There are a ridiculous number of Spider-Men, Spider-Gwens and Spider-Things in Into The Spider-Verse. There’s our starter Spidey, Miles Morales but also a slightly grizzled Peter Parker from the next continuity over (New Girl’s Jake Johnson), a spider-powered Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) who is from the Marvel world’s version of a Bojack Horseman-style anthropomorphised-animal universe, a noir version voiced by Nic Cage…
And they all combine to make Spider-Verse one of the surprise hits of the year, both critically acclaimed and smashing it at the box office.
But one of the directors, Rodney Rothman, told CinemaBlend that there was one version we didn’t get to see: Australian Spider-Man.
Spider-Mate was supposed to be the warning sign that things weren’t all peachy in the multi-verse, according to Rothman:
“We created an Australian Spider-Man. He showed up with the other Spiders, and he said he was 24 hours ahead, and then he glitched to death. So everyone was going to be like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be 24 hours.’ That was the official ticking clock.”
Never mind that we’re not a full 24 hours ahead of New York, where all the other Spideys live because everyone in Hollywood treats Australia like we’re a mythical otherworld anyway.
Sadly, the addition to the script came too late in the production process, and Rothman sheepishly cut him again.
Let us mourn the Poida Pahka that could have been – and could have been voiced by national treasure Eric Bana, with audible mullet.
We’re well overdue for some Australian Marvel heroes. There are plenty of obscure ones in the comics – from the Indigenous mutants codenamed Manifold and Gateway to cheesy surf-themed Queenslander Slipstream – but after everything we’ve given to the Marvel universe, we’re definitely due for some bigger names.
Where would Marvel movies be without Hugh Jackman’s gruff, box-office-bomb-proof Wolverine keeping the Fox X-verse fun for fifteen years? Without the angel-pirate Thor encapsulated in Chris Hemsworth’s perfect genes?
Hell, between Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Ben Mendelsohn in the upcoming Captain Marvel, we’re giving the MCU all their best villains, too.
We demand proper representation. We demand that the in-the-works sequel brings us Spider-Bloke, complete with an appropriately horrifying origin story about how he was overrun by the irradiated escapees of Taronga Zoo’s arachnid enclosure, and a scene where he teaches Deadpool the phrase “not here to f**k spiders”.