Rarely does a film come along that is equal
parts technological maelstrom and cultural
touchstone in the same breath.
Into the Spider-verse is a rare film with
a hell of lot of talent pouring out of every
single frame.
And every frame is a sentient piece of pop
art.
This movie is a pop art nuclear explosion.
It’s not often I am able to jump so freely
into the weeds, so please indulge me.
But few movies offer what Spider-verse managed
to pull off so eloquently.
This movie is a technological feat that blends
a boatload of disparate elements into a cohesive
whole.
This movie is a lot like Space Jam...
I’m saying the film matters to me and I
want to talk, technically, about why this
piece of art was more monumental than the
effusive praise it has already received.
I can not believe something on this level
exists, so without further adieu, lets jump
in the weeds, y’all!
This was the ethos permeating the hallways
at Sony Pictures Animation while making this
film.
Anyone can put on the mask, we’re all in
this together.
It’s primarily through the eyes of a comic
book come to life, weaved through street art
and street culture.
We need to start at the beginning here so
lets talk about animating-
Traditionally, when drawing images in sequence for an animated film, you use what is commonly
known by cool kids everywhere as drawing on the twos.
Or threes, in some cases.
Typically, films are shown at 24 frames a
second, while animation is drawn every other
frame at twelve frames per second, or in some
cases at eight frames a second.
Animation is imperfect.
You could animate at 24, 30, or even 60 frames
a second, but it’s not manageable or practical
to expect animators to draw that many frames.
Into the Spider-verse is therefor animated
on the twos.
You can see it when you go frame by frame
cuz the background will move in frames where
the characters don't.
And we need to start with this basic point,
because they used this imperfection (in tandem
with about a bunch of other things I’m about
to mention,) to create a film where any frame
can be paused, and a pristine perfect frame
is right there.
There is real human effort here to accentuate
poses and create a feeling and an emotion
in every single frame.
Animating on the twos allowed them to get
rid of motion blur as well, which we’re
about to dive in on in a moment.
But first, watch this:
Dope.
Dope.
Dope.
Dope.
Dope.
Dope.
Dope.
See?
Every single frame.
Everyone involved in this movie was pushing the animators from moment one.
It’s directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman who pushed the animation
team to invent new solutions to old problems.
The film was written by Rothman and Phillip Lord.
You’ll remember Phillip Lord’s name from
21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and numerous
other projects that shouldn’t have been
the knockouts that they were, paired with
one Christopher Miller.
Miller was a producer on this film, among
a laundry list of powerful names in the film
industry.
Amy Pascal.
Avi Arad.
Brian Michael Bendis.
It’s like Hollywood Christmas this movie.
Just go to IMBD and click through all of these
people’s names.
I wish I had more time to really go into the
weeds on them, but we’re here to talk about
this behemoth of unsolvable problems they
created while making it.
Let’s talk about Offset Printing.
Offset Printing is a high-volume style of printing where the printer will make custom
plates in Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black
and then run pages through a series of rollers
that will put out a printed page.
It’s high volume because for it to valuable
monetarily, you have to print a lot.
Like a lot, a lot.
Spider-man, as an IP to date, has sold about
378 million copies.
So there’s some volume there.
The quirk of offset printing, is already in
the name: offset.
It's what we get nostalgic over.
You get those lines blurring from where it
should be.
The film uses this effect in place of two
types of blur: motion blur and depth of field.
The artists making this film actively did
not want motion blur pulling us out of this
thing.
They were animating 3d models on the twos.
In practice, the depth of field effect is
used to incredible degree in the car at the
beginning when Miles is getting a ride to
school with his dad.
As things move further away from the camera,
they begin to appear as imperfect offset printing.
Or, in effect, as things move further from
the camera, they begin to appear like older
and older comics.
Depth of field is a printing error in this film.
It is also used as motion blur, in effect,
to make things moving very quickly, have distinct
images portraying their movement.
So, even in still form, you get this illustrated
type of effect, you know, like a comic.
When this effect is not enough, such as the
side shot of Miles running through traffic
in the "What's up Danger" scene: things become
shapes to illustrate the feeling of movement
without confusing your eye.
