Steven Universe The Movie Now Available on HBO Max

Steven Universe The Movie is now available on HBO Max and fans are flocking to social media to share their memories about the film. It’s been a while since the film debuted on Cartoon Network and now even more fans are going to get their chance to experience the bridge between Steven’s initial journey and the wrestling with what comes next in Steven Universe Future. The Movie holds a special place in a lot of fans’ hearts and Rebecca Sugar was praised for her vision with the film. She sat down with Comicbook.com’s Rollin Bishop to talk about the film’s antagonist Spinel and how the Crewniverse went about bringing the pink bouncing prankster to life.

“When we started working on this, the first concept for her is that she would be an old rubber hose cartoon because you have to understand that she has been frozen in time, that she’s old. She hasn’t had a chance to develop, and to change, and live these arcs that our main character cartoons have,” Sugar began. “Looking at animation semiotically, it made sense that she’d have to look like this cartoon that’s been trapped in time and denied this opportunity to grow. From the very beginning we knew that she would have to look, and move, and feel specifically out of place in the present and that that would be part of what makes her threatening and part of what makes her charming.”

She continued, “There’s also a recurring theme in Steven Universe where he’s faced with animation tropes that are old, and they just don’t really work for him. He’s clashing with them. All of the final arc of season five is Steven coming up against these old animated fairytale concepts that he just doesn’t fit inside. There was a piece of Homeworld, there was a piece of that conflict that we hadn’t gotten to do yet, and that is the old school rubber hose cartoon. We did returning to the castle. We did the mice making his clothes.”

“We have always had this theme of the friction between Steven and old notions of what a cartoon or what an animated piece of media should be, so it was only right. I’ve been waiting for so long to get to do a cartoon character like this because some of my favorite animation of all time is Fleischer cartoons, especially Grim Natwick, Betty Boop drawings,” Sugar added. “I really wanted to pay homage to the classic Ub Iwerks cartoon bounce. It was just exciting to have a story that lent itself to needing someone to feel old in that way.”

Will you be checking out Steven Universe The Movie on HBO Max this weekend? Let us know down in the comments!