It’s been more or less confirmed now that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will use “The Death Of Gwen Stacy” as its storyline, and it has been confirmed that Shailene Woodley is going to play Mary Jane. As is par for the course when a woman is cast in a well-known role, her Tumblr tag and discussion elsewhere is full of “But she’s just not pretty enough!”, as well as what I’m starting to call the “Oh my god, only one woman per franchise!” style of misogyny…
But enough of that. I wonder how they’re going to do it. As a completely wild guess, I’d say Peter will meet MJ first as Harry’s girlfriend, meet Norman through Harry, and be having quite a nice time (sucker!) with his new friends when the inevitable happens. MJ will break up with Harry -although he probably won’t have a drug problem in this one- and go to comfort Peter after Gwen’s death, setting things up for their romance in the second sequel.
I’ll also bet my entire collection of hats that they’ll go the Ultimate Spider-Man route with the Green Goblin and have him just transform into a huge green demon thing, rather than attempting to do something new with a costume that probably won’t ever not look silly on the big screen…
Anyway, poor Gwen- we just met her and there’s already plans for her death. Ironically, the thing that saddens me most about that is the fact that she has a family in this one- a still-living mother and some kid brothers. (Whose addition I really love, incidentally.) They’ll barely be over the death of their father before their sister goes too. I don’t think this is going to be a fun movie!
And, of course, Gwen’s only seventeen in this one. I hope they set the sequel a good few years after the first movie, because I don’t think many people will be able to handle a summer blockbuster centering around the brutal killing of a teenage girl…
(Also on the topic of Gwen’s role in the Spider-Man movies: This.)
