Gwen: Peter… I’m dying. I want you to promise me… that you won’t jump into bed with someone as soon as I’m gone.
Peter: I promise, Gwen. I promise.
Mary Jane: But promises you can’t keep are the best kind.
Peter: …bazinga.
One of the things that really bugged me about ASM was that none of the stuff had anything to do with the other stuff. In Raimi’s Spider-Man, sure, they had to get Uncle Ben’s death origin stuff out of the way, but that led in to Norman Osborn as a father figure and the good son/bad son feud between Peter and Harry. Even the Peter/MJ romance didn’t just humanize Peter, it showed how Peter was beating Harry at his own game and thus a more desirable ‘son’ for Norman.
Then you watch ASM and you have the mystery of the dead parents, which has nothing to do with Peter’s hunt for his uncle’s killer, which has nothing to do with the Lizard (I guess they’re both outcasts… even though even before becoming Spider-Man, Peter is getting hit on by the hottest blonde in school… and Curt Connors himself seems to have a cushy job at a giant corporation… for God’s sake, he works with Emma Stone all day!). Oh, and none of that has much to go with Denis Leary or Emma Stone either. It’s all just… stuff. There’s no clear theme.
So, I had a long day at work and here’s a rough outline of how to fix that.
Peter: What’s this? My dad’s old suitcase?
Uncle Ben: Oh yeah. Your father gave that to me before he died. The last thing he said to me before he died was that I keep it safe. It was his dying wish. (beat) I forgot all about it!
Peter: Hmmm… a newspaper clipping hidden inside! It’s about my father and someone named Curt Connors! This is brand-new information!
Audience: Uh, if it’s from a NEWSPAPER, then it’s a matter of public record.
Peter: Maybe if I search for this on Bing, I might find some answers!
Audience: Seriously? That’s what leads to this major revelation of your dead father’s life? An internet search?
Peter: Well! My father used to work for Oscorp!
Audience: ALL THAT TOOK WAS A SEARCH ON THE INTERNET?
Peter: Well, to be fair, I was using Google before, like a normal person. Bing, that makes all the difference.
Spider-Man and His Women by Elena Casagrande
I would retitle this as “awesome ladies and that one dude whom all of them like for some strange reason,” but yes. Also, look! People remember Deb, Betty and Liz exist!
Lol at Black Cat. Eye that ass, gurl!
| — |
Emma Stone on how her Gwen Stacy differs from Kirsten Dunst’s Mary-Jane Watson. I’m sorry, you weren’t angry at Emma Stone a minute ago, were you? |
[Content note: discussion of sexism, misogynistic slurs.]
I understand that this is a joke and ‘haha hilarious!’
but yeah no
I’m really sick of modern interpretations pitting MJ and Gwen as enemies and usually slut-shaming MJ to do it! It doesn’t help that comics have canonized Gwen who was not a saint (now I love Gwen! But she wasn’t the perfect pure princess that comics like to pretend she was and that’s a-okay). And people forget that MJ and Gwen were actually friends—similar to the famous ‘Betty/Veronica/Archie’ triangle, outside of Archie, Betty and Veronica were friends too!. And it’s awful how their relationship is always in relation to Peter’s rather than their relationship to each other as friends.
Basically what I’m saying is that I like Emma Stone but oh, honey no.
TW: discussion of sexism
All of this. The “ha ha Gwen is Peter’s True Love and Mary Jane is a skank” jokes continue the long pattern of forcing Gwen and Mary Jane into sexist Virgin/Whore archetypes. Gwen is “pure” and saintly and thus the only one “worthy” of Peter (at least until the “Sins Past” controversy opened a whole new can of misogyny) and Mary Jane is called a skank and demeaned because she was a “party girl” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), a model (oh no, lingerie! the horror!), and for a long time didn’t want to be tied down to any one guy (or, if we’re just going by the Raimi movies, kissed an ex-boyfriend in a moment of vulnerability. Which was of course AFTER PETER KISSED GWEN IN FRONT OF HER AND HALF OF NYC). ALL OF THAT IS SEXIST AND GROSS. /broken caps
So yeah. The “Gwen and MJ are enemies and must put each other down” or “only one of them is worthy of Peter’s cock” memes suck and I’m so not looking forward to the misogyny and shipping wars when this movie comes out.
I was wondering if I should say anything about this clip, but ronchronchronch and calicobonnet have it covered.
Look, regardless of whether you ship Peter with Gwen or MJ — or, for that matter, Felicia, Betty, Carlie, Carol, Norah, Deb, Cissy Ironwood … — if you need to put down the other female love interests to make the case for your ship then you are Doing It Wrong.
YES. THANK YOU. All these people on my dash (okay, like three people) keep reblogging this, like “lol, isn’t sexism and slut-shaming funny?” Well, NO. No, it is not.
Gwen Stacy stans have actually fostered in me a flaming dislike of the character. Not even stans; people who are just so hung up on Mary Jane not being good enough for Peter that they’re willing to literally make a deal with the devil, but not to get Peter and Gwen together, but just to get Peter together with someone like Gwen. It’s like Gwen’s the female Hal Jordan for over-nostalgic Silver Age fanboys.
After directing Superman XXX: A Porn Parody, porn director/comic fanboy Axel Braun (a man who must have the most interesting business cards ever) set his sights on Spider-Man, to create something that’s somewhere between fan film and sex tape. It turns out Grant Morrison was wrong; when geeks get power, you don’t get Hitler, you get a movie where Spider-Man bones the Black Widow. To quote Braun: “I want to recreate the look and feel of the comics — I want to capture their spirit. Listen, I am a fanboy, too! I feel obligated to give them these details. I put Luthor in the outfit from the Super Friends because the fanboy side of me wants to see these things. So far, the fans have embraced what we’re trying to do, and that makes me feel good.”
But how does the finished product stack up? Is it Spider-Man 2, with screwing, or Spider-Man 3, with screwing? Let’s watch and find out, for purely critical and artistic reasons.
