"Well obviously ONE of us is going to have to go home and change... but WHICH ONE?"

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

The Abridged Script

FADE IN:

EXT. NEW YORK CITY

CHRIS PINE is swinging around NEW YORK as SPIDER-CHRIS!

CGI SPIDER-CHRIS

Hi folks, I’m Spider-Man! No not the Tobey Maguire one, or the Andrew Garfield one, or the Tom Holland one, but the FOURTH cinematic incarnation of Spider-Man even though the first Spider-Man movie is barely fifteen years old. But FUCK YOU if you want us to cut it out with the new Spider-Men. We’ll do as many new Spider-People as we feel like, nyah! In fact here’s another one right now, assholes!

SHAMEIK MOORE is walking around NEW YORK as PRE-SPIDER-SHAMEIK.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Woe is me! I have such a hard life. My preternatural genius got me a free ride at an awesome and prestigious school! My adoring parents give me bucketloads of support and constantly tell me how amazing I am! WHY MUST I ENDURE THIS ACCURSED EXISTENCE?!

CGI MAHERSHALA ALI

Don’t worry, I, your cool disreputable uncle, will make everything better! Come on, let’s go graffitiing together.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Thanks, Uncle Mahershala! It’s neat that you support me and encourage my gifts and have high hopes for my future! Even though that’s the exact behavior that I find suffocating when my parents do it.

They go to an abandoned SUBWAY.

CGI MAHERSHALA ALI

This is a place your dad and I used to hang out when we were your age. And it ABSOLUTELY isn’t like forty feet away from a location where I happen to be aware of dangerous experiments being performed by ruthless criminals! I’d NEVER bring my teenage nephew someplace like THAT.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

What a great place for my artwork! Here in this deserted, fenced-off underground hovel where nobody will ever ever see it.

SHAMEIK makes an elaborate GRAFFITO. But while he’s at it the traditional RADIOACTIVE SPIDER appears, then BITES a creature A MILLION TIMES ITS SIZE for NO REASON AT ALL because being irradiated apparently makes spiders STUPID AS FUCK.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Yowch! So, after all this time have we figured out a better way of writing this scene? No? Still just gonna have a science genius disregard a spider bite, huh. Oh well.

He goes home and PASSES OUT. When he wakes up he has SPIDER-POWERS!

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Urk, stickyhands powers going berserk! Accidentally sticking to my crush Hailee Steinfeld, oh no! And NOW I’m accidentally sticking to a wall outside where anybody could see me, except magically nobody notices except Hailee!

CGI HAILEE STEINFELD

Hmmm, maybe I should tell Shameik that I know exactly what’s happening to him and try to help him out before he does any more mischief to himself or others? Nah, I figure the panicking, screaming, half-naked guy has this under control.

SHAMEIK hurries back to the SUBWAY to check out the dead SPIDER. But when he gets there he senses some kind of nearby DISTURBANCE, and upon tracing it he finds a giant UNDERGROUND LAB where SPIDER-CHRIS is fighting the GREEN GOBLIN!

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

The Green fucking What Now? That thing’s a fifty-foot winged demon, bullshit it’s the Green Goblin.

CGI SPIDER-CHRIS

(spider-fighting)

Yeah well this movie just has an adolescent tendency to “jazz up” classic Spider-Man villains. Which is why the first cinematic incarnation of Scorpion has robot legs. And why our Kingpin is about the size and shape of a Sherman tank.

CGI LIEV SCHRIEBER

(waves from control room)

That’s me! Seriously I don’t know if I’m even supposed to be a human being right now.

SPIDER-CHRIS fights to try and jam a USB STICK into an ACCESS PANEL which has been installed in a RANDOM, COMPLETELY UNREACHABLE PART OF THE CEILING FOR SOME REASON. But then GOBLIN grabs him in his massive talons and rips his head clean from his body and wins forever shoves him into the ENERGY BEAM in the middle of the room, which causes it to EXPLODE!

