saw the first into the Spider Verse are five
Speaker 6: years old.
Speaker 3: You imagine if you were ten when you saw that
Speaker 3: first movie.
Speaker 5: And you're fifteen.
Speaker 3: Now that just I imagine that is just one of
Speaker 3: the most special experiences.
Speaker 5: Now, I would hope, so, I would really hope. So.
Speaker 6: I mean, of course we do these films for everyone,
Speaker 6: but the reality is different. People are going to take
Speaker 6: it different ways. And I have a bit of experience
Speaker 6: doing this. Soul was a film that a lot of
Speaker 6: people are like, did you forget kids are out there?
Speaker 6: And it's like no, because they were like, Okay, let's
Speaker 6: see all the things kids aren't interested in forty five
Speaker 6: year old man.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know, like they just like ran down the
Speaker 5: list of things.
Speaker 7: That like, kids go don't give a shit about, and
Speaker 7: we went and made a movie about it, and guess what,
Speaker 7: kids got it, you know, and kids enjoy it, enjoyed it,
Speaker 7: and thanks to COVID, they had nothing else to watch
Speaker 7: on Christmas that year, so they all watched it and
Speaker 7: took it and actually came away with something.
Speaker 5: So I think people, when we say it's for.
Speaker 6: Everyone, that doesn't mean that everyone's going to receive it
Speaker 6: exactly the same way.
Speaker 5: And that's okay.
Speaker 6: I have friends with little four year olds who would
Speaker 6: probably be bouncing out of their seats through the first
Speaker 6: half of this film and that's okay too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, for sure. I think people have an
Speaker 1: idea of what directing a film is like, Well, what
Speaker 1: is directing an animated film like?
Speaker 5: It's complex.
Speaker 6: I mean, the main thing about animation is that it's
Speaker 6: an iterative process. Because of the use of storyboards and scratch,
Speaker 6: we're able to make version after version after version of
Speaker 6: the film before we actually animate the thing. So when
Speaker 6: you're seeing an animated film like Soul or Across the
Speaker 6: Spider Verse, you're seeing like the thirtieth or forty.
Speaker 5: Version of the film.
Speaker 6: And that iterative process is what makes it take so long.
Speaker 6: But with animation you have to kind of it doesn't
Speaker 6: necessarily you have a script, but you don't necessarily know
Speaker 6: how it works until you start building it. There are
Speaker 6: certain things that are similar in certain things that are
Speaker 6: very different from live action. One of the biggest differences
Speaker 6: working with the voiceover performers is that people are almost
Speaker 6: never in the same room. So you have an actor
Speaker 6: and they come in and they get a script and
Speaker 6: there's no one there, and in many cases there's no
Speaker 6: one there the entire process. In many cases, they don't
Speaker 6: even know who the other actor is playing the part.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: So it was always funny when you realize that cast
Speaker 6: members as we got closer to opening, didn't know who
Speaker 6: else was in the movie with characters that they had.
Speaker 5: Major scenes with, because they never knew. It was just
Speaker 5: me and the.
Speaker 6: Booth and Phil or Phil Lord and me and Phil
Speaker 6: and me and Chris and we're in the booth and
Speaker 6: we're working with these actors, and so you know, you
Speaker 6: have to act against nothing or act against you know.
Speaker 6: Some times I'll be their scene partner, but I'm not
Speaker 6: an actor, so I give them the terrible version of
Speaker 6: the line and they just work that way. So that's
Speaker 6: a that's a pretty tremendous difference. Obviously, our sets are
Speaker 6: all in.
Speaker 5: A computer, you know, like rough layout or layout is.
Speaker 6: Like basically the equivalent of building your set with animation,
Speaker 6: because you have the two D storyboards and the board
Speaker 6: artists really help us get the story solid. But then
Speaker 6: when it comes time to build it in three D,
Speaker 6: we go into building the set and you quickly discover
Speaker 6: the stuff that's been storyboarded doesn't necessarily work in three D.
Speaker 6: And that's when you because when it's in three D,
Speaker 6: when it's in layout, that's when you start setting your cameras. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, and we'll often do something like we'll be
Speaker 6: in the edit suite and you'll have like a picture
Speaker 6: in picture, so we'll have the layout version with the
Speaker 6: two D storyboard version like up in the corner and stuff.
Speaker 6: And I don't want to get like technical bore you
Speaker 6: to death, but there are certain where we're trying to
Speaker 6: do what you do in live action, but a lot
Speaker 6: of it is done in a computer of it is
Speaker 6: done separately, and then you piece the elements together and
Speaker 6: it takes a long a much longer time than making
Speaker 6: a live action film.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say one of the things that
Speaker 2: kind of blew everyone away about the original Into the
Speaker 2: Spider Verse. It really changed the game in the way
Speaker 2: people treated and approached animated movies. I mean, every other
Speaker 2: studio is still doing movies that are coming out the
Speaker 2: beginning of this year that everyone's saying, Oh, they're trying
Speaker 2: to do Into the Spider of Us or they were
Speaker 2: impacted by Into Spite of Us.
Speaker 3: With Across the Spider Use.
Speaker 2: You kind of blow that up and bring in all
Speaker 2: these different animation styles and go even kind of more
Speaker 2: ambitious and out of the box and it.
Speaker 3: Blew us away.
Speaker 2: How does that then come in because you're not just
Speaker 2: trying to make an animated movie. You're making an animated
Speaker 2: movie in a way that no one else has really done,
Speaker 2: where you have multiple different universes that all look asthetically
Speaker 2: different but still have to fit into this space and
Speaker 2: tell a human story.
Speaker 6: I mean, I give a lot of credit to I
Speaker 6: mean Justin my co directors came Dos Santos and Justin Thompson.
Speaker 6: Justin Thompson was actually the production designer in the first
Speaker 6: into the Spider Verse. And it's just justin being the
Speaker 6: type of guy he is. He just doesn't want to
Speaker 6: do the same stuff again. I love you now, it's
Speaker 6: just not wanting to like, well that was cool, and
Speaker 6: now let's try something different.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't it be cool to do this? Can we do that?
