Across The Spider-Verse Has A Deep-Cut Wes Anderson Joke Only True Fans Caught
While "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" essentially stands on its own, its sequel "Across the Spider-Verse" connects itself to a number of other Marvel superhero movies in ways both subtle and explicit. Notably, for example, "Across the Spider-Verse" has significant implications for "Loki" Season 2. Furthermore, although his "Across the Spider-Verse" cameo might not fully make sense, one key "Spider-Man" actor further links the film's animated universe to Marvel canon at large.
"Across the Spider-Verse" also happens to evoke a Wes Anderson movie with a joke that even some of his fans might not have caught. As most viewers are already aware going in, "Across the Spider-Verse" revolves around travel between alternate universes. Accordingly, its main villain The Spot is covered in portals, allowing him to hop to new universes with ease. Shortly after his introduction, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) follows The Spot to a mashup of Mumbai and New York called Mumbattan, home to Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni) who fights crime under the moniker Spider-Man India.
There, Prabhakar jokes that The Spot is in Mumbattan on a stereotypical journey of self-discovery. Fans familiar with the film's voice cast will know that none other than Jason Schwartzman voices The Spot, whose past work in "The Darjeeling Limited" — Wes Anderson's film about Americans trying to do the finding themselves in India thing — this line directly references.
This isn't the first time Wes Anderson and Spider-Man have been linked to one another
While it might be a stretch to say that the nod to Jason Schwartzman's past work with Wes Anderson in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" explicitly references the director's history with the superhero franchise, Pavitr Prabhakar's joke is, nevertheless, not the first time Anderson's name has been linked to "Spider-Man."
Anderson's brief involvement with the property dates back to a 2010 Deadline report listing some of the directors Sony hoped might helm their then-unnamed "Spider-Man" reboot, which ended up becoming "The Amazing Spider-Man." Among them was Anderson. Based on this tidbit, comic Jeff Loveness produced a sketch about how a "Spider-Man" movie might look in the style of "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums." It currently has more than four million views. Loveness has since gone on to write for "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "Rick and Morty," and even received the sole screenwriting credit on "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."
Ultimately, then, Anderson never contributed to "Spider-Man" himself, but indirectly helped propel Loveness to a job writing a major Marvel film, and now remains linked to "Spider-Man" through the subtle "Darjeeling Limited" joke in "Across the Spider-Verse."