Across The Spider-Verse Director Considers It A Miracle That They Even Finished The Film

For as hard as we film journalists can be on certain movies (and justifiably so, in a lot of cases), it's honestly kind of a miracle when any live-action feature film ever gets finished. Even a movie as simple in its design as the recent sci-fi indie flick "The Artifice Girl" — most of which centers on a small group of people talking in a cramped, dimly-lit room — represents the handiwork of many, many different artists working behind the scenes. That goes doubly for animated movies, not least of all ones that push the envelope to the degree that "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" does.

"Across the Spider-Verse" is, of course, the much-anticipated sequel to 2018's "Into the Spider-Verse." A groundbreaking feat of animation, the latter brought Marvel comic book web-slinger Miles Morales to life on the big screen for the first time in a coming-of-age superhero story featuring several other Spider-People from across the multiverse, ranging from the well-known (Peter Parker) to the relatively obscure (Peni Parker). Building on that, "Across the Spider-Verse" brings Miles and several of his companions face-to-face with a whole new multiverse of Spider-Types, once again utilizing different animation styles and frame rates to distinguish those in one reality from another.

If that sounds immensely complicated, well, now you know why the film (like most animated movies) had multiple directors — all of whom were mostly just relieved they made it to the finish line in one piece.

Divide and conquer

As with its predecessor, "Across the Spider-Verse" has three credited directors: "Into the Spider-Verse" production designer Justin K. Thompson, Pixar's "Soul" co-director and writer Kemp Powers, and "The Legend of Korra" storyboard artist and character designer Joaquim Dos Santos. Speaking with Collider, the trio explained that it was only really thanks to their diverse and complimentary backgrounds that they were even able to finish the film in time (or, for that matter, finish it at all).

Naturally, given his background in translating written text into visuals, Santos indicated that he mainly focused on "taking what's written and translating that and disseminating that to a crew that's gonna add to what the script is already doing so well." With Thompson similarly bringing his production design know-how to the table, that freed up Powers to turn his attention to the movie's cast. It's something he "really took a lot of joy in" doing, too, having collaborated closely with actors many a time before on projects both animated (like "Soul") and live-action (including Regina King's superbly-performed directorial debut "One Night in Miami," which Powers wrote based on his original stage play).

Once the trio had gotten on the same page ("I think we all wanted to make the same movie from the beginning," Thompson noted), Powers said they "split up into our specialty silos to execute those ideas." He added:

"So that's me going off and doing recording sessions with the cast, and then sitting in [the] edit with [editor] Mike Andrews and [co-writer/producer] Phil [Lord], and cutting it together, Justin going more into the visual, Joaquim — you know, we just conceptualized, worked on it together, and then kind of split up in order to actually execute it."

It takes a village to raise a Spider-Verse

Getting "Across the Spider-Verse" done under regular circumstances would have been trying enough, even without having to contend with a global pandemic throughout the majority of the process. With so many plates spinning at once, Kemp Powers emphasized that he and his fellow directors made it a habit of keeping up with one another's progress, even when split up:

"And then we made sure we checked in. So every week it's like you get to see what the other person's doing and give your notes, and give your input on that. And that's really — I mean, it's kind of a miracle that we got the movie done, considering how much we had to tackle in such a short period of time."

If critics aren't necessarily as high on "Across the Spider-Verse" as they were on its predecessor, that's likely in part because of where the first movie set the bar. That and "Across the Spider-Verse" is incomplete by design, with 2024's "Beyond the Spider-Verse" slated to bring its story to a proper conclusion. Still, the film's animation alone is reaping in the accolades, with /Film animation expert Rafael Motamayor going so far as to declare, "The result is a movie that looks like this generation's 'Toy Story' or 'Snow White,' a true monumental film that marks a new era, and one that breaks your brain, in the best possible way." As such, Powers, Justin K. Thompson, Joaquim Dos Santos, and their many, many collaborators can take pride in knowing their sweat and tears were definitely not for naught.

"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" is now playing in theaters.