And this is why I resisted posting the months worth of clickbait as much as possible. Marvel has announced today that they have cast the new Spider-Man and have selected the next Spider-Director.
Actor Tom Holland is your new Peter Parker. Jon Watts will be your next Spider-Director.
It’s officially official now. What do you think, Crawlspacers?
From Marvel.com:
Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios are proud to announce that after a full worldwide casting search, Tom Holland will play Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the next Spider-Man film, in theaters in IMAX and 3D on July 28, 2017. The film will be directed by Jon Watts, director of “Cop Car,” the upcoming thriller that made its debut earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
Marvel and Sony Pictures, and producers Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal conducted an extensive search for both the actor and the director. The studios and producers were impressed by Holland’s performances in “The Impossible,” “Wolf Hall,” and the upcoming “In the Heart of the Sea,” and by a series of complex screen tests. Following Marvel’s tradition of working with the brightest next wave of directors, Watts also went through multiple meetings with Feige, Pascal, and the studio, before winning the job.
Commenting on the announcement, Tom Rothman, Sony Pictures Motion Pictures Group Chairman, said, “It’s a big day here at Sony. Kevin, Amy and their teams have done an incredible job. The Marvel process is very thorough, and that’s why their results are so outstanding. I’m confident Spider-Man will be no exception. I’ve worked with a number of up-and-coming directors who have gone on to be superstars and believe that Jon is just such an outstanding talent. For Spidey himself, we saw many terrific young actors, but Tom’s screen tests were special. All in all, we are off to a roaring start.”
Feige commented, “As with James Gunn, Joss Whedon, and the Russo brothers, we love finding new and exciting voices to bring these characters to life. We spent a lot of time with Jon and find his take and work inspiring.”
Pascal added, “Sony, Marvel, Kevin and I all knew that for Peter Parker, we had to find a vibrant, talented young actor capable of embodying one of the most well-known characters in the world. With Tom, we’ve found the perfect actor to bring Spider-Man’s story into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”
Sony Pictures will finance and release worldwide the next installment of the $4 billion Spider-Man franchise on July 28, 2017, in a film co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the Web-Slinger.
UPDATES below the fold!
Your New Spider-Man Is a…Fresh-Faced White Dude. Great.
…
When Marvel and Sony announced Spider-Man’s inclusion in the Marvel Cinematic Universe earlier this year, fans got excited that we could see a fresh take on the character, rather than just another fresh-faced white dude. (No offense to fresh-faced white dudes.) In particular, the studio had a chance to shift gears and make the new cinematic Spider-Man not Peter Parker, but Miles Morales—the half-black, half-Latino teenager who wears the Spidey suit in the Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man. The prospect of that was virtually nil (though Morales is taking over as the web-slinger in the comics), but there was still a shot that Peter Parker could be re-imagined.
By “fans got excited” she means “my friends on Gawker and Tumblr.”
2:33 PM CST – Reaction from Forbes.com’s Scott Mendelson:
Marvel’s New Spider-Man Is Our Third White Peter Parker In 15 Years…
Our long national nightmare is over, as Marvel and Sony Pictures have finally cast their all-new Peter Parker in their all-new Spider-Man movie. And the winner is Tom Holland. He will be playing Spider-Man first in a glorified cameo for Captain America: Civil War and then again in a stand-alone Spider-Man movie that is due to be released on July 28th, 2017 and directed by Jon Watts (Clown, the Kevin Bacon thriller Cop Car). He will be following in the footsteps of Toby Maguire who played the role in the three Sam Raimi films from 2002 to 2007 and Andrew Garfield who played the character in Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 and Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. When Civil War opens next May, he will be the third actor to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man in a live action film franchise in 15 years. He will also be the third white guy to play the role in 15 years. And yeah, that is ever-so-slightly disappointing.
…
There was talk back in February when Marvel and Sony came to their arrangements that our third Spidey would be a minority actor and/or a minority actor playing Miles Morales. In the end Marvel, Walt Disney and Sony went with the traditional choice, even casting yet another British actor as an American superhero. But to be fair to all parties, it was unlikely that Disney and Marvel would pass on the opportunity to put their personal mark on their most iconic character in their most well-known variation. Racial politics aside, it would be like Joel Schumacher bringing on Robin in Batman Forever but going with Tim Drake the first time out. For most people, Robin is still Dick Grayson, young orphaned circus acrobat turned Batman’s junior partner, as opposed to Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and/or Damien Wayne. The first Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man was always going to be Peter Parker, at least initially.
