‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ Directors Reveal Their Favorite Fan Reactions

Ever since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse debuted in theaters last month, critics and fans have been raving about the animated adventure. There’s even been plenty of “best superhero movie of all time” chatter floating around on social media, and don’t think the directors of the film haven’t taken notice.

During the Golden Globes red carpet, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with directors Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman to ask about their favorite fan responses so far.

“We were working so hard, we were very late in delivering the film so we didn’t really have a moment of pause before the reactions started pouring in,” Perisichetti began. “So it was kind of shocking to immediately go from the mix stage to a premiere and a release, but the positivity has been so incredible. There’s one really good story that Rodney has, but I’ve got one that I shared with you from a father of a really good friend of my son who saw this movie and sent a really incredible DM to me about how he grew up in Brooklyn, how he was this sort of really nerdy somewhat cool kid who loved Peter Parker and saw this film with his son and was just talking about how if he had this when he was a kid how much this would’ve meant to him. And he was so happy to share it with his son. So for me, it’s those moments that just make you go, ‘Oh, this is wonderful.’”

For Peter Ramsey, it was all about the audience connecting to the material as deeply as the cast and crew did, which made it a homerun in his mind.

“It’s just great that after three years of work, people are embracing it with the spirit that we hoped they would, and the spirit that we put into it,” added Ramsey. “Because we really cared about this story. I mean we’ve got a crew of, what, 800 people, something like that. And everyone really so deeply cared about telling this story the way that we told it and with the heart that we feel it has. So it’s great that people are actually picking up on that and it means something to them.”

“I mean, Barry Jenkins calling us out on Twitter was pretty good. You know, we’re such huge fans,” Rothman said with a laugh. “There was someone that reached out to us who told us this story where he said that he went to see the movie with his seven-year-old son and – there’s this one scene in the movie that’s about a father talking to his son through a door, and it’s heavy. And this guy started to cry during this scene and he worried it was too much for his son, and he looked at his son and he said that it his son was crying. And then he said that they hugged. At that point I was like, I’m just going to put this in this folder I keep of things I never wanna forget. Working on a movie that can make that happen is all of it.”

How did you feel about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Let us know in the comments!