Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the Oscar-winning flick, Into the Spider-Verse. While the sequel was nominated also nominated for Best Animated Film, it unfortunately lost to a surprising movie, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.
Despite its impressive reviews and being hailed as one of the best sequels to a Spider-Man movie, fans are absolutely shocked, to say the least. While everyone reacted differently, the producer-writer of the movie Christopher Miller took it like a champ. Yet fans brought back one dark legacy of the movie after one tweet of Miller went viral.
Christopher Miller Reacts Across the Spider-Verse’s Oscar Loss
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has everything one would need to be a successful film. With amazing graphics, an intriguing storyline, well-developed characters, an entertaining narrative, and catchy musical scores, the movie has some of the finest reviews on the internet. Yet the movie lost the Oscar for Best Animated Film.
While Christopher Miller, writer-producer of the movie took the defeat pretty well by stating in a tweet, If you’re gonna lose, might as well lose to the GOAT. It was his next tweet that offended fans.
Animation is not a genre for children it is a medium for people and that medium is film
Just a reminder a propos of nothing
— Christopher Miller (@chrizmillr) March 11, 2024
The tweet, apparently simple, led fans to unearth one of the dark secrets of the movie and many of them started criticizing Miller on the internet. Back in the middle of last year, the makers of Across the Spider-Verse were accused of underpaying and overworking their animators.
Sony reportedly had hired over 1000 animators, yet the working conditions were allegedly unsustainable and erratic with countless last-minute changes leading to overtime. As per a report by Vulture, four animators on the project gave a grueling account of the working conditions and even revealed how over 100 of their colleagues were forced to leave the project.
Those who stayed were reportedly made to work for more than 11 hours a day with no break throughout the week on certain occasions. While Phil Lord, co-writer and producer subtle avoided the controversy when asked during an interview with Variety, the movie still turned out to be a splendid success making $681 million worldwide (via The Numbers).
Fans React To Across the Spider-Verse‘s Oscar Loss
Seeing the success and win of its prequel, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, fans were anticipating that even its sequel would do wonders at the Academy Awards. While it, unfortunately, did not win any awards, fans, although upset, unearthed a lost controversy about the movie.
After Christopher Miller’s tweets went viral, this is how many netizens reacted:
maybe start apologizing to your artists for overworking them? maybe you guys would've won if you turned over a COMPLETE and FINISHED film with no last-minute changes
— jahn maclame (@hatstothelull) March 11, 2024
The real question is do you consider animators to be people?
— Paul Meredith (@Paul_Shrupert) March 11, 2024
Pay your animators and stop overworking them Chris
— Penis Villeneuve (@nolovedeepweeb) March 11, 2024
You should still probably apologize to your artists https://t.co/KYsSeVjgkr
— That REDACTED Guy (@REDACTEDSpider) March 10, 2024
Maybe treat your animators better next time
— SpoderFlakes (@SpoderFlakes) March 10, 2024
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but tbh, serves you right for bullying animators!
— TsWade2 (@TsWade2) March 11, 2024
While the controversy surrounding the working conditions of the animators seems to have resurfaced again, it is important to remember that the movie will always be remembered as a groundbreaking, genre-defying work of art, that pushed boundaries and inspired countless fans across the whole wide world.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse can be streamed on Netflix.