By “there was talk,” he means “from people not involved with production.” More:
And if Hollywood is going to insist on rebooting the same franchises over and over again, then they really need to make more of an effort to make them at least try to update these decades-old stories beyond the demographic realities (or presumptions) of their Eisenhower/Kennedy-era (or even Roosevelt-era) origins. The young audience that won’t care as much that this is the third bloody “new” Spider-Man movie being made also won’t care as much if the new Peter Parker isn’t a white kid. And the audiences old enough (or racist enough regardless of age) to care about such a thing probably wouldn’t have lined up for a third Spider-Man “part 1” anyway. And the (not necessarily racist) die hard fans who go crazy at any perceived change in the dogma doesn’t represent the fanbase that Marvel is chasing, but I digress. Yes, I too read that stuff about how Peter Parker couldn’t be a minority (or gay) in the movies from back in 2011, but rules (like promises) are made to be broken.
Note that none of this focuses on what should be the most important: the character. No, it just focuses on “this has to happen for great justice, and because reasons! Character be damned!”
2:48 PM CST – Time.com’s reaction was more muted, and perhaps misinformed:
The casting decision comes just a day after Marvel Comics announced that Miles Morales, not Peter Parker, would be the one and only Spider-Man in the all-new Marvel Universe this fall. Morales, unlike Parker, is black and Hispanic.
I’ve seen this a lot in the non-comics focused press lately. They apparently took the Bendis/Miles Morales from earlier this week to mean there wouldn’t be a Peter Parker after Secret Wars – just a Miles as Spider-Man. Marvel does leak this spoiler stuff all over the press (while admonishing Rich Johnston at BleedingCool.com for publishing potential spoilers) so maybe they know something we don’t.
3:31 PM CST – Yet more butthurt from Forbes.com, who is really exploring the space on butthurt today. It’s like cowbell, but with butthurt instead. From Forbes.com’s Monika Bartyzel:
After a long journey to try and find the magic that once made Spider-Man a safe box-office bet and not an emblem of box office disappointment, Marvel has tapped their director and star for the latest incarnation of Peter Parker. Forget any chance that Marvel might have used the increasing demand for diversity to jumpstart their ailing superhero. Indie director Jon Watts (whose recent thriller Cop Car debuted at Sundance this year) will helm the film, and actor Tom Holland (How I Live Now) will play the titular hero.
The announcement comes after news hit that Miles Morales, the first black and Latino character to be Spider-Man, was officially replacing Peter Parker in the Spider-Man comics. As The Independent noted, the announcement raises hopes that Morales “may get his big screen debut soon.” Of course, if Watts and Holland’s Spider-Man manages to break the webbed superhero out of his big-screen rut in 2017, “soon” still means — at the very least — six to ten years from now. Rumors say Marvel is hoping for a three or four film franchise for Holland’s Parker, which will certainly become a reality if the first film is a success. Marvel does not give their superheroes a vacation when they’re bringing in the money, and they’re not going to have two Spider-Men compete with each other.
Yet again we see this misconception (or forehand knowledge that we’re not privy to) that Miles is “replacing” Peter Parker after Secret Wars. It smells like wishful thinking and not really understanding Marvel’s press release earlier this week about Miles Morales, and also not understanding the difference between ‘Ultimate Marvel’ and ‘Real Marvel.’ Heh.
Bartyzel’s meltdown later extends into Patty Jenkins being replaced on the second Thor film.
5:06 PM CST – Tech Times’s J.E. Reich says you should be as angry as they are over white Spidey, damnit!
What did all of these actors have in common? They are all white. To our, or anyone’s knowledge, no person of color was even considered for the role. Despite the fact that there is no particular reason that enforces Peter Parker’s trend toward whiteness, a black, Latino, or Asian characterization is apparently unacceptable. And with an e-mail leak earlier this week between Marvel and Sony that revealed the “mandatory character traits” Peter Parker must have in the franchise — hetero, cis, and Caucasian — it’s clear that both corporations support this philosophy.
