ANNECY, France — With more than 240 six-dimensional characters, the creators of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” push animation and storytelling to the limit with the sequel to their Oscar-winning hit.
The first unfinished images of the sequel – one of the most anticipated of 2023 – received a standing ovation at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France on Tuesday.
It once again focuses on New York teenager Miles Morales, who is just one of many different forms of spider superheroes spread across parallel dimensions.
Like the first installment, 2019’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” it’s a show of technical wizardry, with different visual styles used for each of the universes the superhero visited.
Among the scenes unveiled on Tuesday was an extremely impressive fight with a vulture at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, with a heavily pregnant spider woman crashing into the scene on a motorbike.
Morales “was always at the heart of the film. But we didn’t want to rest on our laurels and take the easy route,” Kemp Powers, one of the film’s three directors, told AFP.
The team is feeling the weight of expectation this time around.
The first film was a dormant hit, gradually gaining momentum thanks to strong reviews and audience response – eventually winning the Oscar for Best Animation.
“It’s very ambitious – the idea was to push ourselves creatively and test the limits of what technology can do,” said co-director Joachim dos Santos, while promising that the plot would always be understandable for everyone, from “babies to grandparents”.
“Wonderful Medium”
The team is especially having fun creating new villain The Spot, who will be voiced by Jason Schwartzman, whose body is a series of holes that look like an unfinished shape-shifting drawing.
“Animation is a wonderful medium because there are things you can only do with animation,” co-director Justin Thompson told AFP.
“You can’t imagine a live action medium that could replicate what we’re doing now with The Spot in terms of look, movement, interacting with multiple people at the same time…it would have looks so cheesy in live action, but it actually looks fluid in animation.”
While directors like to escape the confines of reality — “no film is tied to physics or gravity,” Powers said — there are inevitable constraints.
“We take five or six years per film. We have big teams but no one can imagine how long it takes to make just a few seconds,” he said.
“While our imagination has no limits, time is a limit.”
The film is set to be released worldwide in June 2023, with a third installment planned for the following year.
The creators are determined that both get a full theatrical release, especially after Powers had to see his previous film, Pixar’s “Soul,” go straight to streaming due to the pandemic.
“We make these for the big screen, and these will be on the big screen, barring an alien invasion or a world war!” he said.