Speaker 6: Can we put off the folks at Sony Pictures Image
Speaker 6: Works like you know, we do a lot of viz
Speaker 6: dev It's just we want to we we just we
Speaker 6: just want to try new stuff. And and I wouldn't
Speaker 6: even say I think it's exciting when people see something
Speaker 6: done a little bit differently and it opens them up
Speaker 6: to other possibilities because obviously when Pixar did Toy Story,
Speaker 6: I mean, look at that transformational change, and to me
Speaker 6: it got a little maybe too extreme, because all of
Speaker 6: a sudden it was like, no one can do too
Speaker 6: d animated anymore. And quietly during that period, some amazing
Speaker 6: Perseis was one of the best animated films I saw.
Speaker 6: I lost to Oscar, I think, to a Pixar film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So like, it's not like it ever died. It's not,
Speaker 5: And that's just it.
Speaker 6: It's just opening people up to using different kinds of
Speaker 6: animation again, but none of it's really gone anywhere because
Speaker 6: you know, there's different practitioners. It was funny when I
Speaker 6: was at Pixar one of my favorite Pixar shorts came
Speaker 6: up there. It was called Kitbull, and it was it
Speaker 6: was just it was unusual and that it was too
Speaker 6: d animo, you know. So the director of that particular
Speaker 6: short decided that even though she could have done it
Speaker 6: three D, she did it two D, and and I
Speaker 6: think that that's what we really want. We just want
Speaker 6: people to figure out the best expression of it. Whether
Speaker 6: Wes Anderson He's done two pretty phenomenal stop motion animated films.
Speaker 5: You know that in the past.
Speaker 6: So so that's all it is is that, you know,
Speaker 6: we want to we we just I hope it just
Speaker 6: opens people up to understanding that there's different ways you
Speaker 6: can do animation. But I already think that's happening. I
Speaker 6: mean Nocchio last year. Yeah, you know, I thought the
Speaker 6: Lego movie was another leg When Phil and Chris did that,
Speaker 6: I was so excited, you know that we got got
Speaker 6: to get a little Lego sequence so.
Speaker 5: Much, which wasn't in the film.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys, oh no, we didn't
Speaker 3: know that.
Speaker 6: That's one of the Okay, when we released our first
Speaker 6: teaser trailer for this film, someone recreated the entire trailer
Speaker 6: in the Lego Yeah.
Speaker 1: We watched it, watched it. Yeah, I believe a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old kid.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we hired him. He did the Lego sequence in our.
Speaker 1: Movie No way. Yeah, that's like the coolest year old kid.
Speaker 6: Actually, we went and tracked him down because we were like,
Speaker 6: we should add a Lego sequence to this film.
Speaker 5: You have this guy do it.
Speaker 6: And we found out that Preston was fourteen in Canada
Speaker 6: and we had to work it all out. But yeah,
Speaker 6: we added that Lego sequence and Preston the same kid
Speaker 6: who did those our teaser he he actually animated.
Speaker 3: That amazing good.
Speaker 1: His teaser trailer is yeah, lighting everything, it's ridiculous. The
Speaker 1: camera moves, it's stupid.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, you know, we gave him notes and
Speaker 6: stuff like that, and honestly, I thought that was like
Speaker 6: one of my favorite I mean, it was just so
Speaker 6: funny to us this idea that like Lego Peter Parker,
Speaker 6: you might not notice it, but the first people, yeah,
Speaker 6: pops up. And the fact that Miguel says.
Speaker 1: You're he's the only one.
Speaker 6: He's actually the only Spider person in the movie. Miguel
Speaker 6: compliments being competent.
Speaker 2: Is the Lego and a screening that got such.
Speaker 3: A huge everyone.
Speaker 2: Was just and of course immediately everyone's like the Lego movie, which, again,
Speaker 2: like you say, that just totally changed the way people
Speaker 2: were perceiving what could be done with animation.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really struck me watching into
Speaker 1: this morning, after watching Across last night is above and
Speaker 1: beyond what we've talked about with the animation is how
Speaker 1: experimental the backgrounds are, you know, like it could have
Speaker 1: into is very clean. You know, when you see Miles
Speaker 1: or Gwen and in an interior setting and the apartment somewhere,
Speaker 1: and you can really make out the background, it looks,
Speaker 1: you know, like a like a comic book page. But
Speaker 1: you're doing so many things with the backgrounds in this movie.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the scene.
Speaker 2: With Gwen, Gwen's water.
Speaker 1: Color and moving around. What what inspired that?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean there's different challenges because think the first one,
Speaker 6: you have these different animation styles, but they all come
Speaker 6: to one set, and that's Miles's universe. So that's all
Speaker 6: you have to really keep in consideration. With this one,
Speaker 6: you have not just the characters from those universes, but
Speaker 6: coming to different universes, and we have to think through
Speaker 6: does a character look exactly the same in every universe,
Speaker 6: because there's actually subtle differences in how Miles looks in
Speaker 6: his universe versus Pavittrus. Yeah, and Gwen's is a great
Speaker 6: I mean, hers was inspired by the comic books, which
Speaker 6: the Gwen the Spiderwind comic books, which have this amazingash
Speaker 6: water color look, and we just took it to a
Speaker 6: different level in terms of like, you know, what if
Speaker 6: her whole world is basically like a mood. So so like
Speaker 6: the inspiration is almost like when you're in when you're
Speaker 6: watching a stage play and like a character like needs
Speaker 6: a chair and a chair like appears to sit down.
Speaker 6: So Gwen's entire world is kind of a reflection of
Speaker 6: her mood. And I think you see it, you know,
Speaker 6: you see it one way in the beginning of the film,
Speaker 6: but then I think you see it even more extremely
Speaker 6: when she reconnects with her dad at the end, and
Speaker 6: when it goes from hostile to loving, the changes in it.
Speaker 5: So it was always meant to be this watercolor mood
Speaker 5: ring and look like.
