Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized i fricking love her, spider-man, spiderman, stuff wot i posted elsewhere, ursula ditkovich 0 Comments

An Ursula Ditkovich appreciation post

I enjoy talking about the non-superpowered ladies of superhero films, a lot. Maybe you’ve noticed.

Anyway, Ursula- she’s actually kinda my favourite thing about Spider-Man 2. (It doesn’t hurt that Mageina Tovah is cute as a button.) I think she’s sort of the audience surrogate throughout the film, picking Peter up when he’s down. I read so many reviews of that film saying the ‘cake scene’ was pointless, but I think it was probably one of the most important scenes in the whole film: people like Ursula are what Peter’s fighting for. There are other scenes, of course, where we get to see why Peter puts his life on the line to save these people- like the train scene- but with Ursula, we get to put a name to a face.

And I think, as well as being a sort of symbol, Ursula’s a good character in her own right too- in a way, she’s almost a female version of who Peter was before he got superpowers. She’s got a crush on the person next door but is too afraid to show it, she’s clumsy and she’s shy. Mageina Tovah described her as “just a very sweet person who wants to take care of people and fix people”. (And that’s the sort of character I always like, so I suppose that’s the reason she’s stuck in my mind all these years.)

But, interestingly, those aforementioned characteristics aren’t her only characteristics- you ever noticed, she’s not in the least bit jealous of MJ, even though MJ’s the actual girlfriend of the man she likes? She tells Peter to call her and is delighted when he does. (I wish Ursula and MJ had had a scene together.) And– her adoration of Peter doesn’t extend to when he starts yelling at her father. She’s the one who says how uncool that is, a tiny little character thing I always appreciated. I never really liked that the last we ever see of Ursula, Peter’s taking advantage of her good nature, being all flirty with her and making her bring him stuff. I always wonder what happened after that, to the other girl next door…but I guess we’ll never know. I like to think she had a nice life fixing people.

And, of course, she’s named after Steve Ditko. He really couldn’t have asked for a better tribute.