- You! Number 43!
- [Matt] Uh, Matt Fagerholm, rogerebert.com.
Extraordinary film, uh, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's
dedication at the end got a standing ovation in Chicago.
Can you tell me about how you went about
wanting to reflect the essence of their artistry
and their message to the world?
- We wanted to talk about it on-stage.
- I mean, that was the "and, finally" that got played off,
I don't know, maybe you don't see that up here,
but maybe you do.
I mean, literally, we were just going to thank Stan Lee
and Steve Ditko for really inspiring this whole thing,
you know, and for, um, you know, being a force,
of believing that all of us human beings
have the potential and the capacity to be heroes.
I mean, that was really sort of um, from day one,
you know, Phil and Chris had put together a treatment,
and there was sort of a statement that was essentially
saying um, it was a challenge to make a movie
that challenged the audience to believe in themselves
and to believe in their neighbor
and really, you know, be positive and make a difference
in the world and possibly be a mentor or be heroic.
That was really it, that's from Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
So that's what we were tryna say.
- [Female Organizer] 228, and then 218.
- [Carlos] Hi, Carlos Aguilar from Remezcla,
this question's for Phil or anyone else
that wants to jump in.
- Oh hi.
- [Carlos] Hi. Um, if there's a sequel to the movie,
would you consider exploring
Miles Morales' Latino side further,
maybe an adventure in Puerto Rico or something like that?
- (laughs) Well, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves,
we're really proud of this movie,
and there's a lot of great ideas for another one,
but obviously we're really proud that Miles
has Puerto Rican heritage.
I'm a Cuban-American, and uh, they say that
Cuba and Puerto Rico (speaks in Spanish)
we are linked, so, you know, so obviously
that's something that's a really interesting dimension
of the character that's been left to explore further.
- [Female Organizer] Going to 218 and then 176.
- [Female Reporter] Hello guys, congratulations.
I just want to know how much of the Filipino animators
contributed to this movie.
- Uh, we had uh, I know back at ImageWorks we had,
I'm going to shout out John Butu, remember?
Yeah, and there were a bunch of people up in Vancouver,
it was a substantial contribution.
We had talented people from all over the world
working together on this movie,
that kind of echoed what you see in the movie
is people coming from whole different universes
to get together and realize their commonality.
So we are very proud of what our Filipino animators
and artists, who were among a crew of 800 artists,
gave to the film.
- Shoutout to John Butu!
- John Butu!
Woo!
- [Female Organizer] We'll go to 176, and then 61.
- Louis Del Carmen.
- Yeah.
- Absolutely.
- All right, yeah.
- [Eli] Eli Glasner from CBC News.
Peter, as the first black director to win
the Animated Feature Award, talk to me
about the responsibility of bring an Afro-Latino character
such as Miles to life.
- Yeah, um, it's a huge responsibility.
This is something that's going to be seen and taken to heart
by millions of people, but everybody has to know
that our whole team, I mean the guys standing
up on this stage as well as those other hundreds
of artists that I was talking about earlier,
all of them deeply felt the importance of that idea
and that mission, so um, Miles had.
Miles had a lot of backup.
He had a lot of people who really loved him
as a character, believed in his story,
and knew how important it was going to be
to black kids, Latino kids, kids who just want to
be their best selves no matter who they are.
So everybody gave it 110% and uh,
we're very gratified that people are,
are receiving his story in the spirit
in which we put it out.
- [Female Organizer] We'll go to 61
and then number one.
- [Male Reporter] Uh, congratulations on your win.
I was going to ask, um, what did--
I'm sorry, hold on, need to double-check my notes here.
What responsibility did you guys have
to accurately portray one of the first representations
of Afro-Latino superhero to audiences
that are hungry for diverse representation?
- Go for it.
- I mean it's obviously a huge responsibility.
We were lucky because Brian Bendis and Sara Pichelli
created a roadmap for us with the comic version
of Miles that they invented
and they made so many important choices.
They made Miles part of a really, loving, tight family,
and they made choices that are somewhat unconventional,
and they were, they did a lot of the heavy lifting for us.
So once we made the decision, like, we want this movie
to be about Miles and his family,
the rest kind of fell into place.
- [Female Organizer] We'll go to one,
and then I do have to wrap it up with 250 in the back.
- [Fabian] Hi guys, right in the back.
Hi, my name is Fabian Waintal for Latin America.
I believe, tell me if I'm wrong,
Mahershala Ali has one of the voices
for the character Uncle Aaron,
so this would be a second Oscar for him, right?
- Yeah, yeah. If we have any advice
for filmmakers out there, put Mahershala Ali in your movie.
(audience laughs)
It seems to work out okay.
- [Fabian] So my question is, what,
how animated was his acting there?
What was his chill?
- Sure.
- Talk about his death scene!
- Well yeah, I mean, broadly we um,
we tried to um, we cast all kinds of actors.
We especially, we had a lot of actors
who had never done voice-acting before,
and who favored a naturalistic style of performance
and our animators really met them
and started to craft animated performances
that were based on fairly underplayed,
fairly subtle vocal performances,
for which, Mahershala Ali's a great example.
One last story about his is that we, well,
can I even say it?
It is a spoiler.
- Spoiler alert.
- It's okay.
- Spoiler alert!
- [Fabian] At least tell us about the character,
what it was about, people might not know.
- So, so, um, he had a death scene in the movie.
We actually asked him to do it, we had him do it twice,
on two different occasion.
We asked him on a third occasion,
and he essentially said no, or (chuckles)
he said, um, he said, he basically
in a very calm, well-articulated way said
that for him to do that kind of scene
takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot out of him,
and he essentially said to us, next time,
if you still need me to do this again, I'll do it.
But maybe look at your stuff
because it takes a lot out of me, you know,
when I do that and we went and we looked at the scene
and we did not ask him to do it again.
- Long way of saying he's very committed.
- He's very committed, he's a Method actor,
you know, he uh did a beautiful, beautiful performance,
as did the rest of our cast and,
and they're a big part of why we're standing
onstage right now.
- [Female Organizer] We're going to wrap it up
with 250 in the back.
- [Lapazaco] Lapazaco Sandoval, New York Amsterdam News.
Congratulations to you all.
Peter, my heart is pounding in my chest for you.
This question is for all of you.
What do you love about being storytellers?
- I mean I'll just do a super-quick one.
I mean, to be a storyteller, it's really
just about connecting with your audience,
whether it's your little kid that you're putting to sleep
or apparently millions of people who go see your movie.
So I think it's just a really, it's validation
of just being a human and sharing the experience
of being a human, so um, it's kind of an amazing career.
- To feel like you've affected someone else's life
positively, one way or another, is a really magical thing
that, that we don't take lightly.
- Bob said it, you know, people have
reached out to us about this movie.
None of us have ever been through anything
like the experience of, after our movie came out
and people would reach out to us
and what they say, what they feel,
and we feel very close to those people
and that's uh, that's very addictive.
And that's why we do, that's why we do this.
Because we want to feel closer to people,
and we want people to feel closer to each other.
- I can't really top these guys.
If you can make a connection, that's everything.
- Uh, it's two things for me.
The collaboration with other people
in this medium, which is a team sport,
and it's miraculous to me
that hundreds of people will collaborate
just to get on an airplane,
let alone to try to make a work of art together.
That to me is so beautiful, and the idea
of all those people putting a message in a bottle
and exercising a part of their essential humanity
which is that we all know how to make art somehow.
And it's amazing.
And sending that out into the ocean,
to me that's the whole bag.
- [Female Organizer] Thank you so much
and congratulations, gentlemen.