Speaker 6: A painting, and it was. It was one of the
Speaker 6: most challenging things to execute. But that's what that's what
Speaker 6: vizdev that's what visual development is for. You know, you
Speaker 6: spend a year just like experimenting with how we're going
Speaker 6: to make this look and how we're going to make
Speaker 6: it work. And and you know, knock Wood, you hope
Speaker 6: that when it's all said and done, people are positive
Speaker 6: about it. And then I mean the even bigger decision
Speaker 6: is to open the film with that, because it's such
Speaker 6: a visual departure from the first film. So to have
Speaker 6: the first, you know, twenty minutes of the movie be
Speaker 6: in this world that's like visually people aren't accustomed to.
Speaker 6: I think was it was something we talked about a lot,
Speaker 6: you know, because we knew it was like, well, are
Speaker 6: people going to get with this or not? But it's like,
Speaker 6: you know what, considering the journey we're going to take
Speaker 6: people on, better to throw them in the deep end
Speaker 6: of the ye, you know what I mean and get
Speaker 6: them used to something a little bit different and try
Speaker 6: to get them to get with this, then spring that
Speaker 6: on them a.
Speaker 5: Little bit later.
Speaker 2: And I think that opening action, like the opening sequence
Speaker 2: is so stunning because immediately you realize this is a
Speaker 2: different game. Like you said, I mean, there's moments, little
Speaker 2: things logically that I feel a lot of animated movies
Speaker 2: wouldn't do, Like when Gwen's hair changes color.
Speaker 3: Because of the.
Speaker 2: Color, there's a lot of people who say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: why would her hair change color?
Speaker 3: Like how does that? But the atmosphere is so there,
Speaker 3: and then.
Speaker 2: You get an unbelievable fight sequence that's like just mind blowing.
Speaker 3: But one of the other things that I just.
Speaker 2: Really I guess you guys have to balance that we
Speaker 2: haven't really seen them before. You get to play not
Speaker 2: only in these different animated universes, we get to see
Speaker 2: these different cool worlds, but you get to bring in
Speaker 2: the and we will put a big spoiler warning on
Speaker 2: this and it will come out after the film is out,
Speaker 2: but like you get to bring in these live action
Speaker 2: elements too.
Speaker 3: What is it like to then balance.
Speaker 2: That because we, i mean, what is it Roger Rabbit
Speaker 2: the last time we really got to see like animation
Speaker 2: and live action together. So what was it like to
Speaker 2: get to not only just tease those moments and do throwbacks,
Speaker 2: but to even bring a live action character into the
Speaker 2: animated world.
Speaker 6: It's interesting because one of the you don't want to
Speaker 6: overdo it. That's one of the key things is that, like,
Speaker 6: you know, we had a lot of different ideas for
Speaker 6: live action things, and you know, we would storyboard them.
Speaker 6: The storyboards of the live action stuff was great because
Speaker 6: we did it south Park style where it'd be like
Speaker 6: a cutout would like the flapy mouth, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, it was just really it was hilarious seeing
Speaker 6: all these floppy mouth yeah versions, but but then we
Speaker 6: just realized it.
Speaker 5: Was diminishing returns.
Speaker 6: So it was again this is I can talk about
Speaker 6: the film this is coming out.
Speaker 5: It will come out.
Speaker 2: On Friday, okay, and we will put spoiler.
Speaker 6: But like, you know, when we decide to have a
Speaker 6: live action character in there, I mean, it creates its
Speaker 6: believe it or not, it creates its own challenges.
Speaker 5: Because we have to like build a costume for.
Speaker 6: The character and then like figure out a way to
Speaker 6: make it not look terrible existing in the animated world, right,
Speaker 6: And but it's also like you just want to have
Speaker 6: the best impact, I guess, and also make it something surprising.
Speaker 6: You know, there's the thing that people expect, and it's like, well,
Speaker 6: if everyone expects it, do we really want to do
Speaker 6: you know this person or that person or this character.
Speaker 6: And it's like, you know, we can't help but get
Speaker 6: a little.
Speaker 5: Bit metas sometimes.
Speaker 6: So you know, we were just you know, thinking about like, well,
Speaker 6: what's a character from the live action that you know
Speaker 6: people wouldn't expect to see and you know, just again
Speaker 6: it's it's Lord Miller Man like it's we want to
Speaker 6: make each other laugh, and honestly we do.
Speaker 5: It's very useful for us.
Speaker 6: To do things like do audience testing and stuff like that,
Speaker 6: and we see the reaction the audience has to it,
Speaker 6: But that's just proving out what we were.
Speaker 5: Already excited by.
Speaker 6: Yes, so we're kind of like trying these versions out
Speaker 6: and it's like, when we're all really tickled and amused,
Speaker 6: that's kind of where we decide to go with it.
Speaker 6: But the technical things, I believe it or not, the
Speaker 6: live action is far from the most difficult technically, where
Speaker 6: it's just basically like, Okay, let's just make sure it.
Speaker 5: Doesn't look stupid.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But for the most part, like yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 6: just want to surprise people if we can.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision will be back and we're back. There's
Speaker 1: some wonderful parallels from across the Spider Verse and into
Speaker 1: the Spider Verse. The one that jumps to mind is
Speaker 1: when Miles first encounters Peter alternate universe Peter in into
Speaker 1: the Spider Verse, he has and tied to a punching
Speaker 1: bag much in the same way, almost the exact same
Speaker 1: same setups as Miles finds himself in at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie. There's different, you know, there's the oh,
Speaker 1: that's a Banksy guys.
Speaker 5: I think that's a vagacy.
Speaker 1: How purposeful, how early in the process, I guess I
Speaker 1: should say, did those ideas come up, like, oh, we
Speaker 1: know that Miles is going to be tied up, what
Speaker 1: if he was tied up the same way as Peter
Speaker 1: was tied up?
Speaker 6: In terms of the specificity, I think it's much later
Speaker 6: in the process. You know, those are you know, you're
Speaker 6: not gonna you're not gonna.
Speaker 5: Build a scene or build a film around a joke.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know what I mean that the story, the
Speaker 6: story has to work in its simplest, least funny version,
Speaker 6: right you know, So, I mean the scene with Miles
Speaker 6: on the bag, that was always the scene in terms
Speaker 6: of the specificity of like shooting it in a way
Speaker 6: that it literally mirrors that that that came to when
Speaker 6: we got to the point where we were getting detailed
Speaker 6: about it and it was like, oh, let's see, you know,
Speaker 6: and that's not the only thing. It's like, you know,
Speaker 6: a certain character turning up the.
