spider-man trilogy meme > favourite characters (2/5)
> mary jane watson
raimispidey
[via pamivy]
I love Harry to bits, I honestly do, and I think over the next two movies he matured quite a bit…
…but dude, you don’t get to decide how your girlfriend dresses. The shit MJ had to put up with, man.
Sam Raimi’s version of Mary Jane Watson was actually a mixture of MJ’s and Gwen Stacy’s personality and traits. As a nod to that, in the first movie Kirsten is wearing a green coat with a purple blouse underneath, the color scheme of Gwen’s famous “death outfit” and a black headband and chunky leather boots, also trademarks of Gwen’s.
#WHAT GWEN STACY PERSONALITY TRAITS #ALL I REMEMBER IS #’Save me Spider-Man! Saaaave meee!’ #granted she had a few moments here and there but you know she was just there to be a damsel in distress (tags via nerdyspiderman)
hmm. we must have watched different movies.
Ah yes, just there to be a damsel in distress – here is what you forgot:
- Her insecurity over her class status. This forms a massive part of her character in Spider-Man 1 – she won’t even tell her rich boyfriend she’s working as a waitress! (Also, mad props to the franchise for actually dealing with classism and remembering Peter, May and MJ are poor.)
- Her putting on a party-girl mask to hide her real feelings (as seen twice in the first Spider-Man movie: first she stands on the street crying only to change moods instantly when her friends show up, secondly she is having a serious conversation with Peter but changes to the ‘adoring girlfriend’ role as soon as Flash arrives.
- She’s a realistically portrayed abuse victim – because of the abuse, she’s insecure and clingy and can’t take criticism, and the movies makes it clear that that’s ok, and I think that’s massively important.
- She achieves everything she sets out to do by herself. She wants to be an actress, so she becomes one. And her career ups and downs, and her dreams, are portrayed as just as important as Peter’s.
- She demands respect from Peter – see: the ending of Spider-Man 2. Hell, she demands respect from everyone. She leaves Harry because she feels he failed to defend her when his father called her a gold-digger. (Hey, it’s the classism thing again!)
- In the first movie, despite being Flash’s girlfriend and very clearly one of the popular kids, she still stands up for Peter more than once. (The first time we see her do anything, it’s demand that the bus driver stop for Peter despite the groans of her fellow students.) She has a moral backbone, in other words.
- Her whole arc in Spider-Man 1 is her realising it’s okay to be herself ‘more than I could be…I’m just me and that’s ok’. This is why she chooses Peter, out of all the men in her life: he’s the only one she feels she can be herself around.
- Peter even says at the beginning of Spider-Man 1 that this story is about her?!
She’s fascinating, complex and clearly written by people who respected her – it’s so, so frustrating to see fandom constantly reduce her to ‘damsel in distress’ or worse.
so in iron man 2
a little boy in an iron man helmet tries to shoot one of the rampaging suits with his lil toy flight stabilizers
in spider-man 2
a little boy puts on his spiderman suit and stands up against the rhino
that’s great for all the little boys in the theater, but you know what I want?
i want a little girl to help the heroes
i want a six-year old redhead to kick nat’s gun to her
i want a twelve-year old with braces and a lisp to shake cap back to consciousness
i want a nine-year old latina girl to take clint by the hand and walk him down unfamiliar streets back to the main fight
i want a sixteen-year old black girl to kick an enemy in the back of the knees to save sam wilson
because girls are sitting in that audience too
and they deserve to see that
Try Spider-Man 2 (the other one). No, really!
Peter Parker sans spider-powers runs into a burning building to save a little Asian girl. As soon as Peter gets into trouble, the little girl tries to pull him to safety. Some combination of the two of them gets him out of the fire. (Here’s the scene!)
In the very next scene, Peter is full of angst that he wasn’t able to save everyone in the fire, and is staring gloomily out of his window. Ursula, the shy and awkward daughter of the building’s landlord, knocks on his door and offers him some chocolate cake. Peter accepts, they eat together, that’s…pretty much it. But after that, his mood seems to improve.
If you’re wondering what those two scenes have in common, it’s that they were promptly written off as silly or unnecessary. (How can a small child help pull a grown man to safety? Why does the action stop for five minutes while Peter talks to some ugly girl?) But in 2004 I was, like the OP says, the girl sitting in the audience, and I felt a) utterly delighted and b) like I belonged. So if someone could do that for today’s girls, that’d be great.
