Credit: Marvel Studios / Sony PicturesThis article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, so if you have not seen the film, look away.
The Spider-Verse movies are some of the most stunning animated films that have come out, and now more details have been coming about regarding what it took to create the expansive worlds shown in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. For starters, a 14-year-old kid was tasked with creating the Lego Spider-Man world, which is impressive in and of itself. However, the best scene in the film took a reported four years to complete.
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Last summer, we all got the horrible news that Across the Spider-Verse was set to be delayed by an entire year, which was highly upsetting. But after hearing what it took to complete this film, we are more than happy that everyone involved decided to delay it. Simply put, the visuals are top-notch, and they go well with the highly emotional story of Spider-Gwen(Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) attempting to keep their friendship and responsibilities as Web Slingers intact.
Apart from taking us to places like Mumbattan, where Spider-Man India (Kara Soni) lives, and entering the HQ for the Spider-Verse, many worlds were explored—and for a good reason.
Across the Spider-Verse brought together a massive amount of Spider-People, all vying to keep the Spider-Verse (AKA Multiverse) thriving. However, once Miles Morales learned of the harsh truth, he was stuck in a pattern that all Spider-Men must go through tragedy for the betterment of the Sacred Spider Timeline, which is letting his father die. So, he fled from the clutches of Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) and his cohorts.
This entire sequence that showcases the multitude of Spider-People thriving together in endless upside-down hallways is the scene that took the longest to complete.
‘Across the Spider-Verse’ Guggenheim Sequence Took Four Years
The scene showcases Miles Morales fleeing the capture of the many Spider-People, arguably the film’s most exciting and hilarious scene. Across the Spider-Verse has many hilarious callbacks, but none better than the famous Spider-Man pointing meme, replicated tenfold during this scene.
Miguel O’Hara calls on the loudspeaker, “Stop Spider-Man!” This naturally confuses all the Spider-Man variants as they hilariously point at one another. This is also the moment the world is introduced to many Spider-Man variants like Spider-Cat and the ever-terrifying Spider-Rex.
According to co-director of Across the Spider-Verse, Joaquim Dos Santos, the scene took four years to complete. He was asked by the editor-in-chief of Collider, Steve Weintraub, just how long certain scenes took. According to Santos:
“If you think about the Guggenheim sequence, that was the first thing that we storyboarded, that was the last thing that locked animation in the film. So that was the entire four years that sequence was worked on. I think Justin [K. Thompson, co-director] has the actual figure, but if you were to line up the hours worked on this film in a straight line, it’s like 792 hours straight, if it was one person who was doing it straight ahead. So the fact that all these things are happening in tandem, like side by side, that’s how these films get made. And it is, I’m telling you, thousands of people, it’s insane.”
We can imagine this particular scene is the most lengthy regarding the time it took to complete; if it’s not, we would certainly like to know what scene happened to take longer than four years to complete. That is a tremendous amount of time to deal with just one scene, but the payoff has been worth it.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is currently over $236 million at the worldwide box office and secured the third-highest opening for an animated film ever with $69.1 million. Even more impressive is the film is already garnering Best Picture attention at the Academy Awards. Its predecessor won Best Animated Feature honors, but the sequel aims much higher.
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Should it be nominated for Best Picture, it will join an exclusive list that includes Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009), and Toy Story 3 (2010)
What do you think of Across the Spider-Verse taking four years to complete a scene? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!