By now you have all seen the amazing animated film known as Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, correct? If there are any outliers, they might want to skip reading this newspost until they’ve seen the movie, as it spoils a bit of its plot. Are we clear? The rest of you can venture ahead.
An infinite number of universes offers infinite possibilities, and there were several permutations of Spider-Man Lord and Miller considered before choosing the final lineup. One was thought up late in production but did not make it past the script phase: an Australian Spider-Man. According to co-director and co-writer Rodney Rothman:
I invented a character I called Australian Spider-Man, who was also part of the group of Spiders that appear halfway through. He told everyone he’d been there for a day already because he was 24 hours ahead, and then he glitched to death very gruesomely in front of the others. They all then look at each other and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, we only have 24 hours to live!’ I nearly got fired, because me adding that character at that moment of production showed a profound lack of understanding of the process of animation production and where we were in that moment, so that particular idea didn’t even make it to storyboards. People just met the next day and looked at me and were like, ‘Go eff yourself.’”
The time zone gag is clever, but unfortunately, time itself played a role in eliminating it. Also, it doesn’t jibe with the rules established in the finished picture: when the story begins, Gwen has been at Miles’ high school for at least two weeks. Perhaps it couldn’t have made it in even IF there’d been time to design, rig and animate Aussie Spidey.
Since the character was invented for a cheap gag and not based on any version of Spider-Man from the comic books, we may never know what an Australian Spider-Man would turn out. Presumably he would spin funnel webs and be significantly deadlier than his counterparts. Or the bite would have just killed that world’s Peter Parker instead of mutating him. Australia is dangerous.
