Spider-Man 2099's LYLA In Across The Spider-Verse Took Cues From Halo And The Flintstones
As the Spider-Man of the year 2099, Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac) has access to technology that fellow Spider-People don't. One of them is his assistant — an artificial intelligence named LYrate Lifeform Approximation, or LYLA (Greta Lee). AI may be harmful here in reality, but LYLA is a big help to her boss even if she doesn't spare him from sarcasm. Miguel is such a brooding scold that LYLA has to make up the usual Spider-Man quip quotient.
A superhero with an AI helper calls to mind the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), but unlike J.A.R.V.I.S. (Paul Bettany) or F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Kerry Condon), LYLA isn't just a disembodied voice. She has a virtual, human avatar: a young woman with short brown hair, a white fur coat, and pink sunglasses with heart-shaped lenses.
Like Miguel, LYLA first appears in the post-credits scene of "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse." She jumps around the screen every half-second as if flashing in and out of existence — it's a representation of her presence in keeping with the movie's mile-a-minute animation.
LYLA and Miguel return for larger parts (and with enhanced designs) in the sequel, "Across The Spider-Verse." In the book "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie," Visual Effects Supervisor Mike Lasker says: "For LYLA, we built on the technology that we had invented for her on the first film, and evolved it into an even more complex set of animating layers that gave her a sophisticated digital structure."
While LYLA isn't an invention of the "Spider-Verse" movies (she debuted in "Spider-Man 2099" #1 by Peter David and Rick Leonardi), the movie's creative team gave their own spin on the character. Co-director Kemp Powers described her in "The Art of the Movie" as Miguel's only confidant and friend, calling her "equal parts Cortana and the Great Gazoo."
Cortana
The "Halo" video game series has, since 2001, been one of the premier titles of the first-person shooter genre and the Xbox console series. A sci-fi series invoking "Aliens" and "Star Wars," "Halo" is set in the 26th century. Humanity, besieged by an alien alliance known as the Covenant, is fighting a war for survival across the galaxy. To give them an edge, they created "Spartans," or cyborg super-soldiers trained from childhood as killing machines.
Cortana is an artificial intelligence designed as the companion to one such Spartan, Master Chief John-117. She manifests as a hologram (varying in size). The graphics improved with every game and consequently, so did Cortana's design, becoming more human. One last wrinkle? In-universe, her appearance is modeled on Dr. Catherine Halsey, creator of the Spartans.
The role of Cortana (as voiced by Jen Taylor) is to provide the player with instructions and commentary; Master Chief himself is famously taciturn. Cortana can be snarky, but she truly cares about the Chief. "Halo 4" is practically a love story, one riding the line between platonic and romantic. I doubt LYLA and Miguel will hit that same line, but their friendship definitely parallels Chief and Cortana's.
You might have heard of Cortana from one other place. Microsoft used her name for their virtual assistant, a counterpart to Apple's Siri, included in Bing and the now-defunct Windows phone line. While this Cortana doesn't have the holographic body that the "Halo" one does, she has the same voice: Jen Taylor supplied the voice for Cortana's U.S. version.
The Great Gazoo
The Great Gazoo is not an artificial intelligence like LYLA or Cortana, but an alien — a green-skinned, imp-sized one who can manipulate reality, including appearing and disappearing at will. After creating a doomsday device, he was exiled from his homeworld Zetox to prehistoric Earth. There, in the town of Bedrock, he met the "dumb dumbs" Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble — despite ostensibly befriending them, he causes more trouble for them than not.
Voiced by Harvey Korman and introduced in the sixth and final season, Gazoo appears in 13 episodes. The character has been cited as a low point for "The Flintstones," a shark jumping moment before Fonzie actually jumped over the shark. An alien is quite out-of-place in a sitcom, especially a prehistory-themed one like "The Flintstones." Despite this, Gazoo appeared in the live-action film, "The Flinstones in Viva Rock Vegas," played by Alan Cumming. Like other pop culture ephemera, he's also shown up in a "Family Guy" gag (Seth MacFarlane is a fan of "The Flintstones"). Gazoo's influence lives on in LYLA too.
"Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse" is playing in theaters.