CGI SPIDER-CHRIS

(pinned under debris)

Cough, hack... I don’t feel so good, Mr. Moore...

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

But hey, you won, right? The lab is totally destroyed, the evil experiment is over.

CGI SPIDER-CHRIS

No, this isn’t over. While crashing Liev’s software would have made him permanently give up, reducing his facilities to rubble will only set him back about a week. Take the USB stick, and get it to... uh, do we have any Avengers in this continuity?

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Unclear.

CGI SPIDER-CHRIS

Damn. You’ll have to do, then. Real piece of luck that I happen to have acquired a whole spare Spider-Man to entrust this to at this exact point of time.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Yes, except - well, if you hadn’t stopped to chat with me for a full minute in the middle of your battle, do you think maybe that would’ve made the difference between you living and dying?

CGI SPIDER-CHRIS

Oh. Almost definitely. So yeah, thanks a lot asshole.

(dies)

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Man, 2018 has NOT been a good year for Peter Parker.

EXT. GRAVEYARD

Days later, SHAMEIK visits CHRIS’S GRAVE.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

So now all of New York is mourning you, because when your corpse showed up people took it for granted that it was really dead Spider-Man and not just some loser who liked to wear Spider-Man jammies under his clothes.

But then who should show up at the grave but... SPIDER-MAN!

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Oh for crying out loud. Marvel, I know you’re bad at keeping characters dead, but this is fast even for you!

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

Actually I’m ANOTHER new Spider-Man! I’m Peter Parker from an alternate universe where it’s ten years later and I’ve become a sad divorced loser. And where I have a completely different voice for some reason.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Liev’s reality beam must have sampled Spider-Chris’s DNA and zapped you here! You should spider-train me so we can go fulfil my mission to stop Liev from destroying the multiverse.

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

Or I could just go do it myself instead of bringing along a clumsy newb who has no web shooters and has barely figured out how to stick to a wall and would almost definitely just fuck things up.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

But I promised! Which is way more important than whether or not all reality disintegrates into nothingness!

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

FIIINE. I guess all we have to do is stick a USB stick in a thing anyway, you surely can’t be incompetent enough to screw THAT up.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Uh actually I may have already smashed the USB stick while falling off a building like a putz.

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

Wow. I gave you entirely too much credit.

EXT. LIEV’S LAB

SPIDER-SHAMEIK and SPIDER-JAKE break into a LAB owned by LIEV on a mission to replace their USB STICK. They find LIEV arguing with head science lady KATHRYN HAHN.

CGI KATHRYN HAHN

Sir, the magic beam you’ve built to bring your dead family back from an alternate reality is unstable! I need a few more days to get it operational otherwise it won’t work, everybody will die, you will get nothing you want and it will be terrible on every possible level.

CGI LIEV SCHREIBER

A sharp businessman such as myself doesn’t let such petty things as guaranteed failure and death briefly delay him! Do it anyway!

He LEAVES. SPIDER-SHAMEIK and SPIDER-JAKE try to steal KATHRYN’S COMPUTER, but she catches them and starts attacking them with MECHANICAL ARMS which look disturbingly like GIANT SEX TOYS.

CGI KATHRYN HAHN

That’s right guys, I’m actually this universe’s Doctor Octopus! I was born female in this world, but somehow my life is otherwise so unaltered that I still became a supervillain with robot tentacles.

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

We need to get out of here, but I haven’t learned how to swing! Save me, Spider-Jake! How do I shot web???

CGI SPIDER-JAKE

Here, I’ll show you! Which will require me to give you one of my web shooters so we’ll only have one each and be kind of fucked over. Why did I bring you again?

They are indeed doing PRETTY BADLY against DOC KAT, but then who should show up to save them but SPIDER-HAILEE!

