Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may have featured half a dozen different versions of Spider-Man from across the Marvel multiverse, but that film was merely a practice run for what’s coming in the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse. The new movie features hundreds of alternate versions of Spidey all sharing the screen. And among the many new faces being introduced this time, we’re especially excited to meet Daniel Kaluuya’s Spider-Punk.
IGN recently had a chance to chat with Kaluuya over the phone about his role in Across the Spider-Verse. How do you find the voice of a character who’s just one Spider among many, and what conflict connects all these heroes? Read on to learn more.
Finding the Voice of Spider-Punk
Spider-Punk is a relatively recent addition to the Spider-Man franchise, debuting in 2015’s The Amazing Spider-Man #10. This version of Spider-Man isn’t Peter Parker, but rather a rebellious teenager named Hobie Brown, who leads New York’s downtrodden youth against Norman Osborn’s oppressive regime. The character has been somewhat reimagined for Across the Spider-Verse, including making him a native of the UK punk scene rather than an American. But for Kaluuya, that’s exactly where he was able to latch onto Hobie as a character. They come from surprisingly similar backgrounds, as it turns out.
“I think the fact that he’s from New London and he’s a resistor, he’s counterculture,” Kaluuya tells IGN. “He’s from the place that I grew up, Camden, which is very punk and we’ve got punk history, a massive punk beat. We had a lot of conversations about what that would sound like.”
Kaluuya continues, “Part of the multiverse is that maybe this character has a lot of London slang; he’s an amalgamation. Because London’s such a melting pot in a similar way to New York, it’s like, ”How about if he speaks a bit of Cockney? He speaks a bit old English. It’s an amalgamation of all that’s within London, so it’s a really exciting thing to take on. But he just has his own language and his own slang and his own dialect in that sense, but it’s all built from true Londoners.”
Kaluuya notes that he had plenty of opportunity to improvise while recording his lines.
“They had a template and then they let me go off on one and improvise and build upon it and change things and hone the language. I’m like, ‘That word’s not right.’ Well, it was very collaborative and we just figured it out in the process, whilst in the studio.”
While Kaluuya certainly read up on Spider-Punk’s comic book exploits after signing onto the film, he also found inspiration in a more unlikely place – Spotify. Spider-Punk is a superhero with music baked into his DNA, and that’s reflected in the fact that fans have assembled their own punk rock playlists inspired by the character.
“Yeah, I did find a Spider-Punk playlist – a couple of them on Spotify, so I listened to them during that time whilst I was recording and I would take that in,” Kaluuya says. “It was really interesting to see how fans take in the comics and what they built upon the comics, you know what I mean? You see the different points of view, so there’s quite a few playlists that I would listen to, so you see different viewpoints of how people perceive Hobie. Then you collate a idea from all of them and you see the patterns. That was something I did.”
Spider-Punk’s Role in Across the Spider-Verse
The latest trailer for Across the Spider-Verse emphasizes the rivalry between Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2099. Miguel O’Hara seems to believe that sometimes it becomes necessary to sacrifice one life to safeguard many. Miles, on the other hand, subscribes to the Peter Parker school of thought – Spider-Man can never accept the fact that some people must die. That’s clearly a huge point of conflict between the two characters in the film, to the point that Miguel is beginning to look like the antagonist of Across the Spider-Verse.
Kaluuya was reluctant to reveal too much about Hobie’s role in the film or his exact relationship with Miles. However, he did confirm that this philosophical divide is something all the characters have to wrestle with over the course of the film. Even Spider-Punk will be forced to ask himself whether the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
“I think it’s the throughline and what makes [Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham] great writers is that everything speaks to that central theme and everyone has a version of it,” Kaluuya says. “Spider-Punk has a quite a few scenes where he interfaces with that dilemma, with Miles. I think it’s something that is not littered but is in the majority of the film.”
Part of the fun in having a character as visually distinct as Spider-Punk in the film is in seeing that visual style and that world rendered on the big screen. We know Across the Spider-Verse will employ at least six different animation styles, and Spider-Punk himself will immediately stand out no matter how many other Spider-People are onscren at any given time.
“It’s a different vibe,” Kaluuya says. “It pushes the form, but how I see it, it’s me and you in the room, we’d have a different style. We dress different, you know what I mean? Because of our experiences, because what we’ve seen and were inspired by. I think it’s very wise of them to take that in its whole, it takes the garment and uses that as the aesthetic of the artwork and the animation. I think it allows everyone to stand out, which is why you can have so many Spider-People in the film, because everyone’s different. In the same way you can have loads of humans in the film because everyone’s different.”
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse hits theaters on June 2, 2023. Kaluuya will also appear in Netflix’s The Kitchen later this year, a film he also produced and co-wrote.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
