‘Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse’ Almost Had An Aussie Spidey

The fact that there’s a film called Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse that doesn’t feature an Australian character is bug nuts. After all, we are world-renowned for our hideous army of ultra-venomous arachnids. It’s as though we’ve been cut out of a film called Barbecue: Into The Barbecue-Verse, or the English have been cut out of Centuries Of Oppressive Colonialism: Into The Colonialism-Verse.

Making that pain all the harder to take is the recently surfaced news that we almost made the cut.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse sees a range of webslingers from different dimensions all converge into the world of Miles Morales, long-time Spider-Man fan favourite, following an experiment gone wrong. There’s Spider-Noir (voiced by Nicolas Cage, doing his best Humphrey Bogart impression), Spider-Ham (AKA Peter Porker, voiced by man of the moment John Mulaney), and Peni Parker, a young girl with a giant, mechanical spider for a best mate.

And, in an earlier draft of the script, there was an Aussie Spider-Man in the mix too (Strewth-Man? Spider-Strewth? Help me out here.)

Aside from simply being a shout-out to Spider-Man’s antipodean fans, Aussie Spider-Man was also designed to move the plot along.

Not pictured here: Spider-Strewth.

See, in Spider-Verse, the motley crew of Spider-People (and pigs) have to work their way back to their own worlds within 24 hours, lest they all be killed. In one draft, that ticking clock motif was revealed by the abrupt death of Aussie Spider-Man. Being an Australian in New York, the idea was that Aussie Spider-Man was a whole 24 hours ahead of the other Spider-Crew: it’s through his unexpected death that the heroes realise exactly how long they have before they will face the same fate.

Neat gag, right? Unfortunately, Aussie Spider-Man was dreamt up too late in the production process, meaning he was ultimately cut.

Oh well. We can’t really complain. Marvel might have spurned us, but we still have DC: most of the upcoming Aquaman was shot in our very own Gold Coast. At least the dude who talks to fishies wants to be our mate!