There are several Spiderman movies, stories, and concepts floating around on the internet over the years. However, most people are familiar with the ones directed between Sam Raimi and Jon Watts’ tenure. But there has been a version of James Cameron that almost featured Tom Cruise as the web-slinger on the silver screen during the 1980s.
While Tom Cruise as Spiderman wouldn’t have been a bad choice, somehow James Cameron’s plot got lost in the process, and Sam Raimi came on board with Toby McGuire. However, in recent years Cruise’s scrapped Spiderman almost featured in the $384M Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie.
Tom Cruise Almost Featured In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Over the years several filmmakers have tried experimenting with the character of Spider-Man, however, only a few made their way to the silver screen. Rest simply got lost in time like James Cameron’s potential Spiderman movie featuring Tom Cruise. However, just like everything finds its way back to its origin, even Cameron’s idea almost made its way into a Spiderman movie.
Following Marvel’s experimentation with an animated Spiderman movie, when the Studios came up with the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie, the creators almost featured Tom Cruise in the movie. Giving life to James Cameron’s conceptualized version of Spider-Man, filmmakers Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti, and Pete Ramsey decided to feature Cameron and Cruise in the movie.
Rodney Rothman shared,
“There was a whole period of time where Miles, rather than learning about being Spider-man from a comic book, learned it from watching the films. There was a movie version of a movie about Spider-Man in Miles’ universe about the real person Spider-Man, but it was a James Cameron-directed movie with Tom Cruise as Spidey.”
That’s how the filmmakers wanted to bring back James Cameron’s concept into the $384M Oscar-winning Marvel movie. However, it was eventually scrapped from the animated film for a reason.
The $384M Movie Creators Eventually Deleted Tom Cruise’s Scene
The filmmakers Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti, and Pete Ramsey mentioned how many possibilities and concepts they tried before delivering the final version to the public. Experimenting with lost-in-time concepts and opening the window to creative versions of Spider-Man, the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse creators tried different variations to make a whole new Marvel movie about Spiderman.
However, they eventually toned down everything for good as Rodney Rothman mentioned, “there’s a lot of stuff that we took out of the movie for good reasons”. While fans weren’t bothered about other stuff that was removed from the movie, they were certainly interested in why the creators scrapped James Cameron and Tom Cruise’s featuring audio. Rothman explained,
“The fact that it’s taken us almost three minutes to explain this idea to you, it gives you an idea of why it didn’t make it in.”
Revealing how difficult it was for people to understand the reason behind Tom Cruise and James Cameron’s featured audio in the movie, the creators decided to take it out. Realizing how most people aren’t aware of Cameron’s version of Spider-Man that never made its way into production, Rodney Rothman mentioned scrapping it out of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to avoid misunderstanding and difficulty to relate, for the audience.
Watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on Disney+.
Source: Slashfilm
