Phil Lord Reveals Why These Specific Spider-Men Were Chosen for ‘Into the Spider-Verse’

The latest Spider-Man movie will see the Wall Crawler’s first animated adventure on the big screen, and Sony Pictures is embracing the character’s Marvel Comics history.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse will function as Mile Morales’ story, but will feature major roles from counterparts from alternate dimensions. These Spideys from parallel universes feature many popular and fan-favorite characters including Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and Spider-Gwen.

Producer Phil Lord recently spoke with Fandango about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, revealing why they chose these popular takes on Spidey rather than introducing any new characters.

“We wanted everyone to be canonical,” Lord said. “We didn’t want to make anything up, because we felt like it would feel like we had a Great Gazoo to the movie or something like Scrappy Doo. We wanted to make sure that they all were originating from the comic, so we just sort of went to Marvel Wiki and having read the books and some of the event crossover books, we thought that these were characters that were as diverse as possible [and] had as many different colors to them.”

Lord talked about the aesthetic difference between each of the different characters and how they all look together on the screen.

“Like, Spider-Man Noir is such a special dude because he’s so characteristically different than all the other ones and darker,” Lord added. “He’s got a different personality and point of view. Spider-Man is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. So we really were looking for a Benetton ad of spider people in terms of the personalities and their visualization. So that when you put them together on the screen they didn’t feel like it belonged necessarily. And one of the most fun things to watch is this black-and-white character next to this highly saturated cartoon next to an animated character next to Peter and Miles. It’s a really neat sight gag to get them all in one frame.”

Despite the movie featuring many different characters, Miles Morales will be the main focus. Lord spoke about why they decided to make the Ultimate Spider-Man the movie’s anchor, and why it’s relevant in the wake of Peter Parker’s 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.”

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse premieres in theaters on December 14th.