Speaker 1: Sound y yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Like perfectly yeah, And we and we we got to
Speaker 6: that specificity a little bit later, but in its earlier version,
Speaker 6: the scene that the dialogue wasn't even all locked in
Speaker 6: and we were just kind of experimenting with it. But
Speaker 6: but we were always thinking about, like I mean, that
Speaker 6: was one of my you know, it was one of
Speaker 6: my favorite little parts in the in the first film,
Speaker 6: when you know he's Peter's tied to the bag and
Speaker 6: he like guesses immediately exactly where. It was such a
Speaker 6: great scene and and so yeah, yeah, yeah, we were
Speaker 6: thinking about it.
Speaker 5: But that's not always a case.
Speaker 6: Sometimes it's just like like that, like the little Banksy joke.
Speaker 5: And I'm not kidding. I think we just added it,
Speaker 5: maybe just a couple of.
Speaker 6: Weeks before we finished, yeah, because at first it was
Speaker 6: just like everyone was like whoa, and it was just
Speaker 6: like just put that there.
Speaker 5: You know, why not.
Speaker 2: We live in this age where there is like a
Speaker 2: lot of comic book adaptations. But I think the first movie,
Speaker 2: and especially I think in this movie is you know,
Speaker 2: I'm Top to eleven. This feels like it is adapting
Speaker 2: a comic book. It's not just about adapting Miles, who
Speaker 2: came from a comic book. You know, Bendis Andceelli like
Speaker 2: created this character. This we have Hobi here, this spider punk,
Speaker 2: his hornerful visual seeing stealing sid but my favorite no
Speaker 2: surprises to anyone, but like the way you bring him
Speaker 2: to life. He's a zine basically you see these collages
Speaker 2: this so that's one style of comic books. You get
Speaker 2: these moments where you see actual comic books and you
Speaker 2: have people like Samford Green, you know, Rick Leonardi, these
Speaker 2: icons come on raw. Could you talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about bringing the comics to life, because that is not
Speaker 2: something we get so much.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean a lot of it was actually inviting
Speaker 6: in the artists. Yes, folks like you know, Rick Leonardi,
Speaker 6: Brian Stealfries. You know, a lot of the look of
Speaker 6: Jess Drew's character. We brought in Brian Stealfries, not just
Speaker 6: his comic work, but he does this amazing pin up work,
Speaker 6: and it was a lot of the pin up work
Speaker 6: that really inspired the look of Jess Drew. And of
Speaker 6: course Sandford. I mean you wouldn't even realize it, but
Speaker 6: a lot of the marketing materials to pose as you
Speaker 6: see of miles all over the place, those were Sanford's poses.
Speaker 6: Sanford was brought in really really early to do lots
Speaker 6: of miles posing. You know, it's it's amazing, how how
Speaker 6: long and and it's.
Speaker 5: Just you know, comics.
Speaker 6: I don't I don't want to get like overly philosophical here,
Speaker 6: but you know, it's kind of sad when you think
Speaker 6: about the history of comic books and how these creators,
Speaker 6: you know, created these amazing things that are now so
Speaker 6: valuable and just got cut out of everything about monetarily
Speaker 6: and also creatively, and and it's and it's and it's
Speaker 6: inspired at least, and sometimes it's just like straight up ripping,
Speaker 6: you know, off the work. And I mean people legally
Speaker 6: have a right to do it, but I don't know,
Speaker 6: I just it just felt better, It felt right to
Speaker 6: kind of invite this community as much as we could
Speaker 6: that inspired it, you know, into into the process. I mean,
Speaker 6: my favorite comic book artists, I mean I have I
Speaker 6: have a big three. It's Adams, you know, Frank, Frank
Speaker 6: Miller because my first comic book that I love was
Speaker 6: Frank Miller's Wolverine.
Speaker 5: And billson Kevich.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we hire billson Kevich, who actually did what
Speaker 6: I think is like one of the most amazing posters
Speaker 6: that I think they're going to be giving out at
Speaker 6: one of the theaters. So just to be able to
Speaker 6: engage some of the like artistic the people who made
Speaker 6: me love comices.
Speaker 5: Like billson Kevitch's run on New Mutants.
Speaker 6: Of course, you like changed my impression of like what
Speaker 6: a comic book could be. And and I mean that's
Speaker 6: what this film is really trying to do. It's it's
Speaker 6: it's it's like, you know, you're seeing all these different
Speaker 6: styles that say, like, oh, animation could be that, because
Speaker 6: like that's what that's what comics are about, is that
Speaker 6: there's all these amazing you know, Alex Ross, there's just
Speaker 6: all these different styles, painterly abstract, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I thought, you know m Night Shyamalan, his his crazy
Speaker 6: character who runs like a comic book art gallery.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit crazy about it, but.
Speaker 2: Like it is, no, it is really that's amazing because
Speaker 2: like so when there's the five X structure with the
Speaker 2: comic books, right, and when they were coming up at first,
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh, that's the Samford
Speaker 2: Green like nod, it's a knee ter egg, that's a
Speaker 2: Leonardi not I have. This is a Leonardi piece on
Speaker 2: my palm. Like but actually then at the end really
Speaker 2: early credits, you get comic books and they were also
Speaker 2: Neila Magruder, who was a co creator of Spider By Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: So I love to hear that that was your mentality,
Speaker 2: because that's how it felt like it was. The movie
Speaker 2: moved me in many ways, but as someone who cares
Speaker 2: about this stuff we talk about all the time we
Speaker 2: dream of comics getting a union. That was the thing
Speaker 2: that moved me the most was to see these people.
Speaker 2: Chris Anka, who made these characters.
Speaker 5: He is everything.
Speaker 6: I mean, all of these you know, Metro Wooman's been
Speaker 6: posting all these Metro so those are all Chris. Chris
Speaker 6: has done all that stuff, all the all the Metro
Speaker 6: sonas have all been Chris Anchor and and a lot
Speaker 6: of our key character designs for the film, you know,
Speaker 6: have started, you know, with Chris Anka's pencil, and it's
Speaker 6: I mean, I can't really imagine us having been able
Speaker 6: to accomplish it without without any of them.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 1: That grounding and reverence for the comics allows you to
Speaker 1: do some really great, uh humorous moments where you poke
Speaker 1: fun at certain characters. I'm thinking specifically of Scarlet Spider Ben's.
