None of these are the robot. These are real Spider-Mans. Photo: Kevin Winter
Back in August, we reported that Disney was planning to expand the Marvel presence at Disneyland’s California Adventure park with a new superhero zone called Avengers Campus. We didn’t know much at the time, beyond promises of an Ant-Man restaurant with “oversized and shrunken foods” (still sounds awesome) and some kind of jetpack-related Spider-Man ride (this news came out in the brief window when Spider-Man and MCU weren’t friends anymore, but that wasn’t going to stop Disney from putting the wall-crawler in a theme park). Now, Disney has released a teaser video for Avengers Campus that’s all about ol’ web-head.
The video (via Deadline) acts as a mini preview of a “robot stunt double for Spider-Man” that will sort of swing on a web and fly through the air over the Avengers Campus park, flipping and spinning kind of like a real Spider-Man. Deadline also shared a clip from Disney+’s The Imagineering Story about how they made the robot. You can see that one below.
They’re basically just launching a dummy into the sky in a pre-determined arc and then safely catching it before it lands on some kid and traumatizes them for life, but it does kind of move like Spidey and it’s certainly a more believable experience than having Kylo Ren walk through Galaxy’s Edge and harass children. Hey Disney, you think the Supreme Leader of the First Order has time to walk around a crappy spaceport and harass children? He’s trying to destroy the Resistance. He doesn’t have time to yell at children.
Where were we? Oh yeah, the Spider-Man robot. Avengers Campus is supposed to open in Disneyland this summer, but we just hope those jerks from the Sinister Six don’t see these videos and try to steal this robot Spidey for themselves. They’ll reprogram it to do crimes and frame the real Spider-Man! Jameson would have a field day! Mary Jane will be like “Hey Peter, we were supposed to meet for lunch and you’re doing crimes!” and the robot will be like “beep boop, I am the real Spider-Man!” Once again, the Imagineers were so focused on whether or not they could, they forgot to consider whether or not they should.
