SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

Co-director Peter Ramsey on how the multiverse-straddling, joke-crammed Spider-pic redefined the limits of animation

Co-director Peter Ramsey on the animation that rewrote the rulebook.

People weren’t fully prepared for how visually wild Spider-verse would be. Did it feel risky when you were making it?

I don’t know if it ever felt risky in the sense of “we could sink the studio” or “people might hate it”. The risk was whether or not we would actually be able to pull off the making of it. One of the big mandates, both from [producers] Phil [Lord] and Chris [Miller] and also from Sony, was to make it really different. We wanted to push the envelope and try to inject some life and freshness back into the medium.

It’s definitely different. For one thing, you have a character called Peter Porker, aka Spiderham, who’s become a big breakout star.

I mean, talk about risk — probably the one big question besides, “Can we even finish the movie?” was, “Is he gonna make it in? Is the pig jumping the shark?” There was a little pushback from various quarters, but once John Mulaney’s voice entered the picture, that was kind of all she wrote. There are hours of lines he did in our recording session that have never been heard. We were on the floor dying laughing.

You also convinced Nicolas Cage to voice Spider-man Noir. What’s your favourite memory of working with him?

I think it was when we went to go see him in Las Vegas to pitch the character. He was in a big hotel suite, and I think he had broken his ankle, so he had an ankle boot and a cane with a skull on the head. I was like, “How much more Nicolas Cage can you get?” We showed him artwork of the costume and told him Spider-man Noir is like a ’30s gumshoe. He went, “Yeah, yeah, alright, alright.” And we knew pretty quickly we had him.

The movie’s full of silly little deep-cut moments, like the bit in the end-credits that riffs on a meme of two cartoon Spider-men pointing at each other.

I’m pretty positive that was a Phil Lord joke. Phil will jam ideas into every last nook and cranny of a movie if he can.

How about memes inspired by Spider-verse — are there any you’re particularly fond of ?

I’ll tell you one thing I’ve seen on Twitter that was absolutely amazing. There’s a Filipino artist named Pinot Ichwandardi, and he and his kids recreate scenes from the movie with practical techniques. These incredibly complex images we made with millions of dollars’ worth of computers and software, they’re making it at home, and it’s astounding. In terms of repurposing a movie to make your own statement with it, or show your love for it, what they did blows me away. I love that people have got so much inspiration from our film, whether it’s on social media or in the industry itself. People are feeling like maybe some shackles are off, or maybe there are some new possibilities.