Swinging back into action

Since making his comic book debut in 1962, Spider-Man has become an icon of pop culture, racking up numerous appearances in books, cartoon series and movies. Now, the world's most famous web-slinger is swinging back into Chinese theaters with the new movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

A sequel to 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, winner of the best animated feature at the 91st Academy Awards in 2019, Across the Spider-Verse was simultaneously released in China and North America on Friday.

Following an accident in the first movie, where he is bitten by a radioactive spider giving him superhuman powers, Miles Morales — a teenager living with his parents in New York — is still struggling to keep his superhero identity a secret from his family. While facing a new crossroads in life as a graduating senior who's attempting to apply for a physics major at Princeton University, Morales finds comfort in reuniting with Gwen Stacy, a young woman from a parallel universe who is also gifted with spider-administered super powers.

Known as Ghost Spider, Stacy is struggling with a similar problem to Morales. She, too, is trying to hide her superhero identity from her father. With Stacy's help, Morales gains entry into the headquarters of a secret society where many people and creatures gather, all sharing the same experience as the duo — being bitten by a weird spider and becoming the super-powered wall crawler in their respective universes.

The gathering of around 280 variations of the comic book icon has become one of the biggest highlights of the movie. They include an Indian Spider-Man, Spider-Punk who carries an electric guitar, and a pregnant Spider-Woman riding a motorcycle.

Jointly directed by Justin K.Thompson, Kemp Powers and Joaquim Dos Santos, the 140-minute animated movie features Shameik Moore reprising his role as the teenage protagonist, Morales, with Hailee Steinfeld voicing Stacy and Jake Johnson voicing Peter B. Parker, the Spider-Man who trains Morales how to use his powers in the first movie.

Alongside Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, two of the three scriptwriters, the eight major cast and crew members shared behind-the-scenes stories of the new movie with China Daily during online interviews held over two days in late May.

Director Powers, a native of New York, says that he has been a big fan of Spider-Man since childhood. He explains that all the fights depicted in the comic books made him feel like Spider-Man is a neighbor responsible for protecting his own community.

However, the new movie has greatly expanded the superhero's range of activities. Powers says they made this breakthrough because they wanted "everyone in the world to feel like they could see Spider-Man in their own community when they leave the movie theater".

Recalling that he studied Chinese cities on the internet, Powers says he has discovered that Pudong district in Shanghai has many skyscrapers, adding that he is looking forward to featuring a Spider-Man from China in future projects, since they have already created so many versions of the web-slinger from different worlds.

In an interesting twist, Parker's Amazing Spider-Man — a jaded, slovenly character in the first film, aside from serving as a mentor to Morales, becomes a father in the new movie. He appears wearing pink pajamas over his iconic Spider-Man suit and is more preoccupied with taking care of his mischievous baby than superhero work.

For American actor Johnson, who again lends his voice to Parker, it has been a long journey to bring to life this version of superhero, who is struggling with a midlife crisis.

"We had been working on this movie for about three years. The animators had been working hard, making cuts and changes constantly. When they made changes, they wanted new options for the voice acting. That's why we were brought in early on, even when there were just scratch drawings — really rough versions of the animation. As the animation got closer to the final version, we came back and kept recording to make everything work together," says Johnson.

"It's like a dance between the characters, the story and the animation. I think they want to make sure everything works in sync," he adds.

For director Thompson, who had also served as the production designer of the first Spider-Verse movie, the new film gave them an opportunity to pay homage to some of the most brilliant comic book artists who had adopted their unique art styles to tell the Spider-Man stories.

In the movie, such homages could be seen in the hometown of an Indian Spider-Man, who lives in a fictional community, which looks like a kaleidoscopic hybrid of Manhattan in New York and Mumbai, and Spider-Punk, whose world is easily reminiscent of 1970s London.

"The first movie was experimental and broke so much new ground, taking many risks. As an artist and filmmaker, being given the chance to take those same kinds of risks and go even further than before is exciting," says Thompson.

For the director, Stacy's world — which is expected to remind audiences of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood in the 1990s — was one of the most difficult to bring to life.

"The decision to open the film in a dynamic watercolor world (Stacy's universe) that changes based on her mood required a lot of experimentation. It was one of the first things we started working on for the film, and also one of the last things we finished in terms of the visuals for the entire movie. It took the entire production process to get it to a place where we felt it was just right," adds Thompson.

The voice stars also faced challenges with the many action scenes in the movie, such as conveying the feeling of having gone through intense physical activity while the heroes swing from building to building.

"It's not easy to do just by standing in a booth without the opportunity to physically act out what these characters are doing on-screen. I mean, I can't swing from buildings while fighting crime, but I have a method that I practice differently every time," says Steinfeld, who voices Stacy and her Ghost Spider alter ego.

The 26-year-old American actress adds that sometimes she would run around in a circle or do a couple of push-ups or jumps to get out of breath and portray exhaustion or frustration accurately.

Although, over the course of six decades, there have been numerous iterations of Spider-Man's story, the movie writers believe that the new tale has enabled them to satisfy their aspirations for innovation.

"I grew up in comic book shops," says Lord. "So, for me, what I love about comics is that you can really see the hand of an individual artist or writer reinterpreting these stories. The comics I liked the most were the ones that had the most personality and individuality in their artistic expression. They weren't beholden to trying to imitate an earlier version, but rather allowed a new version to flourish.

"That's the central metaphor of this new movie — can a new version of Spider-Man, Miles Morales, be allowed to flourish? Can the differences between his story and everybody else's story also be allowed to thrive?" he continues.

Consecutively topping China's single-day box office for five days, the new Spider-Man story has seemingly flourished, heating up the competition for summer blockbusters in the country, the world's second-largest movie market.

On its opening Friday, this movie surpassed two highly anticipated Japanese animated movies: a remastered version of Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 classic Castle in the Sky, and Doraemon: Nobita's Sky Utopia, the 42nd installment of the long-running franchise. As of Wednesday, it had already grossed 160 million yuan ($22.5 million).