Speaker 1: It's so good because if you are not aware of
Speaker 1: the nineties material, it's funny, it's accessible, you're laughing, and
Speaker 1: if you are aware of it, have you readier mask Rale.
Speaker 6: His design was like we were literally saying, like, Okay,
Speaker 6: how many pouches can we get?
Speaker 5: You know what I mean?
Speaker 6: I think the casual fan doesn't even notice because his
Speaker 6: poses are extreme.
Speaker 5: And he goes a fick poke.
Speaker 6: His legs are doing things that legs can't really do
Speaker 6: and he's casually doing it, and we just would laugh
Speaker 6: so hard. But then when we saw it rendered the
Speaker 6: first time in his style FO Miles of World, it
Speaker 6: was Honestly, it was one of the first things that
Speaker 6: kind of took my breath away. We had a three
Speaker 6: D model and it turned and moved because I just
Speaker 6: thought it. I was like, oh, I thought I was
Speaker 6: just looking at a picture from an image, you know,
Speaker 6: comic from the from the Heyday. But but yeah, that
Speaker 6: that design, man, I was just like, yeah, that's that
Speaker 6: is like the Heyday, the nineties, the muscles on top
Speaker 6: of muscles, shading, yes, crying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you obviously love comics. Was there for you,
Speaker 2: like coming into this project and getting this idea of
Speaker 2: how many Spider people?
Speaker 3: Was that someone you really wanted to see?
Speaker 2: Like was there a Spider character or urist or you know,
Speaker 2: was there's something that you were like I want to
Speaker 2: bring this into the world, even if it's just for me.
Speaker 5: There wasn't any one.
Speaker 6: There were just I mean honestly, the ones that I
Speaker 6: most wanted to see were the ones we put in
Speaker 6: the film. Yeah, you know, I was goundy. I was
Speaker 6: really excited about Punk. I was really excited about Pov
Speaker 6: Pov because we did a pretty extreme redesign of his
Speaker 6: character so good.
Speaker 2: We were talking about, Yeah, I was actually my brilliant
Speaker 2: friend nick I Shookla is the writer of the New
Speaker 2: Spider Man in the ecomic, and I was just saying,
Speaker 2: I just want to see Pav on the pages now
Speaker 2: because the design you guys did.
Speaker 1: Is so cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I was really gassed about and you know, there was
Speaker 6: It took a lot of you know, we brought in
Speaker 6: a consultant to talk about like certain things, you know,
Speaker 6: like the Nehrew collar and and what you know he
Speaker 6: should and then the hairstyles was also a tremendous thing,
Speaker 6: and then our first design from him. He was younger
Speaker 6: and and rightfully so someone brought up like issues of
Speaker 6: like why don't make the dying guy like a Mowgli stereotype,
Speaker 6: So it was like, you know what let's age this kid.
Speaker 3: Up and he gets to be that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but he's he's just tough, he's good at what
Speaker 5: he does. It was.
Speaker 6: It was one of the most challenging parts of the
Speaker 6: film to do, which I think made it all the
Speaker 6: more satisfying. But from the redesign of Pav to executing
Speaker 6: his character and his story which involved I mean true story,
Speaker 6: an early version of it.
Speaker 5: We thought it was.
Speaker 6: Getting pretty good and then we got an email from
Speaker 6: a lot of our animators in India who were just like,
Speaker 6: this is not good. Like it's not, it's not it's
Speaker 6: not as good a character. Like we're we're from different
Speaker 6: parts of India and like one thing we agree on
Speaker 6: is like this, this could be better.
Speaker 5: So and again this is this is the nature of collaboration.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we very quickly assembled in all like Indian writer's room,
Speaker 6: and we invited not just Indian American Indian like Hassamanaj
Speaker 6: was in the room, like we we brought in a
Speaker 6: lot of people and showed him the scene and then
Speaker 6: just got notes and taught and they were just talking
Speaker 6: about their lives, talking about their culture, and then rewrote
Speaker 6: the whole thing.
Speaker 5: Pav went He was very different he was much younger
Speaker 5: he he was.
Speaker 6: He was kind of like almost like naive, and and
Speaker 6: we just transformed the character into something that the folks
Speaker 6: in that room could recognize. So I don't know just
Speaker 6: of the characters. I didn't know much about Spider Man
Speaker 6: India and the comic books. I just literally saw a
Speaker 6: design and I read a little bit about it, and
Speaker 6: I was like, oh, he gets power, so it's really cool.
Speaker 6: Came in his uncle's uncle beam like it's like there's
Speaker 6: always gonna be Peter, you.
Speaker 5: Know, parallels.
Speaker 6: But but it was like, Okay, I think this is
Speaker 6: an interesting idea, but we got to like, really, let's
Speaker 6: try to just do our version of it, because that's
Speaker 6: the other thing is we don't want to be beholden
Speaker 6: to any source material, which if you've seen our movie
Speaker 6: you should know that's a pretty strong The world view
Speaker 6: we have is that, you know, canon can also be
Speaker 6: like turned into a noose, and it can it can
Speaker 6: take all the joy, it can take all the excitement
Speaker 6: out of anything when you know you set these incredibly
Speaker 6: rigid rules. And so of course we weren't going to
Speaker 6: where to that in making this film or any other characters.
Speaker 6: But I think Punk and POV are the greatest examples
Speaker 6: of it. Yeah, because they look nothing like their source material.
Speaker 2: That's going to become the defining version for people who
Speaker 2: watch these movies.
Speaker 5: Oh man, the punk toys, it looks incredible.
Speaker 6: When they gave me schwag and like, my son came,
Speaker 6: I was like, you got some stuff in there, and
Speaker 6: he was like, where's punk? Then Action figure has like
Speaker 6: a guitar, and you know, then my daughter came by
Speaker 6: and she was like, oh, you want to pinch.