Although Marvel has traditionally been framed as more progressive than DC when it comes to the POC/LGBT/female representation/identity politics department, it more or less only extends to their comics sector, with a few exceptions. Inasmuch, the reluctance to entertain the idea of a POC Spider-Man projected onto the silver screen indicates a larger issue, one that breaks the confines of celluloid frames and outpaces the whirl of manic projectors, throttling into the real world: the societal problem of whitewashing our narratives.
…
But the latter — in the context of the last Spider-Man reboot and the latest one — is more difficult to detect. It relies on laziness and a strange sense of comfort: the default of whiteness. It hankers on a parasitic symbiosis and a willful blindness that is inherent to the American racial hierarchy, that whiteness is intrinsically the norm. It feeds off a lack of information and the reluctance to discuss race in any other context than within the realm of a “postracial society,” which has been proven time and time again is only a myth. This benign racism thrives when we refuse to even entertain the notion of racial justice, inequality, and non-representation, even in something as seemingly insipid as who is cast in a superhero movie.
This is not to say that Holland is undeserving of the role of Peter Parker. I wish him luck and hope he does a great job; Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, so I’ll root for him. Despite this, I still mourn for what could have been: a Spider-Man who represents a concept of justice for all, even if, as a POC, he is not always granted it – a hero to inspire us to do better.
Note how the writer says Spidey is his “favorite” hero – then goes on to say he just can’t be white anymore because “justice for all.” Odd, but as someone who actually *does* love Spidey as his favorite character, Spidey’s never been about “justice for all.” He’s always been about “responsibility.”
Wednesday, 11:35 AM CST – Forbes goes for the trifecta of butthurt with a ‘piece’ by Dorothy Pomerantz:
But I would argue that if there was ever a time to take a risk, it’s with Spider-Man. As I said, this is our third Spider-Man in 15 years. That alone is ridiculous. If the new movie turns out to be an origin story (Holland will play Peter Parker as a high school kid) it will be the third time we’ve seen the Spider-Man origin story in less than 20 years. Even by Hollywood’s reboot-crazy standards that’s pretty extreme. It’s not like a new generation has come along since Andrew Garfield played Spider-Man. Kids who saw the last Amazing Spider-Man movie when they were 10 will only be 13 when the new Spider-Man movie comes out.
If the studios are going to view Spider-Man as a character who can be constantly re-invented, why not take a chance with him? If they had gone with an ethnic or gay Spider-Man and it hadn’t worked out, they could have easily rebooted the franchise yet again in 2020.
Note that last bit, folks. That’s a taste of what’s to come. Not just making Spider-Man black – but also making him gay, too. Because to journalists who haven’t read the comics or followed the character, there is a great pressing need for great social justice that can only be worked through Spider-Man.
12:50 PM CST – Quartz.com has a piece up from Adam Epstein entitled “Eight actors who should have been cast as the new Spider-Man.” All eight are black. What makes this funny is that the author states:
Spider-Man, as far as we know, is not a real person, and thus shouldn’t have to be anything.
I will go ahead and confirm it for Adam Epstein: Spider-Man’s not a real person. Neither is Peter Parker; he’s a fictional white guy from Queens.
Wednesday, 3:55 PM CST – Vox.com finally gets around to posting their own butthurt. Vox is a site created by Ezra Klein to ‘Voxsplain’ things (i.e. “dumb it down and usually get it wrong”) to people who can’t be bothered to read anything lengthy. They’re often mocked on Twitter for getting facts completely wrong, to the point of sometimes posting charts that make the opposite point that they try to make themselves.
In 2015, it’s pretty hard to accept the idea that Parker must remain white and straight simply because he’s always been white and straight. But if you think of the character as a piece of intellectual property worth millions of dollars, Marvel and Sony’s contract takes on a different tone.
Well no, in 2015 it’s really not hard to accept the idea that Peter Parker is a white, straight guy. I’ve accepted that Peter Parker was a white, straight guy since 1975. That makes it pretty easy to accept in 2015, too.
Wednesday, 4:03 PM – E! Online comments on the manufactured (my word, not theirs) outrage over white Spidey. They don’t take a side in the article so much as just post a lot of socially butthurt tweets.
