I did actually see Spider-Man: Homecoming today! There are a lot of things I really liked about it. I frickin love that it has a more diverse cast than any MCU movie released so far, and that you can see Jewish kids!! and Muslim kids!!! just randomly chilling out in the background like how they don’t generally on screen. And I loved Ned. That kid is awesome. He even made a fedora adorable. What?
BUT I guess…I can’t quite get over how they translated the female characters to screen. Okay, you’ve got a lovely, sweet Liz Allen, she’s perfect. You’ve got Betty Brant with… with the exact iconic Gwen Stacy look, blonde hair and black hairband, okay I’ll go with that I guess? And then you’ve got Zendaya, the perfect casting choice for Mary Jane Watson, playing someone who has the nickname MJ but is not technically Mary Jane Watson? Okay….? And the message I got from all that is that Peter’s main love interests throughout the years – Liz, Betty, Gwen and Mary Jane – are interchangable in the eyes of these filmmakers, and that really and truly bums me out. Add to that that Aunt May never really gets her due either, and…
Basically, it is a really, really good superhero movie it’s just not a very good Spider-Man movie? I mean… there’s not a single mention of Uncle Ben in there. A Spider-Man film!? That doesn’t mention Uncle Ben!? Come on!
Side note: I really and truly and utterly dread the day the MCU casts a Harry Osborn. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But I can’t help but think, if they see a whole group of women as being basically interchangable, they’ll probably see the two Goblins that way too. So that means for the second franchise in a row, we’ll get Harry Osborn – an abused drug addict and mental illness sufferer – seen as interchangable with his abuser. I really, really hope they don’t do that. But like I say, I dread it.
Okay, I’m…genuinely not getting how conflating Gwen with Betty and changing MJ’s name makes all of Peter’s love interests interchangeable. Like. Liz and MJ are actually distinct characters in this? They have basically nothing in common? Like if you wanna argue they’re not necessarily putting names in the right places, sure, I guess, but I really don’t see how this means that Norman and Harry will be the same guy if they both appear in a film.
Also, uh. We’ve gotten a whopping five movies and god knows how much else where Uncle Ben is constantly hovering over proceedings. It is really goddamn refreshing to me to get a Peter Parker who’s not constantly defined by the death and loss in his life, a Peter Parker whose takeaway from the death of a loved one has more to do with keeping people safe than agonizing on rooftops. The fact that only one person dies in this movie and it’s not Peter’s fault makes me extremely happy.
I mean I like that this is a lighter-hearted take on Spider-Man too, but I just feel like Uncle Ben should’ve been in there somewhere, not because he died, but because he was such an important part of Peter and May’s lives. I kept waiting for there to be a talk between the two of them about how they cope with everything now and it never happened. I like a Peter who’s defined by (well, not entirely, but) not exactly the fact that his father figure died, but the fact that after his father figure died he immediately set about superheroically making sure no-one would suffer the same way he did. Adding Uncle Ben into the movie wouldn’t have even meant adding in Peter’s culpability in his death, but… I just figure he should’ve been in there in some form, a photograph, a grave, what have you.
The female characters aren’t interchangable in the film as such, I know (and yeah, Liz doesn’t really borrow heavily from any of the other women, although she does have a plot function very similar to, well…. to Harry, of all people! Who she ends up marrying in the comics! Huh.) And maybe I’m reading too much into the Betty/Gwen thing (it’s not like she was a major character) but it bugged me a bit. And Michelle was a good (if slightly underused) character but…I dunno. I just feel like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me because Zendaya was such great casting, and inexplicably for no reason she’s not getting to play ‘the real’ Mary Jane after all. It’s as if back in 2002 JK Simmons had put in his performance as J Jonah Jameson and then someone dropped in to say “nah, this isn’t J Jonah Jameson, this is J Jonas Jimson. Totally different person!”
Look, the stuff with MJ on Kevin Feige’s end is bad and wrong. You’re absolutely right about that. There’s no reason this character shouldn’t be called Mary Jane Watson. What’s tripping me up, though, is how this plus the Betty/Gwen thing somehow leads to the idea that Harry will be conflated with Norman in future movies. I feel like I’ve been presented with the beginning and end of your argument and left to sort out what the middle is for myself.
As for Uncle Ben–I feel like he is in the film in some good, subtle ways. You can see him in May’s anxiety over Peter sneaking out. And I think more than anything you can see it in Peter’s refusal to let Liz’s dad die. Just sort of the…the general ethos of the film is pervaded by the fact that all these people have loved ones. It doesn’t need to literally be Uncle Ben. The hole he left is still there.
Oh, the middle part is “okay, we know this adaptation has changed and conflated quite a bit of stuff, aged down characters and the like, are we I sure they won’t go the shitty Amazing Spider-Man route and have Harry be the original, murdering-criminal-monster Green Goblin for whatever reason*” I don’t want to rag on the MCU too much, I like and love huge amounts of it, but they don’t really have a good track record when it comes to stuff like this… and I love Harry Osborn. He’s like in the top three Most Important Characters To Me Of All Time. Having him be written into the place of his abusive father again would depress the hell out of me.
(*[spoiler!] “Because we’ve already done a story where one of Peter’s classmates turns out to be the child of a supervillain” is one reason I can think of :/)
But I really hope I’m wrong. (And I really hope the next movie retcons the “Michelle” thing and Zendaya gets to be a Mary Jane for a new generation. You did say, I remember, that the actual writer wanted that…)