This Valentine’s Day, T asked five writers to compose a love letter (of sorts) to an actor or fictional character who has been nominated — or, in one case, passed over — this year for the 91st Academy Awards. Here, the writer Victor LaValle, who most recently coedited the anthology “A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers” with John Joseph Adams, shares a letter to the fictional character Miles Morales of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which has been nominated this year for best animated feature. Dear Miles, My kids think you’re great, but I’m the one who loves you. I’m 47, my son is 7 and my daughter is 5, but at the end of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” I’m the only family member who sat there in tears. In the movie you look like a teenager, but in reality you’re barely 8 years old. Back in 2011 two folks at Marvel Comics — the artist Sara Pichelli and the writer Brian Michael Bendis — created you. In the sea of Caucasity that was (and still is) the comic book industry, you were long overdue. I know this is all a bit meta, but that history was rolling through my brain when the movie ended. Meanwhile my son and daughter were too busy pretending to turn invisible or web-sling across the Magic Johnson Theater lobby to notice. I watched them playing and thought about myself at their ages. I know, I know, nothing is duller than listening to an adult talk about how things were “back in the day.” I’m going to do it anyway so go ahead and pre-roll your eyes. [Sign up here for the T List newsletter, a weekly roundup of what T Magazine editors are noticing and coveting now.] I grew up loving Peter Parker, identifying with him. I’m a working-class kid from Queens; wasn’t raised in a “traditional family,” whatever the hell that means. But Peter Parker was the “boy next door” and I wasn’t. How did I know? Well, because in the world of comics — the only world that mattered to me then — a boy who looked like me never lived next door. Dennis the Menace (to use a reference you definitely don’t know) could barge into his neighbor’s home and television audiences found it endearing, cute. But a brown-skinned boy entering someone else’s home without knocking has never been adorable in America. (I guess Urkel used to do it in the ’90s, but look how much they had to neuter that boy in order to make such a thing palatable.)<doc-sep>Before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature on Sunday, Miles Morales had already become an iconic character for millions of fans. The power of centering an Afro-Latino hero in a tentpole movie was immediately palpable to the movie’s creative team once audience reactions starting pouring in. Cuban-American Phil Lord, who served as co-writer and co-producer alongside Christopher Miller, expressed this sentiment in his acceptance speech, “When we hear that somebody’s kid was watching the movie and turned to them and said, ‘He looks like me.’ Or, ‘They speak Spanish like us,’ we feel like we already won.” Backstage at a press conference, Remezcla asked if they would consider further exploring Miles’ Latino identity in the film’s sequel, perhaps through an adventure in Puerto Rico. Lord didn’t discount the possibility. “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We’re really proud of this movie and there is a lot of great ideas for another one, but, obviously, we’re really proud that Miles has Puerto Rican heritage.” Lord used the title of a famous poem by Puerto Rican poet and revolutionary Lola Rodríguez de Tió to explain his own connection to the island. “I’m Cuban-American and they say that, ‘Cuba y Puerto Rico son de un pájaro las dos alas.’ We are linked. So obviously, that is something that is a really interesting dimension of the character that has been left to explore further.” One of Spider-Verse’s co-directors, Peter Ramsey, who became the first African-American director to win in the Best Animated Feature category, spoke of the pressure of bringing Miles Morales to life. “It’s a huge responsibility. This is something that is going to be seen and taken to heart by millions of people,” he told reporters. “Our whole team, 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.” Ramsey knew that his crew had Miles’ back: “He had a lot of people who really loved him as a character, believed in this 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.” Lord also acknowledged the general audience’s overwhelmingly positive embrace of their movie, and described it as a connection they had never experienced with their previous projects. He’s been moved by fans reaching out to share what Spider-Verse meant to them, “We feel very close to those people, and that is very addictive and that is why we do this, because we want to feel closer to people and we want people to feel closer to each other.”<doc-sep>Creating a movie as complex and transgressive as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse required an astonishing level of collaboration and cooperation. From co-directors directors, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, down to the thousands of artists and technicians who worked alongside them, it was a group effort to bring Miles Morales and his comic book world to life. The film has been repeatedly honored over the past few months with dozens of awards and nominations, all of which will culminate February 24 with a possible Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. But even though the trio could reach an accord about how to tell Miles' story in the film, they're slightly less in agreement about what their young hero would wear if he were able to join them Sunday at the Oscars. "He'd wear a tux, and probably Jordan Is," Rothman told SYFY WIRE, referencing the character's trademark footwear. Persichetti was less sure. "Let's wait to see what Shameik [Moore, who performed the character's voice] shows up in. He's a living embodiment of at least a part of Miles," he observed. Video of Meet The Spider-Parents And Spider-Producers Of Into The Spider-Verse | SYFY WIRE After pausing for a moment, Ramsey suggested that Miles' Oscar get-up would perhaps be a little less flashy than Moore's might be, no doubt owing to the character's down-to-earth, working-class parents. "I think it would be some blend of whatever tux his parents were going to buy him, and something from Uncle Aaron," he said. Rothman quickly agreed: "He needs a little bit of Aaron detail, some Aaron swag," he said. "Maybe he'd wear the Prowler boots — a little purple glow right down the red carpet." The 91st Academy Awards will be broadcast on ABC this Sunday. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is available on digital platforms on February 26 and arrives on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD March 19.