Upon its release in 2018, fans immediately fell in love with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” and for good reason. The Academy Award-winning movie is visually stunning, the story is touching, and the animation is gorgeous. On the surface, it’s obvious that the filmmakers put their all into the film, and diving deeper into the movie’s production just further cements this point.
To start, nearly every movie you see in theaters is shot and played back at 24 frames per second. In general, “Spider-verse” is no different. However, certain characters in the movie are animated at 12 frames per second, namely Miles early on in the film before he embraces and fully learns his powers. As a result, Miles doesn’t move as smoothly or gracefully as his web-slinging contemporaries. Once Miles truly “becomes” Spider-Man in that really great scene, he too is animated in 24 frames per second.
Another great detail is how the movie integrates its comic influences. Like most contemporary animation, “Spider-verse” is mainly animated through computer programs, instead of by hand, frame-by-frame like classic Disney movies were. However, tons of frames throughout the film were touched up by hand with classic comic techniques like shading and lining. This connects back to how the movie itself talks about comic books in its hilarious, self-referential way.
As is the case with nearly every Marvel movie, Stan Lee appears in “Spider-verse.” Of course, he’s featured as the owner of the costume shop where Miles buys his first Spider-Man suit. However, he actually pops up throughout the film, traveling around New York City. His pop-ups are incredibly fast and hard to spot. However, this just goes to show the attention to detail laced throughout every frame of the film.
“Spider-Verse” is a really great movie. Every frame of the movie looks like it’s straight out of a comic book. The story is super fun, and the movie all around is really beautiful. Animated movies truly take a village to make, and “Spider-verse” was no different. The movie required twice as many animators as your average animated movie to make, and it definitely shows.