Speaker 5: She was like, where's punk? They went right for the
Speaker 5: Spider Punk stuff.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the inclusion of punk, because, as we
Speaker 1: were saying before, Cody Ziggler, great friend of the Pod,
Speaker 1: was the writer of the ongoing Spider Punk series over
Speaker 1: at Marvel Comics, and I remember talking with him before
Speaker 1: he had seen the movie and several weeks back, and
Speaker 1: he was like, I don't know. They tell me the
Speaker 1: art style is like incredible, but I haven't seen yet
Speaker 1: and it truly is startling and great. Tell us about
Speaker 1: the inclusion of.
Speaker 6: Spider Yeah, I mean, I think his design is like
Speaker 6: the coolest thing in the film. I agree, And there
Speaker 6: was an earlier version of it where you know, we
Speaker 6: almost cut Punk out of the film, but wonderfully, as
Speaker 6: we were working on the story, he became integral to
Speaker 6: the plot. And then I think that's that's really what's key.
Speaker 6: And it starts were like, well, this is kind of
Speaker 6: a cool character, this idea of you know, Miles starting
Speaker 6: to have feelings for Gwen and being uncertain about this
Speaker 6: other boy. So immediately like filled in that slot because
Speaker 6: it's like, Miles is so cool that we watched the
Speaker 6: first end of the Spider Verse and Miles is cool.
Speaker 6: So it's like, we need a character that would make
Speaker 6: Miles immediately look uncool.
Speaker 5: Make one of them cool. You know.
Speaker 6: It's like Miles who's wearing his nikes and his hoodie.
Speaker 6: We need to make that character look like a dork. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And the character that makes that character like a dork
Speaker 6: is Spider Punk.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: He's he's nineteen twenty, he's six foot three inches tall,
Speaker 6: rail thin, you know, And we always we always use
Speaker 6: the term, Like when we first brought in Annual and
Speaker 6: we were talking about the character and it was like,
Speaker 6: the way we describe him is it's not just that
Speaker 6: he's cool, he's effortlessly.
Speaker 5: Cool and makes him annoying.
Speaker 6: You know, he's effort and for there was an early
Speaker 6: version of the script where everyone kept saying that like
Speaker 6: it's so effortless, it's so effortless, Like it's so effortless,
Speaker 6: and Miles was just like, if one more person says effortless,
Speaker 6: they're gonna scream. But it's the fact that he's effortlessly cool.
Speaker 6: So you know, we always knew he was gonna be
Speaker 6: in there, but then we had to make sure it
Speaker 6: worked for the overarching narrative. But it started with, you know,
Speaker 6: the the boy who makes Miles jealous, but then when
Speaker 6: we really dug into it, it just became a character
Speaker 6: that became integral to the plot of the entire film.
Speaker 6: And you know, again without spoiling it, there's certain key
Speaker 6: like the film can't exist.
Speaker 5: Without company anymore.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and and and you know, we knew there was
Speaker 6: gonna be a lot of people who were just like, oh.
Speaker 5: Man, where's where's Noir?
Speaker 6: And where's Henny and and you know, again spoiler, you're
Speaker 6: gonna but it's like, you gotta take some time to develop.
Speaker 6: You can't just throw one dimensional characters on top of people,
Speaker 6: and you you really have to take the time to
Speaker 6: give these characters a story, give them a motivation, to
Speaker 6: make people care about them in order for this all
Speaker 6: to work in the in the bigger story that you're
Speaker 6: trying to tell. It was so great to hear people
Speaker 6: cheer at the end when it's like, Okay, now you're
Speaker 6: seeing some characters you know that you are familiar with,
Speaker 6: but you love these new ones.
Speaker 3: Seeing them together, you're.
Speaker 6: Thinking, Wow, what's it going to be like? You know,
Speaker 6: Noir interacting with Punk? How fun is that's gonna be?
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you get That's one of my favorite lines
Speaker 8: in the movie that I think sums up the effortlessly
Speaker 8: cool thing is when he takes his mask off and
Speaker 8: Miles is like, like.
Speaker 3: That's not fair. So you talk kind of about this.
Speaker 2: We touched on the idea of this the noose of
Speaker 2: Cannon and Spider Punk is kind of this great rebel
Speaker 2: against the Cannon as that is such a fun meta
Speaker 2: story arc and obviously as create as it come short
Speaker 2: a place of you guys knowing that as readers and
Speaker 2: people who love Canon but also have had to sit
Speaker 2: through Uncle Ben dying fifty thousand times in fifty thousand
Speaker 2: of us, could you talk about that because when that happened,
Speaker 2: it sort of exploded the movie onto a different meta level. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a big turn for the film. And and
Speaker 6: again like this is Look, we can't talk about Miles
Speaker 6: Morales the character in the world without talking about the
Speaker 6: negative pushback that to this day you still get for
Speaker 6: the character about whether he's a legit Spider Man. And
Speaker 6: it's it's heartbreaking that these are conversations that have to
Speaker 6: be had.
Speaker 5: But you know, it was.
Speaker 6: Really you know, when when Miguel says a line like
Speaker 6: you're not supposed to be Spider Man.
Speaker 5: Of course that has a multiples.
Speaker 6: You know, and in that moment, he represents every person
Speaker 6: in the world who questions the existence of this very
Speaker 6: character in the film and in him. If Miles is
Speaker 6: going to push back and do something you know different,
Speaker 6: Like we're having a conversation with our audience. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: we're not trying to lecture anyone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but we want to.
Speaker 6: Have a conversation and just like we we feel like
Speaker 6: Miles in that moment, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 6: so that those and hopefully if we're successful, someone who
Speaker 6: doesn't know about any of that can just understand it
Speaker 6: and appreciate it and be moved on the very simplest level,
Speaker 6: But if you are privy to the world in which
Speaker 6: these characters are being discussed, you can also get that
Speaker 6: that double meaning.
Speaker 1: It really amps up the movie. You're absolutely right, because
Speaker 1: it's in that moment where you understand that Miles has
Speaker 1: to do what he has to do despite the fact
Speaker 1: that everybody is telling him not to. Yes, he can't
Speaker 1: do that. He has to go to the other is.