They came up with solutions on the fly for
motion blur.
We'll get to this more in a moment, when we
talk about all of the one-off artistry layered
into this movie to create the astonishing
overall effect of watching it.
I’m sure I’d usually put a joke here but
I really don’t even have the ti-
This movie reminds me the most of Interstellar.
Okay, so here’s me backing up that ridiculous
statement.
Interstellar is a film where the special effects
programmers and actual theoretical physicists
literally rewrote the 3D renderer because
they needed to make light not a linear thing.
Traditionally, light goes, like straight and
stuff – that’s true in the renderers for
both Mario 64 and A Bug’s Life—also everything
else.
But the gravity of a black hole is so strong,
it can literally bend light.
They adjusted the rules of physics in their
simulation with some bananas math and they
were surprised by the results.
So, what’s the lesson?
I’m gonna connect that example now, though, with a bit more artistic methodology.
Let’s talk about systemic solutions.
Into the Spider-Verse wrote their own rules.
On every front.
It’s important to recognize how the things
I’ve already mentioned and the things I’m
about to mention worked in tandem together.
There’s really too much here but I’m going
to do my best.
First, we need to understand the difference
between Benday Dots, named after the creator
Benjamin Day, and Kirby Dots, of course named
after Jack Kirby.
This movie has a serious dot thing.
There's like... there's too many dots.
Benday dots work in conjunction with hashed
lines to create this movie’s idea of lighting.
I mean everyone and their dog noticed this,
obviously, but to rewrite a renderer so this
affects shaders and reflections, and literally
the look of every single thing in the film.
It’s bonkers to me that this works as well
as it does.
To me this was the most beautiful thing in
a comic movie in a while, they went out of
their way to pay homage to legendary comic
artist Jack Kirby by making the particle systems
of the world composed of Kirby dots.
It was kind of his thing.
This movie is such a celebration of comics,
I don’t have enough words to praise it.
This is literally his drawings come to life
in a way that no one ever had.
And it doesn’t stop there.
There is an incalculable amount of math going
on behind the scenes and some of the best
graphical programming in the history of, like,
Earth—Ed Catmull would be so proud.
I’m being hyperbolic here.
But they did things that work together so well in concert it may as well be magic.
And that’s where artistry comes in.
Because they let the programmatical solutions
get them there, and the animators and artists
started running with the football out the
back of the endzone and into the parking lot.
And then the artists just started drawing
on top of it.
Hell, one of the characters is entirely hand
drawn.
It’s a wonderful celebration of art in the
21st century and the tools we currently have
access to, and in some cases, invented entirely.
Into the Spider-Verse is a historical piece
of art.
This is a deal that actually cannot be described
with hyperbole because none is really fitting
of it.
The accomplishment is actually bigger than
it appears to be on the surface.
I could make videos about this for the rest
of the year and I probably would still be
merely scratching the surface of this ludicrously
unmatched accomplishment here.
But in lieu of doing any of that...
Let's talk
about Miles Morales.
The break into act 3 in this film is monumental,
so my act three is a curveball too, naturally.
This is why all of that tech; all of that
art; all of that effort—this is why it mattered
to people.
After Miles gets too far inside his own head
and drops the ball a little, the other Spider-people
tie him to a chair for his own safety.
Not only does Spider-Man look him in the eye
and tell him he doesn’t have it—five spider-mans
look him in the eye and tell him he doesn’t
have it.
Like, I don’t think I could handle the anxiety
mushroom cloud of even a single Spider-Mans
telling me I don’t have what it takes.
Which is what makes Miles the perfect Spider-Man.
Our hero feels like an underdog again.
Same story, entirely different texture and
emotional journey.
But he was chosen.
Great power, great responsibility and all
of that.
Peter Parker in this reality- died.
The responsibility is on Miles.
And then Miles breaks himself out.
He sits there for a moment and he’s like,
No hang on. No, we are the same.
I am Spider-Man.
The film up this point, sets up this narrative
of the leap of faith, the moment you become
a hero is the moment you say: it’s me.
I’m scared.
And the world does not treat me fairly.
(do you see the subtext?)