One good thing to come from this is that with most of these articles, including the multiple butthurt articles at Forbes.com, the people writing these have largely been taken to task in the comments section by their readers. And rightfully so. It hasn’t been every article I’ve seen but on a lot of them. There’s been a lot of pushback to the pushback. Heh!
Wednesday, 4:24 PM CST – While I have talked about major news outlets getting last week’s Bendis/Miles press release from Marvel completely wrong, the New York Post gets it very right, and I feel like I have to point that out for doing the job major news outlets should do.
Unlike with, say, Superman or Daredevil, a more racially diverse alternative to Peter Parker/Spider-Man does exist in print.
He’s Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Latino teenager who first appeared in 2011. The catch is, Miles existed in Marvel’s so-called Ultimate Universe, part of Ultimate Marvel, a publishing imprint for characters and stories that existed outside of mainstream continuity.
In other words, those adventures weren’t considered canon by the hard-core fanboys.
All that changed on Tuesday, however, when Marvel announced that Morales will be brought into its mainstream universe and will headline a new title simply called “Spider-Man.” Morales is now just as much Spider-Man as Peter Parker.
…
And when Tom Holland as Spider-Man does finally show up in a movie, reportedly first in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War,” it will be the first time the character has been controlled by Marvel.
Earlier this year, the studio cut a deal with Sony, which had licensed the rights to Spidey and released five movies, to share the character. Marvel execs must have been cringing while watching Sony’s wretched, franchise-killing “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” dreaming of what they’d do differently if they ever got the chance.
Well, now they have, and they no doubt feel they need to get Peter Parker right, and do him the true Marvel way, before they could possibly branch out into other Spider-Men.
Morales might one day get his chance — just not anytime soon, it appears.
That’s incredibly fair, even-handed and factually accurate, and it also makes the distinction between Peter, Miles and 616 and ‘Ultimate’ Marvel – something most media outlets who misinterpreted last week’s press release failed to do.
More updates as they come!
—George Berryman!
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Pandora
Amazon Music
iHeartRadio
Podbean
Amazon Alexa
Player.fm
Listen Notes
Stitcher
“But we are also not gonna complain too loudly about a Tibetan character becoming a white person.”
I actually went off about that, but not here on Crawlspace. It was on my FB page.
Spider-Man’s skin colour isn’t important except apparently merely changing his skin colour= ‘a fresh take on the character’. Because it is a-okay to say white males are interchangeable. If they wrote a non-white Peter Parker the exact same way they wrote a white one, say Garfield’s why do I get the feeling that’d still be regarded as fresh and new somehow.
Also no offence to fresh faced white dudes as I clearly insult them by equating them to all be the same.
The studio had the chance to not make Spider-Man Peter Parker but Miles Morales, a less well known, less popular, less financially and creatively viable derivative character that fewer people care about and had zero influence on the decades old Marvel Universe that the movies are basing themselves upon. How dare they not go with him even though they made it clear they weren’t doing that in the very first press release. Instead we’re stuck with Peter Parker a character who is one of the 3 most iconic superheroes of all time who was the heart of the Marvel universe and has had relationships with most of it’s characters. Fuck them for doing that amirite.
Yep. This is our 3rd white (live action) Peter Parker in 15 years. In other news here is our ninth white Bruce Wayne in 77 years.
Yes. Casting a an actor to play a character who looks like the character is lazy. Of course. It’s as lazy as casting Cumberbach as Dr. Strange.
And Spider-Man has and always will represent the concept of justice for all. He’s about responsibility, but within that comes the idea that he doesn’t just defend one group of people he helps out anyone who is in trouble if he can. And for someone who claims he is a big fan of Spider-Man apparently he doesn’t know much about the character because he’d observe Spider-Man was denied justice routinely in the 1960s and beyond despite being white.
Why precisely is Spider-Man the character to risk these changes with? He is the most financially profitable hero of all time so if anything NOT changing a lot about him would be the smart thing to do. It’s smarter to change something with a LESSER known hero where the win can be big and if it doesn’t pan out nothing too bad has happened. Not to mention you make Spider-Man gay and suddenly his love interests who’re important to his mythos need to be male. So we’re down on female representation and we’re also fucking up our objectives of adapting the source material. Which is the point. Which has been the MCU’s methodology for years now and it’s clearly worked.