<doc-sep>Photo: Columbia Pictures Once again, Vulture is speaking to the screenwriters behind the awards season’s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack. For this installment, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse writers Rodney Rothman and Phil Lord talk through the introduction of Miles Morales, the half-black, half–Puerto Rican teen stepping into Spider-Man’s suit. Miles Morales, for fans of comic books and Spider-Man, is very well known. But for people outside of that world, he’s not very well known. With Into the Spider-Verse, we’re introducing a character who our audience already knows is going to become a new Spider-Man. But the audience loves Peter Parker, the Spider-Man they’ve got. It’s a challenging introduction of a character: Our movie doesn’t work if you don’t fall in love with Miles Morales. We open the movie with a montage that introduces the real Spider-Man. The scale of that scene is enormous. It’s like seeing an entire superhero movie in 45 seconds, guided by this very confident narrator. Then we cut to Miles, and things slow down a lot. In an elegant script, everything is deliberate, and everything is a microcosm for something larger: When you meet Miles, we see him singing a song with headphones on. We made a very deliberate choice to spend the first couple of minutes we’re with Miles really just watching him. We wanted Miles to be kind of lovable. We see him drawing and making stickers; we’re establishing that he’s a creative person, he’s an artist, who is able to create without feeling self-conscious or encumbered. The most important thing for this scene to communicate is that Spider-Man, as a character, is always punching up. In Miles, we have a kid who’s not ready — he’s not ready for school; he’s not ready for this mission. He doesn’t have all the tools, but he has spirit, and we fall for him because of that. We start the movie looking at Miles, and then we end it with him looking right at us. We needed Miles to score a foolproof laugh at the beginning of the movie, right when you meet him. There aren’t exactly jokes in this stretch, or any clever lines. It’s just what a reasonably clever kid would say. We had this idea that if he sang a song that was out of his register, it would make the audience laugh. It got a big laugh in the preview screening a year ago, but there was one problem: The song we initially used was the Donald Glover song “Redbone,” and we liked the double-layered joke of opening with a Donald Glover song because of his history with Spider-Man. “Redbone” killed … until Get Out premiered. It was critical that the song gag landed. We had a feeling it was because people knew the song, and they knew how he was messing it up. We were in big trouble when we couldn’t use it anymore — we needed to replace one of the greatest songs of the year, and we had to do it in time to spend the three months we would need to animate that shot. It turns out “Sunflower” is a massive hit song. We heard it as part of a batch of songs that Republic Records presented to us. We also liked the metaphor this presents: Miles is singing a song that theoretically he’s a little too young for and he doesn’t know the words yet. That’s the metaphor we’re going to be working with for most of the rest of the movie. He’s going to be asked to step into shoes that he feels he’s not ready for, he’s not going to know the words, and he’s going to feel very self-conscious and nervous about that. With Jefferson, we need to convey the authority he has in Miles’s life. His lines are delivered from either off camera, or passing. In a very subtle way, there’s a bit of a disconnect between these characters: Miles and his dad talk to each other, but they don’t necessarily look at each other, or face each other. Jefferson is a character who’s searching for a way to communicate with his son. This line — “you’re a grown man now” — was improvised by Brian. Jeff and Rio are both helicopter parents in some ways. We were always riding a line, we didn’t want Jeff to feel punitive or naggy. We always wanted him to seem like he was a good dad. We had to have Spanish in this scene. We worked really hard with Shameik [Moore] and Luna [Velez] to have enough Spanish in there that felt credible and that didn’t alienate English speakers when they heard it. It was important that it wasn’t subtitled, that it felt completely normal, and was never presented as foreign or other. Sometimes we overdid it. And at one point we underdid it. We spent a lot of time fine-tuning that stuff. Even in recording sessions where sometimes Rodney would be on the phone with his mom, and Luna would be on the phone with hers, and we’d be saying, “What would you say if I didn’t do my homework, and you were going to call me out?” We tried a lot of different versions of this scene, but sometimes the most down-the-middle structure works the best. A lot of these sequences were grounded in conversations we were having about how a lot of the characters in the movie were fighting against inevitable change, and were seeking to go back to a comfortable place in the past that didn’t really exist anymore. That was the intention behind Miles and his old school, and wanting to go back to it. We decided that Miles’s school was around the corner from his house, because it let us say a lot of stuff very quickly. The initial versions of this scene, in some ways, hit a lot of the same things but in a different order. You saw Miles hanging out a lot with a specific group of friends that we no longer meet specifically.<doc-sep>
There was plenty of controversy surrounding the release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse after it was announced that the Marvel would feature Peter Parker's replacement, Miles Morales, in the blockbuster feature film. Having an Afro-Latino character don the Spider-Man costume was too much for some to bear, but there were plenty of fans who flocked to theaters to check out the computer-animated, superhero film. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse made nearly $360 million at the box office—a triumphant feat for a film with a $90 million budget. Hailed by critics and fans alike, it was recently announced that the movie has been nominated for the Best Animated Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards. The film's co-directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman will be at the ceremony wearing their Oscars Best, but considering Miles Morales can't make it to the show himself, the cinematographers sat down with SYFY Wire to playfully argue over what they believe the teen hero would wear to his first award show. "He'd wear a tux, and probably Jordan 1s," Rothman began. Persichetti was less sure stating, "Let's wait to see what Shameik [Moore, who performed the character's voice] shows up in. He's a living embodiment of at least a part of Miles." Meanwhile, Ramsey suggested that Miles would probably show up in something fly but unassuming, opting not to go with threads that were too flashy. "I think it would be some blend of whatever tux his parents were going to buy him, and something from Uncle Aaron," Ramsey said. Rothman relented and agreed saying, "He needs a little bit of Aaron detail, some Aaron swag. Maybe he'd wear the Prowler boots — a little purple glow right down the red carpet." We may never truly know what Miles' red carpet look will be, but you can check out real-life celebrities show off their fashions at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday, February 24.