Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) is one of the most hotly anticipated superhero sequels of the year, without a doubt. Pushing aside even Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the first of two sequels to 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has been in the works since before the first film even hit theaters, and in an interview with Collider’s own Steven Weintraub for The Afterparty, Phil Lord and Chris Miller spoke about the “ambitious” sequel, as they described it, hinting at expanding on a fan-favorite aspect of the series.
One of the most iconic parts of Into the Spider-Verse, and what separates it from its multiversal counterpart, Spider-Man: No Way Home, was the unique animation styles used to differentiate between spider-people. Anime for Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), flat black and white for Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), and a unique 3D animated look for hero Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) all contributed to giving the heroes recognizable looks that stuck with audiences well after the film ended. That style was one of many things Into the Spider-Verse was praised for, changing the way audiences understood what animation can do. And it looks like Lord and Miller plan to stretch the limits of their chosen medium even further when both parts of Across the Spider-Verse hit theaters.
And while Lord and Miller failed to confirm whether No Way Home stars Zendaya and Tom Holland would be in the film after expressing interest (which hopefully means we could be on the right track with that hunch), they did reveal something else about the direction of the upcoming film. While we knew from a brief trailer that Miles would be visiting other universes — and running into Oscar Isaac’s Miguel O’Hara — the directors revealed that each universe will be as distinct as its characters, with different animation styles corresponding to each branch of the multiverse, according to Miller:
“It is, as Phil said, a very ambitious sequel, because we didn’t want to just sort of do the same thing again. And so the idea that we’d be going to different dimensions really opened up an opportunity artistically to have each world have its own art style, and to be able to push the folks at ImageWorks to develop a way to have each dimension feel like it was drawn by a different artist’s hand. Seeing the development of that stuff is breathtaking, and really, it’s the reason we keep doing it, because it’s so hard to get it right.”
Lord described their work on Across the Spider-Verse — as well as their other work, on projects like The Mitchells vs. The Machines — as attempting to “push animation in directions it hasn’t gone yet,” and we can fairly safely say that the duo has already accomplished that, creating a film with Into the Spider-Verse that looks like it was ripped directly from the pages of the world’s greatest comic books.
What animation styles can we expect to see when Across the Spider-Verse hits theaters? No one knows, though we did get a brief look at a more traditionally two-dimensional universe in the film’s opening sequence, where Miles goes multiverse-hopping and finds himself in a tussle with Spider-Man 2099, who was teased during the end credits scene of Into the Spider-Verse. Will the two get along, or will their disagreement rip a hole in the fabric of the multiverse like their live-action counterpart Peter Parker? We can only hope for the former.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) hits theaters on October 7.