Also if the social justice warrior within the person who cast 8 black actors as Spider-Man was really crying out, why are all 8 black and none of them are of other ethnicities
“If Miles Morales ever makes it to the big screen (that would require a certain contract to be nullified), it really should be Glover who plays him. Though he’s 31, Glover can play younger. He actually inspired Morales’ writers to create the character after he donned Spider-Man pajamas on Community—a reference to Glover’s failed attempt to secure an audition for The Amazing Spider-Man. The role eventually went to Andrew Garfield, and look where we are now.”
Yeah, Sony rebooted in the first place, wanted to do spin-offs and making a shitty Spider-Man movie landed us where we are now (on the cusp of getting a probably better Spider-Man movie part of the MCU where Spider-Man probably belongs). But it was actually all because they didn’t cast Donald Glover back in the day. Okay…
“Morales is now just as much Spider-Man as Peter Parker.”
Not…not really. Everything that makes Spider-Man what he is was created through Peter Parker’s character. Miles deserves respect but he can be just as much Spider-Man as Peter Parker when he accomplishes all the things Peter has.
Also everyone seems to loooooooove Daredevil, who was also white. Ah, but he needed to be white because…he was…Catholic???????? Er…No but seriously, people haven’t been bemoaning the ‘new’ white Kingpin we got on Netflix or how in that show we got 2 black men (one who sold women into sex slavery and the other who got killed), one woman (I believe she was of Spanish decent) who also died and then a few Japanese people who were evil ninjas. But we love Daredevil. Daredevil is great. SJWs aren’t ripping Daredevil a new one.
But fuck Marvel for adapting Peter Parker in a way which is visually close to their source material which was itself a visual medium…just like they’ve done with basically every other major lead character they’ve cast.
But yeah, Marvel sure do suck. Just like how they cast Dr. Strange to be white when he was also white in the comics. But we are also not gonna complain too loudly about a Tibetan character becoming a white person.
and thus made them financially viable enough to become movies in the first place? But yeah, Marvel sure do suck. Just like how they cast Dr. Strange to be white when he was also white in the comics. But we are also not gonna complain too loudly about a Tibetan character becoming a white person.
the spam filter got me. could someone please help me out?
“Oh great, another white actor is playing the role of Peter Parker. I want a black actor to play him”
“Peter Parker should be gay. There’s nowhere in the comics states he can’t be gay”
“Peter Parker should be an asian, indian, chinese and blah blah blah.”
“ANOTHER Peter Parker movie? Miles Morales should’ve been the next Spider-Man in the new movie”
“WE WANT DONALD GLOVER TO PLAY SPIDER-MAN!”
The people who always try to come up with crap complaints like the above quotes are egomaniac morons. Someone should make a youtube poop out of these complaints.
@26 – Cap 3 is really Avengers 3. Everyone and their damn dog is in Cap 3 except for like Thor and Hulk. Spidey’s only going to have a cameo, but Marvel already announced that back in February.
I find the announcement that Spidey will definitively be in Civil War very interesting. For one, it means he will be introduced in someone else’s movie. This concerns me in a few ways. While it does allow them to get an origin story out of the way before his solo flick, the story focus on a Captain America movie needs to be on Cap. Its not a very good way to spotlight Peter.
Secondly, it runs right into my biggest fear with Pete’s inclusion in the MCU, that they’ll make him the cartoon ultimate Spider-Man. That he’ll be a superhero in training, who Cap and Tony are “showing the ropes.” That he’ll be a highschooler during Civil War and not an adult places a greater emphasis on this. In any major Marvel “war” scenario, Spidey should be cleaning house and making Cap and Stark look bad, not playing “little kid side kick” which I get a stronger and stronger sense is where they want to go with the character. This is especially true if they try and reproduce what happened in the comic Civil War, which didn’t paint Pete in a positive light for the sake of making Iron Man look good. I am glad that we’ll get the MCU Spidey in less than a year, but I’d much rather him stay in his own movie universe if it means dramatically altering the character to be the “kid’s” superhero.
