Shameik Moore believes that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was "robbed" at the 96th Academy Awards.
The highly successful Across the Spider-Verse, in which Moore stars as the Miles Morale incarnation of Spider-Man, lost Best Animated Feature to Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron on Sunday, March 10. In a series of tweets shared after the award recipient was announced, Moore proclaimed that the second Spider-Verse movie was "robbed."
"Respect to the winners," he wrote. "It's true, I'm definitely a sore loser, but we didn't lose, Spider-Verse has impacted A LOT of lives, we may not have been acknowledged tonight but life goes on, and BEYOND..... yea get ready."
Across the Spider-Verse co-writer and producer Christopher Miller, meanwhile, responded to the loss in the category by complimenting the winner. "Well, if you're gonna lose, might as well lose to the GOAT," Miller wrote. The response was shared to Moore as an example of how to respond to losing.
"You're right, honestly the whole Spider-Verse team are such good sports," he replied. "Very professional and I'm excited to see what comes of this. I'm young, and a fighter, so forgive my nature. Congrats to the winners."
He concluded, "Everyone keeps telling me how my story is suppose to go... NAH IMA DO MY OWN THING." The last tweet appeared to be a reference to popular Miles Morales NPC TikToker Leaks World, who said the same thing when he was confronted by a security guard for allegedly recording his livestream on private property.
Regardless of how Moore feels, Spider-Verse was a big success at the box office and received rave reviews from critics and fans alike. The first film in the franchise, 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, won Best Animated Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.
Best Animated Feature was a contested category this year, with the acclaimed Nomna also getting a nod alongside the obligatory Pixar movie Elemental. The Spanish-French movie Robot Dreams, which features zero dialogue and is the smallest budgeted movie of the nominations, also got a nod.
Spider-Verse lost out to a Studio Ghibli film, directed by the legendary Japanese studio's co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. He previously took home the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away in 2003, arguably one of the greatest animated movies of all time. He also got nominations for Howl's Moving Castle in 2005, which lost to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and The Wind Rises in 2013, which lost to Frozen.
Now that's robbery.
Miyazaki, who did not show up to collect his award this year, has indicated that The Boy and The Heron is set to be his final film. So, if anything, the award was also a recognition of his contributions to filmmaking.
