Director Joaquim Dos Santos explains why the film's antagonist, The Spot, could never have been successfully portrayed in real action and why animation was the only option.
One of the directors of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse explains why the film's new antagonist can only be successfully shown in animated form.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the first film in the franchise, was released in 2018 and was the first animated film based on the Spider-Man comics.
The 2019 animated feature film Into the Spider-Verse was a critical and commercial triumph, earning the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film and grossing $375.5 million throughout the world.
Sony was so confident in the success of Into the Spider-Verse that a sequel picture was approved in the final week of the month leading up to its theatrical release.
In Across the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales will continue his adventures as Spider-Man, teaming up with Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman and other Spider-Men from different dimensions to take down a dangerous foe.
As opposed to the Kingpin that Morales faced in the previous film, Jason Schwartzman voices the antagonist The Spot in the upcoming Spider-Verse sequel.
Related: No Way Home Can Be Copied Across the Spider-Verse, and Two Spider-Man Injustices Are Fixed
Director Joaquim Dos Santos explained to CartoonBrew (via The Direct) why animation was the best medium for The Spot.
Dos Santos called The Spot "art come to life," and he has the ability to create portals to other realms, both outside and inside of his own body.
The filmmaker spoke on why it would be impossible to recreate The Spot in a live-action film and why animation was the only option for a true likeness.
In another quote, the filmmaker compares Schwartzman's The Spot to paint splattered on a white paper, saying:
"And his living ink really is just, I think we’ve all been saying, it’s not just an effect. Its artistry comes to life. It’s something that can only really happen in animation. You can imagine Spot as a dude in a sock suit in a live-action Spider-Man film. It’s not going to work. It’s just not going to work. So his art comes to life. He’s the inkwell spilled on the page. It all goes back to sort of comic books and comic book art."
Marvel's Miles Morales, Spider-Man Across Multiple Dimensions
The distinctive visual style and high level of artistic achievement in Into the Spider-Verse have been widely praised by critics.
Trailers for Across the Spider-Verse suggest that it will visually resemble its predecessor, Spider-Man: Homecoming.
The original Spider-Verse film gained notoriety for reimagining the visual possibilities of animated films; the sequel looks to be leaning into this, pushing the medium's limits by incorporating a character that could not be transferred into any other form.
In a tribute to the inventiveness of the animation team, one of the film's directors, Justin Thompson, has said that it took a whole year to design the tools and techniques used to produce The Spot.
There has never been a superhero picture franchise like Spider-Verse.
While staying true to the source material and creating a compelling version of Miles Morales' Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse also succeeded in subverting viewers' expectations of what animated films are capable of and their role in the cinema industry as a whole.
Since the previous film received praise for its visual flair, great hopes have been placed on the characters, action, and cinematography in Across the Spider-Verse.
Now that Dos Santos has teased the film's intriguing new animated enemy, there's little doubt that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will deliver on the visual front.