If articles like the one from Wired were limited to, “there’s no reason Peter Parker in the films has to played by a white actor,” then that would be a valid argument. After all, other than the comics, there’s nothing which really states Peter has to be white, and films adapted from comics don’t look 100% identical to their source material anyway. I can also understand the frustration in wanting something different for another Spider-Man film, especially since this would be the second reboot in less than a decade, and effect which is bound to carry with it a sense of fatigue to potential movie-goers. But what they’re these articles really seem to be calling is for Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be Miles Morales, not Peter Parker. Which means, in a desire for having more diversity in superhero films, these critics also haven’t considered any the following:
1. It’s not just comic book readers who see comic book movies. Matter-of-fact, the general audience who sees comic book movies far outnumbers those who read comic books. And as far as the general audience is concerned, Peter Parker is Spider-Man. There was no way Marvel, as part of their deal with Sony, was going to reintroduce Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and not have it be the character most people are familiar with—something even Forbes in their article acknowledged.
2. In order to establish Miles Morales, you need to establish Peter Parker first. Because Miles’ origin as Spider-Man is entirely dependent upon Peter having already been Spider-Man and, what’s more, no longer being Spider-Man, either because he was killed like in the Ultimate Comics, or is forced to retire in some capacity. This means that, in order to have Miles as Spidey in the films, you need to make yet another origin story—the very thing Marvel and Sony are trying to avoid with the new film.
3. There are more than 50 plus years of Spider-Man stories featuring Peter Parker to draw inspiration from, versus the four years worth of Spider-Man stories featuring Miles Morales (and very decompressed ones at that thanks to Brian Michael Bendis’ writing style). There’s a lot of iconic moments in that 50 plus year history and to arbitrarily insert Miles into them would just seem unnecessary. Not to mention that since Miles is supposed to be a different character with his own personality and history, those iconic moments would no longer have the same context.
4. Shaking the Spider-Man franchise up by having Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker isn’t going to matter jack-you-know-what if the film isn’t any good. You can have the most diverse group of talented actors and top notch special effects and production values, but none of that is going to matter if the story and script sucks. This is what happened with Amazing Spider-Man 2 and why Sony is rebooting the franchise with the Marvel Studios deal in the first place. Andrew Garfield was, quite possibly, one the best actors to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man, the chemistry between him and Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy was undeniable, and the effects (especially the Spidey stuff) were the best of any Spidey film to date. But almost everyone agrees that the script for that film was terrible, and the performances from otherwise excellent actors such as Jamie Foxx and Dane Dehann were utterly wasted in thankless roles. It’s content, content, content which matters.
@23 – “Seriously, do these people read this stuff before they post it? Here’s a question though, if he doesn’t have to be any particular race, why is it that they only posted black actors? Why no Japanese or Indian performers? Its almost like the social media/pop journalist crowd don’t actually carry opinions. They’re just trying to impress each other by repeating what the last person said.”
This. A thousand times this. I know we’ve brought this up on the podcast before and I wish it was a question that more people would ask. Especially Asian comic fans. Asia has opened up, largely thanks to China, as the world’s biggest movie market. Many hit movies produced in the U.S. now make anywhere from $200-$400 million or more from Asian box office. And full-well knowing this Marvel took an Asian part and cast it with a white chick (the Ancient One in Dr. Strange). That still has me scratching my head.
Honestly, it proves that the entirely manufactured brouhaha isn’t about diversity (which is not a bad thing!) so much as it is political correctness in one of its most pure and uncut forms.
Saw the update and immediately knew George must have a whopper for us.
“If they had gone with an ethnic or gay Spider-Man and it hadn’t worked out, they could have easily rebooted the franchise yet again in 2020.”
Yes, because Hollywood is infamous for taking wild risks for almost no gain when they can make easy money instead by sticking to formula. Nevermind that the character has a huge supporting cast of female love interests who are quite popular who obviously wouldn’t work if you made him gay. I can’t even imagine how you would do Black Cat.
“Spider-Man, as far as we know, is not a real person, and thus shouldn’t have to be anything.”
Then why does he have to be black?
Seriously, do these people read this stuff before they post it? Here’s a question though, if he doesn’t have to be any particular race, why is it that they only posted black actors? Why no Japanese or Indian performers? Its almost like the social media/pop journalist crowd don’t actually carry opinions. They’re just trying to impress each other by repeating what the last person said.