Speaker 6: Our hero and what he's doing is ostensibly very selfish. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but we have to be on his side.
Speaker 2: And it's also it's also a choice that is incredibly relatable,
Speaker 2: not just to the audience, but to every single Spider
Speaker 2: Puss and in the Elite Spider Force they would have
Speaker 2: done the same thing.
Speaker 3: They can pretend that Miguel.
Speaker 2: Has, you know, So in that way, it's a very
Speaker 2: interesting choice. And I think the coolest thing is I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people will probably learn the term
Speaker 2: canon from this movie and learn it and understand it
Speaker 2: in that context, and then get to understand and learn
Speaker 2: retroactively how it impacts comics and the way that we
Speaker 2: read them.
Speaker 6: Canon is something that is always and again, I had
Speaker 6: a lot of experience with it. My first TV job
Speaker 6: was on Star Trek Discovery, so it just felt like.
Speaker 1: Well, Cannon, here's the textbooks.
Speaker 6: I've worked on other projects behind the scene that are
Speaker 6: all a lot of big canon things, and it becomes
Speaker 6: so rigid and so frustrating, and like we were having
Speaker 6: a conversation earlier and it was just like so many
Speaker 6: of the things you feel like you can't live without
Speaker 6: and you love the most right now. When it first
Speaker 6: came out, you were suspicious of it and you thought
Speaker 6: it was stupid, you know what I mean. It's not
Speaker 6: like people's saw these things that are iconic coming, whether
Speaker 6: it's films or performances, I mean pretty much everything. When
Speaker 6: it comes to comic book films, everyone wanted to Revolt.
Speaker 6: When Michael Keaton was cast as Badman, they.
Speaker 5: Wanted to Joker.
Speaker 6: People thought, why do we need another Spider Man movie
Speaker 6: into the Spider Verse. All of this stuff has been
Speaker 6: greeted with hostility until it. For all the Star Wars,
Speaker 6: I mean the year that Star Wars The Phantom Menace
Speaker 6: came out, there was this other little movie called The
Speaker 6: Matrix that was kind of silly and movie that turned
Speaker 6: into another thing that people were psychotic and rich and
Speaker 6: then immediately rigid about So here's all the rules that
Speaker 6: have been established in newsflash. Most of the people creating
Speaker 6: this stuff are kind of making it up as well.
Speaker 1: Law.
Speaker 6: The stuff that becomes cannon and law is we're just
Speaker 6: kind of like whatever, Man, I'm going home right now,
Speaker 6: or I'm drunk.
Speaker 5: I don't know, did I say that?
Speaker 8: Really?
Speaker 1: The only words red shoes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 3: This Spider Man was bitten by a pig.
Speaker 6: That's really real because it's it's just a bunch of
Speaker 6: people and we're throwing it and we kind of go
Speaker 6: back and go, oh man, but that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 5: That's too late. Now someone else makes problem.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and and and so it's like be careful about
Speaker 6: don't don't take the fun out of it, don't don't
Speaker 6: turn it into something where it's the very thing that
Speaker 6: made us get into comics is that we couldn't get
Speaker 6: into the elite clubs. You know, we weren't invited into
Speaker 6: all these spaces. I was a nerd growing up, so
Speaker 6: that the reaction to that is to then become like
Speaker 6: elitist and exclusive about about something that makes no sense
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, that makes no, especially when comics is not
Speaker 2: just accessible because they've always been able to be bought
Speaker 2: for a couple of dollars or twenty five cents depending
Speaker 2: on how far. But anyone can make one because all
Speaker 2: you need is paper and pencil. So in that way,
Speaker 2: it's like almost impossible to gate keep. Yeah, people still
Speaker 2: do everyone, you know, co makes off for everyone, just
Speaker 2: like this movie's for everyone, and people hate that. It
Speaker 2: terrifies them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they want to feel like, you know, I'm the
Speaker 6: only one in the world who can enjoy this, and
Speaker 6: it's like, no, man, you gotta gotta be open to
Speaker 6: doing things a little a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: I must ask Kemp, as the one of the co
Speaker 1: writers of Soul, you put the Knicks joke in Soul
Speaker 1: Bring Out. It was like a gut punch when I
Speaker 1: saw the scene, and it's so incredibly accurate. Tell us
Speaker 1: about putting that in the movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, context is everything, right.
Speaker 6: I'm a lifelong Knicks fan and the last time the
Speaker 6: Knicks won a title was the year I was born,
Speaker 6: so I haven't been alive.
Speaker 5: For a championship Knicks team.
Speaker 6: So, and I'm loyal. Hey, I mean, I was sitting
Speaker 6: in the front row of Nick heat. Like I literally
Speaker 6: flew to New York just to watch Nick's heat and
Speaker 6: I and I and I hold to you know, I
Speaker 6: have I have Clipper season tickets. You know what I mean,
Speaker 6: because I'm here, But I'm a Knicks die hard, and
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's just it felt like the perfect.
Speaker 6: Joke, this idea of like, you know what, what if
Speaker 6: my team's futility has been because of a cosmic prankster
Speaker 6: who's just been like picking on them. But I will
Speaker 6: say after Soul came out, it felt like the Knicks
Speaker 6: started getting better.
Speaker 5: And if we can talk basketball for just a.
Speaker 6: Minute, please this year's playoffs, man, Like everyone's talking about
Speaker 6: who can they trade for?
Speaker 5: I think this team they have it as is if
Speaker 5: you just stay with them. You know, everyone wants to
Speaker 5: get rid of Randall.
Speaker 6: I actually love this Knicks squad, man, I really love
Speaker 6: this thing.
Speaker 1: All I know is we got too off a team
Speaker 1: that's going to the finals.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I really.
Speaker 2: Like you said, they beat Jimmy Butler, who is currently unbeatable.
Speaker 6: The problem with the Knicks is because New York is
Speaker 6: such a huge market. Even when you have a team,
Speaker 6: you feel like Okay, it's New York. We got to
Speaker 6: get a bigger star.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, and they they never build through the draft.
