Warning: this article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse introduced a lot of new faces. Over 200 in fact, but out of all the new characters that debuted in this sequel, there was one new character that the filmmakers felt proud to include in above all.
Joaquim Dos Santos, the director of Across the Spider-Verse, spoke to Variety and claimed that he felt proud about the inclusion of Pravitr Prabhakar, aka Indian Spider-Man from Earth – 50101, or Mumbattan. According to him, he had to collaborate with multiple people to not only bring this character to life but to also make sure that the culture is respected, especially if hero is representing a specific group of people.
“Of the new characters that are in the film, I think Pav is one that, collectively, we’re the most proud of. It really spoke to the spirit of collaboration on this movie. You have to be open in this process to criticism and to good ideas from wherever they come. And that really speaks to the amount of problem solving that we had to go through to make sure that that character who’s supposed to represent a very specific part of the world felt authentic to people from that part of the world.”
Kemp Powers, who was also a director of Across the Spider-Verse, revealed in the same interview with Dos Santos, that he and the directors got an email from Indian crew members in Vancouver, who told them that Pav didn’t feel “authentic” which led to them not only inviting Pav’s voice actor, Karan Soni, but also other Indian and Indian-American writers to help rework the character, even if it means halting production.
Then the directors got an email from some Indian members of the animation team based at Sony Pictures Imageworks in Vancouver, who told them that Pavitr, the emotional anchor of the sequence, “doesn’t feel authentic. He doesn’t feel aspirational.
“We very quickly assembled a writers room of Indian and Indian American writers. We literally re-broke the entire sequence and reimagined the Pav character. And then Chris and Phil very quickly rewrote the entire script for that section so that Pav’s characterization completely changed.”
This spirit of collaboration was further emphasized by Soni in a video released by Sony Pictures, titled “How it Happened.” He revealed that he was invited to be part of the writers’ room to ensure that Mumbattan and Pav’s story is more “culturally specific.”
“I grew up in India and I just know that this character will mean so much to the people from India. I’ve gotten so many messages. They, Phil and Chris, were like just so open. They were like ‘blow it up. Like what do you want to say?’ and like, the “Chai Tea bit, all this stuff that was so culturally specific came out of that session. And it was the most collaborative experience.”
In Across the Spider-Verse, Pav was Spider-Man for only six months and was immediately part of Miguel O’Hara’s team. He’s over-confident and very charismatic. However, unlike all the other Spider-people, his canon event, which was the death of Captain Singh, was altered thanks to Miles Morales’ meddling.
Expect to see more of Pav in Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, as he joins Gwen Stacy, along with the rest of her friends, save Miles in Earth-42.