@21 – “Let’s just hope we’re spared yet another retelling of the origin story.”
This is something I’ve seen a lot of for the last couple of days across Twitter and on comment sections everywhere.
Kevin Feige has already said there would not be another origin. We even covered that here at Crawlspace.
http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2015/04/12/kevin-feige-no-spidey-origin/
I would’ve been okay with a Miles movie, or with a non-white actor in the role. Holland seems like a decent choice, but I don’t think any of the Spider-Man movies has ever risen above mediocre.
Let’s just hope we’re spared yet another retelling of the origin story.
The people who are making butthurt comments about Peter being white are a bunch of idiots. Even though Stan and Steve originaly made Peter a white character, these racist blabbermouths wants a black actor to play him. These guys are out of their minds.
Never heard of either one of them. Which may be the point, I suppose.
😎
@#16-People want racial/ethnic minorities represented which I understand. I even understand changing the race of characters who were white originally. But I can’t call the casting of a white character with a white actor racist. In particular when it’s such a big and iconic character like Spider-Man who’s been merchandised to here and back and has had his image built up in the minds of the popular consciousness the way he has. Racist or not, from a marketing POV it’s understandable why they’d keep his look consistent.
I actually made the point on both my Twitter and on my YouTube channel that I find it a little hypocritical that people want the Human Torch to be white because it contradicts the comics; yet people want Spider-Man to be black when he wasn’t in the comics. Nobody replied though, which is good because there would be a flame war with my name on it, but it’s still mind-boggling that people can’t make up their mind when it comes to these things.
@14 – Oh I know. I was just speaking of Tumblr in general. 😎
@#13-I’m on tumblr a lot and there is indeed a lot of…questionable things said there. The blog I quoted though tends not to go in for that
@12 – Yeah. Tumblr is ground zero for this buffoonery. Twitter is almost as bad today.
From tumblr:
“Charlie Cox is the third white man to play Daredevil on screen.
Ben Affleck is the sixth white man to play Batman.
Mark Ruffalo is the fourth white man to play Bruce Banner.
Henry Cavil is the ninth white man to play Clark Kent.
Ezra Miller will be the fourth white man to play The Flash.
But hey, you draw the line wherever you want.”
And:
“Man, I sure hope all the people outraged about Spider-Man being a white straight man instead of Miles Morales will be similarly outraged at Black Panther being a black straight man instead of Shuri, or Captain Marvel being a white straight woman instead of Monica Rambeau. Be kinda hypocritical otherwise, wouldn’t it?
‘but it’s totally different because spider-man already got movies where he was a white man’, ‘just like dr. strange had all those movies about being a white man when tumblr was outraged about him not being a poc’.”
@9 – I don’t know who annoys me more for propagating this nonsense. Donald Glover and his “campaign” (which I saw as self-promotion as its most nakedly obvious) or Brian Michael Bendis for making it his personal mission to replace Spidey for being too white (and suggesting that Spidey could never be for minorities due to his white ethnicity, which reeks of anti-white race baiting). The SJW’s are just following their lead.
And don’t worry, the bitching about Batman and Superman being white will come eventually.
Was hoping for Charlie Rowe as well who looks a lot more like Peter Parker than Holland does.
Haven’t seen Tom Holland in anything yet, but Rowe is a great actor. Too bad he missed out.
Jon Watts is a good pick as Director. I guess we’re gonna have to wait and see how it all pans out.
@8 – Pretty much. I’ve been asking this a lot lately. Why is the great need for great social justice being fought with Spider-Man? Why not Batman, Superman, etc. etc. Why does it absolutely have to be Spider-Man?
How many white Bruce Wayne roles have we had!?
Never seen him in anything. But I trust marvel casting.
I am in the wait and see crowd.
I have no clue about either of them. I guess I’ll have to wait and see the movie…
I’m happy with Holland’s casting, he’s the right age and has the talent.
2017’s gonna be one awesome birthday for me.
Eh on Holland, eh on Watts. Holland was the least interesting cast member of Wolf Hall, and that’s the only thing I’ve seen him in.
Waiting for other casting announcements and basic plot beat leaks before gearing up the hype or “hell no” machine.
I was hopping they would pick Charlie Rowe but Im not going to complain as Holland do look like young Peter Parker.