Once he realizes it has to be him, Miles is
like:
And then my favorite shot in film history
happens.
Miles ascends to be Spider-man by leaping
into a freefall.
Outside of being a stunning visual triumph
that no superhero movie has even come close
to accomplishing, it’s a moment of maximal
impact.
The idea of the Leap of Faith—a phrase the
film uses multiple times—originated from Kierkegaard.
A god (cough superhero) cannot be explained
by science alone, you have to believe in—well,
if you’re a superhero, you need to have
faith in yourself, obviously.
Spider-Man by way of Danish Philosophy.
Miles doesn’t just save his friends.
Miles doesn’t just save the city.
Miles doesn’t just save the world.
Miles doesn’t just save the universe.
Miles saves the multi-verse because he can
believe in himself.
There's so much here.
The cleverness with which this movie handles
an audience’s understandable apprehension
about origin stories is a stroke of actual
genius.
There’s too much clever and wildly entertaining
stuff in this film it’s actually embarrassing
that I didn’t even take a breath so far
to discuss Nicholas Cage saying things like
Or John Mulhany playing a traditionally 2D
animated superpig named Spider-Ham.
But lots of people have already talked about
all that stuff.
I thought it was important to do two things
in this episode: 1) talk about why this movie
was possibly a bigger deal than you thought
it was and hopefully incentivize you to devour
every single thing you can read about it and
2) why it mattered to people.
If you’re going to put this much effort
into a piece of art, it better mean something
pretty special to at least part of the audience.
Anyone can be Spider-Man.
Race, gender, corporeal reality—we don’t
judge.
Here's a thought.
Gwen Stacy as a character got the rawest deal
in comics.
Gwen, the auspicious student of science dies
because the writer writing her decided that
Spider-Man was more interesting with MJ.
Could have just written her out by sending
her off to a college or somethin' but
ya know.
That's one way too.
Not anymore, now she’s Spider-Man too.
And that look, though!
Anyone can put on the mask, it’s who you
are that counts.
What’s up, Danger?
Hello David McIntyre, Brosephene, A wooden
leg... singular.
Unlike Ken Burns who has five wooden legs.
Hello.
This is the credits of my show that no one
ever watches and the algorithm punishes me
greatly for having but I love all these people!
Ernest Baum and the Vita Activa.
Good yogurt and handheld entertainment in
one.
Ummmm, hey sorry my... sorry I'm so scattered
right now.
I had to kind of like make this episode in
sort of the holes in time I had where I wasn't
doing a lot of other stuff I'm sure you will
find out about later but *sighs* I'm spread
a little thin right now.
The Descripti, that's a cool name.
I was really looking forward to making this
episode, it was a lot of fun.
I got to dive into the dumb dumb weeds on
one of my favorite movies of probably the
last decade.
Animated, probably for all time.
But anyway I tried to dig a lot of very shallow
holes cuz um, it probably feels like I'm moving
at a million miles an hour and Didn't necessarily
wanna walk every idea through to it's logical
completion, because then this episode would
be 54 minutes long.
Which everyone immediately types "That's fine!"
[laughs]..it's not fine for me, I'm spread
thin enough as it is.
What a week, y'all.
And it's monday, I'm lookin forward to another
week of Brian Graham's Graham Cracker Emporium.
Wonderful company, family owned.
The Graham business is kickin'.
Hey, follow me on Twitter @Mikeyface I'm okay.
Sometimes.
Benedict the Mad is good all the time.
Hello Grepo, Steven Hillman, Chris Hinojosa,
Pat Rothfuss, John McGarity, Brad Leclerc,
Vitamin G, Merlin Brittenham coming this fall
on the BBC starring uh, Anthony Stewart Head is
playing Merlin Brittenham in this version.
I forgot who was writi- was it the Dowton
Abbey guy?
Yeah it is.
Okay.
Ethan Fant, Benjamin A Straub.
My brain no longer works, I am so sorry.
I am recording these credits like, sitting
in a chair and sweating.
What a week!
WALRUS.
Comming this week to ABC.
What a week, walrus.
AND MAP.
Sure.
See you next episode!
