Spider-Man and Peter Parker debuted in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15, going on to become one of the most iconic superheroes of all time. With multiple films having already depicted Parker’s trials and tribulations, producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller chose instead to focus on Miles Morales for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a potentially controversial decision that the studio was fully on board with.
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“Well, [Sony executives] Amy Pascal and Avi Arad came to us with the idea of doing Spider-Man as an animated movie,” Miller shared with Fandango. “And of course, the first thing you think is, well, doing an animated movie with the source material of a comic book, you can really, really get into the artistry in a way that no live action version of a comic book movie ever did, and that was really exciting. But then we also were really excited to tell the story of Miles Morales. So, first we said, ‘Uh.’ And then we said, ‘We’ll do it, but only if it’s the Miles Morales story.’ And luckily, they were super on board.”
Miles Morales debuted in 2011 and quickly became a fan-favorite member of the Marvel Universe, becoming the focus of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man. This iteration of Spider-Man might have earned a passionate following, yet other readers struggled to accept a new character as the Wall-Crawler, leading to the merge of multiple Marvel Universes into one, allowing both Morales and Parker to be heroes in the same universe.
While there are many similarities between the different versions of Spider-Man, the biggest difference is Miles’ family dynamic, which became a major reason the producers chose to focus on this version of the hero for this story.
“Well, to me, it sort of all circles around to his family. He has a very different family than Peter Parker did,” Lord confessed. “First of all, both of his parents are alive, so that’s a huge difference right there. And being able to portray a very grounded family with a mother and father who both want the best for their son, but go about it in different ways. Also an uncle that loves him, but is encouraging him to go down a different path. That whole dynamic is really the center of what the whole movie’s about, and it was really important to us to get right. And it really speaks to Miles trying to figure out who he is and who he’s gonna be, what kind of a person he’s going to become.”
Fans can see exactly what makes Miles Morales such an exciting character when Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse lands in theaters on December 14th.
Are you glad to finally see Miles in his own film? Let us know in the comments below!
