When Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse hit theaters, keen-eyed audience members noticed that there were two ever-so-slightly different versions of the movie, with little pieces of dialogue and animation changed. Now that the movie has come to home release via digital video on demand platforms, there are even more things changing — including some lines excised completely — leaving fans wondering what the point of all these little changes might be. Twitter user ChrisAGwrites, editor at The Hollywood Handle, broke down about a dozen differences he spotted in the movie’s digital version (although at least one or two of those, including Ben Reilly’s “well-defined musculature” gag, were differences across the two theatrical versions).
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Most of the changes are just different takes by the actors, from Jason Schwartzman to Oscar Isaac. One thing that seems to have really frustrated some fans was the removal of one of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore)’s final lines in the movie, when he tells Miguel O’Hara (Isaac), “I’m going home.”
You can see the two versions of the scene compared below.
Changes made to the theatrical cut actually drew some positive attention from moviegoers, since it fit so nicely with the multiversal nature of the story in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and did so in a way that seemed subtle and clever. With this latest round of changes, some of which aren’t entirely popular, more fans on social media are wondering i this is less about creativity and more about the reported behind-the-scenes issues that animators experienced trying to produce a masterpiece on a tight deadline.
Back in June, anonymous sources supposedly inside the production of Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse suggested that it was all but impossible that Beyond would hit its release date. The original idea had been to make both movies at the same time, but animators were reportedly under so much pressure to perfect Across the Spider-Verse that Beyond the Spider-Verse is nowhere close to done. Sony haven’t commented on the specifics of the situation, but the suggestion that the movie will likely be delayed has turned out to be pretty well-rooted in fact.
“It’s common for executives on a production to have a big say, but usually, they’re not as heavily involved as Phil [Lord] was. As producer, Phil overrides all the directors,” said one crew member in a Vulture interview. “They are obviously in charge of directing, but if Phil has a note that contradicts their note, his note takes precedence. They have to do what Phil says. So there were constant changes and cuts. With Phil Lord, nothing is ever final or approved. Nothing was really set in stone. Nothing was ever done. Everything was just endlessly moving beneath our feet because they wanted it to be the best that it could be.”
Another stated, “Something like 90 percent of the shots in the trailer are not in the movie. We re-engineered or reanimated, had different characters doing the same thing. It was purely a sequence of cool ideas they made us slap together while they “rested” the production. We were ‘idle’; that’s what they called it. And that was probably the biggest de-motivator for a lot of people: some of them had been flown over to Vancouver, gotten an apartment to work on this movie and then sat on their hands for maybe three months. The worst thing you can do to an artist is hire them and then tell them to do nothing. These people were like, How do you expect us to make this huge movie in less and less time? Each week that went by idle meant that later on it was going to be more insane. An avalanche of work is waiting.”
