(dramatic music)
- Hi, I'm Brian Horton,
- Peter Ramsey.
- Phil Lord.
- Chris Miller.
- James Ham, I'm a-
(all speaking)
- Nailed it!
- Hi, my name is Saladin Ahmed
and I write "Miles Morales: Spider-Man" for Marvel Comics.
- Hey, Saladin. I'm a fan.
(Saladin laughing)
- Likewise. - Yeah.
- We are honored and ashamed of ourselves
to be in your presence.
(Saladin laughs)
- Yeah, I'm the new Spider-Man. Check it out.
Whoa!
That was part of the move.
- What I love about Miles is he is really contemporary,
but still has the heart
of what I think Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created,
which is a hero that's like all of us.
Really early on into the idea
of what if we made the movie about Miles
was what if Miles put Peter in the position
to have to be an adult? (laughs)
Which he had never done before.
- With great power, comes great-
- Don't you dare finish that sentence.
Don't do it.
- And that seemed suddenly very exciting
because a movie can't be about a person.
It has to be about a relationship.
We had the person,
but we didn't necessarily have the relationship.
And as it turned out,
the Peter relationship was sort of secondary
to a bunch of other relationships that are in Miles' family.
It was one of the discoveries of making the picture,
but we knew we had something to start with, I guess.
- For me, it was all about building Brooklyn, you know?
And I think you guys did something similar in the film.
The place that the hero comes from
is part of the hero and is part of the hero's team
in a weird way, right?
So you build this neighborhood,
you think about what does this neighborhood look like?
What is it...
And especially you guys could deal with,
what does it sound like?
Right?
We tried to evoke that on the page as best we could,
but to produce a Brooklyn that produces our hero,
to me, is the first part of that.
Iron Man's power being that he's rich enough
to build the armor, right?
Tony Stark's power is his mind, but his money.
Miles, I think is his heart and his community.
- Yeah, it was foundational to our process
was how do we ensure that everything we do for this story
is specific to Miles Morales
and the fact that he has these two aspects
of his personality, and we thought about, well,
where would be the best place for him
to go if he had to move from Brooklyn?
And when we instantly thought of East Harlem,
it was like, oh, wonderful.
We get a chance to see Rio's childhood home
to understand the culture from her eyes.
And when we put out our demo,
where we show Miles walking through his neighborhood,
and the representation of Puerto Rico
just imbued on the streets,
through the music, through the flags, through the pride,
through the language that you just hear organically,
all of that was the team coming together
with this very specific goal to ensure that the world
that Miles Morales was living in felt real.
- Yeah, and after that demo came out,
seeing the fans' reaction to that moment,
just to seeing the flag really let, for us,
I felt like it let the studio know
that we're doing the right thing
by showing this authenticity.
And I remember growing up being from Florida,
I have a lot of friends that were Puerto Rican
and seeing that flag everywhere
and it was just a normal thing.
It didn't feel like it's forced in your face
and that's what we wanted to convey in the game.
It's not just a forced thing.
It's everyday life there. That's a part of their culture.
That's a part of authenticity that comes with them.
And I think putting that in Miles has meant so much
to so many people and finding a way
to have this in the game, to show representation
for everyone and having it mean so much to so many people,
the team did so much research.
And I remember in particular in dinner,
the amount of research that the team did
just to find out which dishes that they wanted to have
to have this Puerto Rican dinner
with Ganke and with Phin and Rio.
And to have that feel like you've been there before,
like you can smell the food through the game.
And I know they did so much research
on getting that stuff right.
- So honestly, for us, the more specific we could make it,
down to what's in the pot that Miles' mother is making
that he sneaks a bite of,
we know what that is.
As specific as we could get it.
It's a celebration of the things about those cultures
and those people
that are great
and that we take to heart.
Quite a bit has been made
of the fact that when the character speaks Spanish
in the movie, there's no subtitles.
What we were going for
was a sort of unforced authenticity.
You're just observing real people doing what real people do.
And the minute you do that and you're doing it
from a place of empathy and understanding
rather than constantly reminding yourself
that there's a difference between you and somebody else,
you realize no,
there are universal things that all people share
and you can instantly, no matter what culture you are,
you're going to recognize certain things
that bond you to these characters
and make them real for you.
- I like that you guys made him the new kid on the block.
I thought that was a really clever
way to talk about how he feels as a superhero
in his sort of everyday Miles life.
And these guys were kind enough to invite us over
to their place and show us
some of what they were working on.
And we were really blown away with their observation
and the details that they found in their Harlem location.
And I just thought it gave it a great dimension
to the game that we didn't get to explore
in the movie.
- And one thing that we found pretty early on
was that the more specific and the more culturally specific
and character specific Miles got,
the more universal he became,
because he wasn't just sort of like a generic avatar
for everyone.
Like the specificity let audiences relate to him more
in a way that would be almost contrary
to what you might expect, but that ended up being the case.
- Well, you guys influenced us tremendously too.
I gotta say, when we saw the film,
we had already developed a bit of story
for what our game would be,
but we were heartened and freaked out
by how good of a story you guys told with Miles
and how much his specificity,
all the small details that you brought into his character
that were cultural touchstones,
but also just human moments,
really helped us raise our game.
So I just wanted to say that on many fronts,
it was sort of like the synergistic energy
that we were both feeling,
but you definitely raised the bar
and it really inspired the team a lot.
- I got to say guys,
yeah, the movie is phenomenal and I'm not exaggerating,
I did see it so many times in theaters.
- Oh, makes me so happy.
- After the first game,
where I came from, they consider me the Spider-Man guy,
so everyone I knew wanted to see "Into the Spider-Verse"
in theaters with me.
So like, I saw it...
It's so good.
And it just felt...
Watching that movie felt so relatable
in so many different ways,
considering the relationship he has with his uncle,
the relationship he has with his dad,
even just the professions
of his father being a police officer
and how that can affect him as a person of color growing up.
The whole thing was just amazing,
so thank you for such a great movie.
- Oh man. Thank you.
And you're right to shout out the fans
for embracing something.
It gives everybody confidence.
It gives the studio confidence.
The fact that
it's so important that people went to see it.
Just any more proof that you can win this way
is really important.
(dramatic music)