CGI SPIDER-HAILEE

That’s right, I ALSO am an alternate-reality spider-person! I’m from a universe where Gwen Stacy was the one that got bitten by the spider, and wound up designing a crimefighting costume almost identical to the one Peter Parker would have thought up. I guess inventing faceless angry-eye web-pattern costumes is one of the lesser spider-powers?

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

Wait, but the reality beam retrieves people based on their DNA. You and Peter Parker don’t have the same DNA, do you?

CGI SPIDER-HAILEE

Yeah you’re gonna have to ignore that DNA thing reeeaaally hard if you want to get through what’s coming.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Okay but I met you before the reality beam even went off! How did you get here before the universes got smushed together?

CGI SPIDER-HAILEE

Oh, uh, the reality beam also... sent me two weeks back in time? Sure. That makes the story function. Then I knew to go infiltrate your school because my spider-sense told me to, which is not how spider-sense works at all.

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

You were told by semi-psychic instinct that you must go to my school, but when you got there and met a whole other spider-person you didn’t think you were supposed to even talk to me or anything?

CGI HAILEE STEINFELD

I guess I must have decided to just stalk you instead. Otherwise there’s no explanation as to how I even knew to come here.

CGI SPIDER-JAKE

Okay well we have the computer now. Let’s take it to Aunt May. It may be horribly traumatic for her to suddenly be confronted with her nephew back from the dead, but without her help however would us three science geniuses put a computer file on a USB stick?

EXT. SUBURBAN HOUSE

SHAMEIK, JAKE and HAILEE go to see this universe’s AUNT MAY, who this time is played by A TODDLER ON FIRE LILY TOMLIN.

CGI LILY TOMLIN

You’ve come to the right place. Come on, I’ll show you to the super-high-tech Batcave Chris and I built.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Isn’t a big part of Peter Parker’s whole deal that he’s perpetually broke?

CGI LILY TOMLIN

Look, this movie’s suddenly decided that Aunt May is some kind of gadgeteer genius, clearly we don’t give a hot fuck about the lore.

They head down into the SPIDER-CAVE.

CGI LILY TOMLIN

And look, we’re chucking in a bunch more Spider-People, all in a clump because we’re starting to get pressed for time!

She points out BLACK-AND-WHITE NICOLAS CAGE, ANIME SCHOOLGIRL KIMIKO GLENN, and LOONEY TUNES PIG JOHN MULANEY, who were all hiding on the CEILING for NO APPARENT REASON.

CGI SPIDER-NIC

I am a Nazi-hunting Spider-Man from the 1930s, a simpler time when hating Nazis was something that Americans could actually agree on.

CGI SPIDER-KIMIKO

I am a teenage girl from future Japan who pilots a mech, which goes to show that we’re stretching the definition of “Spider-Man” really fucking thin.

CGI SPIDER-JOHN

And I’m a cartoon pig who gets barely characterized and doesn’t really do anything. Just like Nic and Kimiko, really. We’re just here to pad out the numbers and provide a handful of gags each. Oh, and to destroy any sense of reality or logic this movie ever had.

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

So here’s the plan: we go and put the USB drive into Liev’s reality beam. We then tune the beam into each of our respective alternate realities so we can all go home.

CGI HAILEE STEINFELD

That sounds like a very complex operation that rightfully we wouldn’t know how to do.

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

Yeah but instead we’ll be able to do it by, like, just typing in what reality we want or something. Anyway, then when we’re all gone Shameik will press the one big button that makes the reality beam shut down forever.

CGI HAILEE STEINFELD

But Shameik is a total amateur! I honestly don’t think he can be trusted with the task of pressing a single button!

CGI SPIDER-NIC

Yes let’s all harass Shameik about this!

CGI SPIDER-KIMIKO

No good could come of having a whole other superhero at this fight!

CGI SPIDER-JOHN

More words to that effect! We’re all just glad for any excuse to have more lines!!

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Okay, well, fuck you guys too.

