Rebecca Sugar on happy endings and the Steven Universe fusion that no one expected
Image: Photo: Kevin MazurGraphic: Allison Corr
Note: This interview discusses plot points from Steven Universe: The Movie.
Saying that Steven Universe: The Movie takes the audience through a maelstrom of emotions isn’t hyperbolic. But while the years-long story of Steven and the Crystal Gems has always been a kaleidoscope of crisis and triumphs, this particular chapter feels especially complex. The addition of Spinel, Homeworld’s latest malefactor, brings more than chaos; she also bears a totally new perspective confirming just how far the consequences of Rose Quartz’s past actions extend—a collection of wounds that Steven will always feel compelled to amend.
Between the moments of peril are celebrations of life, love, and friendship. Creator Rebecca Sugar and her team have fashioned a universe where a rollicking musical number can easily segue into a battle to defend life on Beach City, or a tearful confession of pain can lead to healing and laughter. Out of the heap of astounding feats that Steven Universe has accomplished over the span of five seasons, hosting a space where both children and adults can process their own relationships with grief and sadness has to reign among them. The A.V. Club interviewed Sugar a week before the film’s premiere, and the esteemed animator spoke candidly about encountering friends like Spinel, Steven’s quest for a happy ending, and creating one of the most shocking fusions of the series.
The A.V. Club: The film unexpectedly revisits the Gems’ origin stories. It also features Spinel, who has a very interesting animation style that hearkens back to the old-school Mickey Mouse cartoons. What was the inspiration behind Spinel’s look and revisiting the past in this way?
Rebecca Sugar:I love to work with the semiotics of cartoons. [We] have this character who was frozen in time—she didn’t get this chance to develop as a person. So in order to express that in the language of cartoons, making her look like this out-of-date cartoon that never evolved was a way to say everything about who she is and what happened to her, not just through the design but also through her motions.
I also have a pretty complicated relationship with older cartoons. I love history, but I do not like nostalgia. I absolutely would never want to go back in time and work on cartoons in the ’30s, but I’m totally fascinated by cartoons from that era. I particularly love Grim Natwick’s Betty Boop animation, and there are some moments of Spinel’s that very directly reference some of his work, along with [Ub] Iwerks’. I found that stuff really fascinating, but then there’s also something unsettling about it. There’s a toxicity to it, just because of the time when they were created. So it’s really exciting to get to work in that style—because I’m such a fan—but also to have what’s difficult about it be part of the character.
AVC: How have you been able to find such compassion for even the villains? Because it would have been very easy to simply paint Spinel as this evil-doer, but she has dealt with a tremendous amount of trauma.
RS: The thing about Spinel is that she’s a really toxic person. She’s so toxic that she’s literally trying to poison people. In my interactions with friends who have had a history difficult enough to make it hard for them to trust other people and sometimes even actively want to hurt others, it’s just a very difficult situation to navigate. In the case of Spinel and all of these characters, that’s extremely exaggerated because cartoons have the ability to be extreme exaggerations. I wanted to explore what it’s like when you’re trying to help someone who really doesn’t want to help themselves, who wants to embody the negative feelings that they have about themselves. I think that’s something really real. I hadn’t seen that in a cartoon before. Spinel, unlike many other characters, actually has the goal of hurting people, which is new territory for the show. She really wants to hurt Steven, and there’s a reason that she does—because she’s in so much pain. I just wanted to explore all the dimensions of that.