Across the Spider-Verse Almost Included A Very Meta Spider-Man

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse almost featured a Spider-Man that’s an action figure.

During an interview with Empire, one of the film’s three directors, Joaquim Dos Santos, explained how the Toy-Biz action figure would have made a very meta appearance. “One of the Toy-Biz Spider-Man toys was going to show up and he was going to have a giant kid’s hand that would go off-screen and hold him,” he said.

Unfortunately, it didn’t make the cut. It was decided the Spider Society scenes needed to bring a sense of amazement for Miles. “We wanted to make sure Spider Society could have jokes and things like Bag-Man, but when Miles showed up you wanted to be in awe of this place,” he added. “It had to feel cool, emotionally.”

Across the Spider-Verse exploded the Spider-Verse that was introduced in the first film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Essentially, it added hundreds more Spider-People into the mix. “If we take the sequence as a whole, there are over 600 different spiders,” said co-director, Justin K. Thompson. “It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 630-ish.”

Thompson revealed there are around 150 unique Spider-People with specific designs, including the Spider-Cat and the rather awesome Spider-T-Rex. “From the beginning, I was like, ‘Can we have Peter Parkedcar?,’ ” said Thompson. “’Can he look like a Hanna Barbera cartoon?’ ” That proved to be one wacky idea that did make it into the movie.

Although Across the Spider-Verse was praised for its style and animation techniques, it has also come under fire for allegedly harsh working conditions facing its animators. Creating over 600 Spider-People couldn’t have made this any easier, not to mention the fact the film boasts at least two different versions in theaters.

IGN’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse review gave it 8/10 and said: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse surges with visual inventiveness and vibrance in an undeniably strong evolution of the style established in Into the Spider-Verse. Miles and Gwen’s search for their place in the multiverse is relentless and exciting, almost to a fault, and though the plot is often an afterthought to the pure chaos of creation on display, strong performances and character arcs that feel true to the heroes we met last time help ensure that Across the Spider-Verse is a more-than-worthy follow-up to an all-time classic.”

Want to read more about Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? Check out the real bad guy of Across the Spider-Verse as well as our explanation of the film’s cliffhanger ending.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.