(runs away)

INT. MAHERSHALA’S APARTMENT

SHAMEIK retreats to MAHERSHALA’S APARTMENT. But literally seconds after he arrives, one of LIEV’S SUPERVILLAIN HENCHMEN climbs in the window. Then he takes off his mask and it’s MAHERSHALA!

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Oh shiiit, my beloved uncle, who earlier was implied to be some kind of low-level hood, is instead a costumed supervillain with martial arts skills and robot claws! That seems like something that would take a LOT of explaining to justify, but fuck you, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.

CGI MAHERSHALA ALI

Intruder! MUST KILL!

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

OH FUCK! MUST FRANTICALLY SCRAMBLE AWAY IN FEAR FOR MY LIFE, RATHER THAN JUST IDENTIFY MYSELF AND HAVE MAHERSHALA INSTANTLY STOP TRYING TO KILL ME!

He flees back to LILY’S HOUSE. But MAHERSHALA has TRACKED HIM and now arrives with KATHRYN and SCORPION and TOMBSTONE and they all attack SPIDER-SHAMEIK and SPIDER-JAKE and SPIDER-HAILEE and SPIDER-NIC and SPIDER-KIMIKO and SPIDER-JOHN.

CGI SPIDER-HAILEE

(spider-fighting)

So I guess the MCU isn’t the only one who likes doing these huge pile-on clusterfuck fights. How can this many people even move around comfortably in a regular suburban living room?

CGI MAHERSHALA ALI

(prowler-fighting)

Hey, you’re just lucky that for whatever reason we didn’t bring Green Goblin with us and instantly curbstomp the lot of you.

SPIDER-SHAMEIK grabs the USB stick and runs for it! But then MAHERSHALA pursues him to a ROOFTOP and CATCHES HIM. So finally he does grow a brain and REVEAL HIS FACE.

CGI MAHERSHALA ALI

Oh fuck, it’s my nephew! I guess I won’t murder a terrified fleeing teenager after all. Say, is this movie ever going to confront the fact that I’m obviously a terrible terrible person?

CGI LIEV SCHREIBER

Grrr, I need Shameik dead, but Mahershala isn’t killing him for me! So I’ll whip out my gun and shoot... Mahershala apparently? Instead of my actual target?

He SHOOTS MAHERSHALA! SHAMEIK drags MAHERSHALA into an ALLEY where he DIES. And to make things worse, his cop dad BRIAN TYREE HENRY stumbles in with SITCOM TIMING and gets the WRONG IDEA.

CGI BRIAN TYREE HENRY

Oh God no, my brother was killed by being shot from a distance, and the new Spider-Man was near him afterwards, which obviously means Spider-Man killed him! CURSE YOU SPIDER-MAAAAN except I’m going to realize he’s innocent just a couple of scenes from now anyway, so what the fuck was the point of this.

INT. SHAMEIK’S DORM ROOM

SHAMEIK is ANGSTING back at his DORM, when JAKE, HAILEE and the MISCELLANEOUS OTHERS show up.

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

Sorry about your uncle, Shameik. If it makes you feel any better, we’ve all decided you’re too much of a useless fuckup to bring to the climax, so we’re gonna tie you up and abandon you now.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Come on, give me a chance! I’m sure I’ll get the hang of my weird extraneous invisibility and electro-hands powers any minute now.

CGI JAKE JOHNSON

Sorry buddy, you’re just not in our league. I mean, when we swing away from here, there’s gonna be a shot where we clearly web off of the goddamn sky. Do you have any idea how much practice that takes?

They take the USB STICK and WEB SHAMEIK UP and LEAVE.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Damnit! I guess they have a point though. I can’t really expect to get proficient in my powers without a lot of time and experimentation and training and-

CGI BRIAN TYREE HENRY

(showing up)

What if instead you heard one inspirational speech?

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

(instantly leveling up)

SUDDENLY I AM AN EXPERT AT EVERYTHING EVER!!!

He returns to the SPIDER-CAVE where LILY is waiting for him with some WEB SHOOTERS.

