Spider-Man 3 is an all-over-the-place campy glorious wild mess of a movie, but in the middle of it all they managed to pull off something remarkably progressive:
Everything about Gwen.
As you probably know (there’s been a lot of talk about it since the most recent Spider-movie) Gwen Stacy isn’t just a fridged female character: she’s the fridged female character. She’s iconic as the beautiful dead girl in Peter Parker’s arms, murdered partly by Norman Osborn and partly by writers and editors who didn’t know what to do with her. People know her far better as a corpse than a character. I’m not saying that her death and the fallout from it isn’t deservedly known as one of the best stories in comics, but dying young both canonised her and warped her – for literally decades she was a perfect, pure, idealised image of What Could Have Been, rather than a person in her own right. (Which she was!) Fandom often used her as a stick to beat MJ – flirty short-skirt-wearing party girl MJ – with, using disturbingly misogynist rhetoric. When Sins Past – the story where it was revealed Gwen had slept with Norman Osborn – came out, people were furious with Gwen for ‘tainting’ herself, rather than furious at Norman for sleeping with a woman young enough to be his daughter. (There was anger at the writers too, but it was mostly in the same vein.)
Anyway! Once I’d spent enough time in Spider-Man fandom to get to know both Gwen and what she became, I was watching Spider-Man 3 one night and it hit me. Okay, I knew perfectly well that she didn’t die in this one, but this Gwen, far from being perfect or pure, was everything people aren’t meant to like in a female character. She’s a model. (Shallow!) She’s only an average science student. (Stupid!) She’s – through no fault of her own – a very real threat to Peter and MJ’s relationship. (Bitch!) She’s still friendly and even flirty to Eddie Brock, even though she has no romantic interest in him. (Cocktease!) She turns down Eddie’s advances, even though he’s obsessed with her, and goes on a date with another man. (Friendzoner!) She’s quite happy to literally wrap her legs around that other man. (Slut!) She’s also a sweet, polite, nice person, but come on! The very archetype of the Woman In The Refrigerator, Gwen, just friendzoned the supervillan and sexy-danced with the superhero: really, she’s gonna survive?
But not only does she survive, absolutely nothing bad happens to her (beyond the inital accident that brought her into the story). When she realises Peter’s using her to make MJ jealous, she apologises to the other woman and walks away. Eddie becomes Venom, but (though motivated by ‘losing’ Gwen) he doesn’t actually go after her. MJ doesn’t seem overly fond of the girl her boyfriend’s been flirting with, but after Gwen apologises that subplot’s forgotten. Gwen’s father, who dies in the comics, doesn’t die this time around. MJ doesn’t die either – someone is killed to inspire Peter to be a better person, but that’s Harry, another man. Oh, and creepy Eddie is toast. (Literally.)
So yes.
Who knows if any of that was intentional? If Sam Raimi had gotten to make a Spider-Man 4, maybe he’d have killed Gwen Stacy off then, I don’t know. But I’ve always been pretty pleased with this movie because, whether by accident or design, the only Gwen who gets to be overtly sexual is also the only Gwen who gets to live.