Speaker 6: They always try to, like, you get some talent and
Speaker 6: then you're like, now, let's get rid of this talent
Speaker 6: and get a star who's gonna sell tickets. But nothing
Speaker 6: will sell tickets more than just being good. And the
Speaker 6: Knicks were good for years. The Ewing years were actually
Speaker 6: awesome that you know, even the Allan Houston fighting getting
Speaker 6: into fist fights with Miami years with Latrell's Freewell and
Speaker 6: Allen Houston, those are pretty good years too, you know.
Speaker 6: So anyway I can, I can go down a rabbit
Speaker 6: hole and no one new questions. My New York Knicks
Speaker 6: bomb can eat it because I.
Speaker 5: Earned that joke.
Speaker 6: I'll stand by that joking soul till my dying days.
Speaker 5: And I think it's a good joke.
Speaker 6: You know people Knicks fans laugh their asses off, and
Speaker 6: Lakers fans laugh even harder, of course, so but whatever,
Speaker 6: but I love that joke.
Speaker 1: Camp Powers, thank you so much for Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 5: Great meet you come back any time. Thank you, thank
Speaker 5: you very much.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Kemp up next ned out in today's nerd out where
Speaker 2: you tell us what you love them, why, or a
Speaker 2: theory you're excited share. Amy pictures us on the ya
Speaker 2: series The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Mayer.
Speaker 4: My name is Amy and my nerd out is The
Speaker 4: Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. It's a young adult book
Speaker 4: series that can be described as fairy tales in space,
Speaker 4: and it feels like a cross between Sailor Moon and Firefly.
Speaker 4: It has great characters, type plotting, and is a space
Speaker 4: opera that is clearly having so much fun being a
Speaker 4: space opera. In the opening, Cinder is a mechanic in
Speaker 4: New Beijing and Earthen City centuries in the future. She's
Speaker 4: also a cyborg with mechanical hand and leg and a
Speaker 4: brain interface so lets her download data directly into her head.
Speaker 4: Across the series, we meet Little Red riding Hood, who
Speaker 4: is a farmer, an expert pilot, Rapunzel, who is a
Speaker 4: hacker trapped in a satellite, and snow White and says
Speaker 4: who is letting herself lose touch with reality rather than
Speaker 4: compromise her ethics. There's also a Moon colony, a pandemic
Speaker 4: mind control, a social media star prints, genetically hybrid humans,
Speaker 4: a scoundrel with a heart of gold, the stolen ship
Speaker 4: he loves, a palace guard who keeps his cards close
Speaker 4: to his chest, and a revolution about fighting the system,
Speaker 4: by and for the people directly impacted by the oppression.
Speaker 4: And let's not to forget near and dear to my
Speaker 4: heart Eco, a robot buddy with a faulty personality. Chip
Speaker 4: Meyer weaves in clever references to the old traditional tales,
Speaker 4: which reward deep fairy tale readers, and she pre plotted
Speaker 4: everything out so the foreshadowing is fierce. The first book
Speaker 4: was published in twenty twelve, and the quartet was added
Speaker 4: to with a collection of short stories, a villain origin novel,
Speaker 4: and a graphic novel duology starring Eco. I first came
Speaker 4: across the series while living abroad, and that cover image
Speaker 4: of a Cinderella foot with a cyborg foot faintly visible
Speaker 4: inside it definitely caught my eye. I'm a school librarian,
Speaker 4: and I love that this is a series I can
Speaker 4: hand to a mature eleven year old looking for light
Speaker 4: romance and slightly more complexity in storytelling. But it's also
Speaker 4: a series that as an adult I can read and
Speaker 4: find utterly delightful in my opinion, it might be a
Speaker 4: perfect way series. The books have remained in print and
Speaker 4: are widely available libraries. My hope is that the sff
Speaker 4: TV renaissance we're having right now will mean this series
Speaker 4: gets adapted into a teen friendly, jubilant and fast paced
Speaker 4: space opera. Other the books are already great, so you
Speaker 4: should read them.
Speaker 3: Thanks Amy.
Speaker 2: If you have theories or passions you want to share,
Speaker 2: hit us up at x ray at crooked dot com.
Speaker 2: Instructions in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Big thank you to Camppowers. What a wonderful interview, hewoye.
Speaker 1: And that's it for us, Rosie, any plugs.
Speaker 3: Go see Across the Spider of Us. Really delightful.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 3: Lots of comic book.
Speaker 2: Creators worked on this movie, and I want them to
Speaker 2: get residuals.
Speaker 3: I want them to do it.
Speaker 2: I want them to be living life and enjoying it
Speaker 2: and having a great time.
Speaker 3: And I want you to watch the movie because it's delightful.
Speaker 2: Also, go and buy some comics, go read some comics
Speaker 2: by these brilliant creators, and of course listen to us
Speaker 2: talking about those comics and the movies on here.
Speaker 1: Catch the next episode of Extra Vision on Wednesday, June seventh,
Speaker 1: where we finish our coverage of Yellow Jackets season two
Speaker 1: on the Beleaguered Showtime. Now those girls.
Speaker 2: Are looking Believe it in that finale and subscribe on YouTube.
Speaker 3: But you can now watch full episodes.
Speaker 2: Of the show and check out the discord to meet
Speaker 2: and hang with tons of amazing fans and listeners plus
Speaker 2: Mia Jason.
Speaker 1: Five storrdy x five star. You gotta give them to us.
Speaker 1: Here's one from Oh Bob Saggat forty for eighty nine,
Speaker 1: simply the best. I could listen to Jason Rosie talk
Speaker 1: all day. Oh they're super knowledgeable when it comes to
Speaker 1: all things comics and just nerd culture in general. Listening
Speaker 1: to these two is always the highlight of my week.
Speaker 1: Thank you for keeping everyone saying all the best, Oh
Speaker 1: Bob Saggat forty forty nine, Thank you, Bob Sagod forty
Speaker 1: four eighty nine. Extra Vision is a Crooked Media production.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Jason Contempts You and our
Speaker 1: editing at Sound design is by Facillis Fotopoulos. Video production
Speaker 1: by Delon Villanueva and Rachel Gaiski. Social media by Awa
Speaker 1: Oklati and Caroline Dunfey. Thank you to Brian Basquez for
Speaker 1: our Themesday. See you next time, folks.
Speaker 3: Bye,