CGI SHAMEIK MOORE

Awesome! Now, the others will be starting the climax right about now, I’d better get there as fast as possible!

(pause)

Riiiight after I waste a quick half hour coloring in my costume.

He fancies up his OUTFIT and then swings over to the CLIMAX, somehow not passing out from the fumes coming from his MASK COVERED IN STILL-WET SPRAYPAINT.

INT. LIEV’S MIRACULOUSLY UN-EXPLODED EXPERIMENT ROOM

LIEV and KATHRYN turn the repaired REALITY BEAM on.

CGI KATHRYN HAHN

Awesome, I can’t wait to do this incredibly dangerous thing which might rip all reality apart!

CGI LIEV SCHREIBER

Weren’t you the one who said this entire experiment was a bad idea?

CGI KATHRYN HAHN

That was before my big reveal. Now that the audience knows I’m evil, my “responsible” character trait has vanished in a puff of smoke.

Then SPIDER-JAKE, SPIDER-HAILEE, SPIDER-NIC, SPIDER-KIMIKO and SPIDER-JOHN break in.

CGI LIEV SCHREIBER

Grrr, I will crush that Spider-Man! And then that other Spider-Man!! And all the Spider-Men!!! TIL I’M THE SPIIIIIDER-MAAAAAAAAN

He sends in his ever-present collection of GOONS. The SPIDER-FORCE fight KATHRYN and SCORPION and TOMBSTONE, while the REALITY BEAM starts spitting out CHUNKS of OTHER UNIVERSES.

CGI SPIDER-JAKE

Oh wow, would you look at all these random objects floating around in this vast space with fluctuating gravity! Do you know what this means?

CGI SPIDER-HAILEE

That the animators have come up with a way to throw out setting, spatial logic and physics, and can just do whatever incoherent action beats they feel like in almost any order?

CGI SPIDER-JAKE

Exactly! The Doctor Strange gambit!

The fight predictably starts to go against our heroes, until SPIDER-SHAMEIK predictably shows up in the nick of time, and then they all start predictably winning.

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

All right, we’ve gotten the USB stick in place! Now let’s send you guys back home. Hopefully the multiverse won’t self-destruct in the time it takes for everybody to have a tearful farewell.

CGI SPIDER-NIC

Let’s hope this parting is emotional...

(goes through beam)

CGI SPIDER-JOHN

...even though we’ve seriously given the audience no reason...

(goes through beam)

CGI SPIDER-KIMIKO

...to give a flying fuck about us!

(goes through beam)

Then HAILEE and JAKE also leave. SHAMEIK goes to press the button that PERMANENTLY STOPS THE BEAM, when LIEV burst in to FIGHT HIM.

CGI LIEV SCHREIBER

Not so fast, Shameik! It’s time for the big climactic fight: a clumsy teenager versus an overweight businessman!

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

Look dude, I have superhuman strength and reflexes, so realistically there’s no way-

(ass kicked every color of the rainbow)

CGI LIEV SCHREIBER

Ha! And now I’ll deliver the final blow, a massive ground pound which earlier in the movie straight-up killed a guy!

(slams Shameik)

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

Aha, but the strategy that HE didn’t think of was to just be inexplicably unharmed!

SPIDER-SHAMEIK throws LIEV at the BUTTON, and then the BEAM is destroyed and the room’s PHYSICS turns back to normal. At which point you’d think LIEV would plummet from the ceiling to the floor a hundred feet below and instantly die, but the scene cuts away so he’s FINE somehow.

CGI SPIDER-SHAMEIK

And so that’s our story! And the moral is to have faith in yourself, because the power to be Spider-Man is in all of us. That’s right, kids, anybody can be Spider-Man!

(pause)

Oh wait, the only people in this movie who were Spider-Man were the ones who got superhuman powers from a radioactive spider bite. So yeah, I guess unless that happens you absolutely can’t be Spider-Man. Sorry to get your hopes up.

END.

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