Controversial Spider-Man Opinions

[PCN24454]

If you read between the lines, Weisman was absolutely planning on killing Gwen one day. Just not while they were all in High School.

Sounds more like bloodlust.

[Kevinroc]

Sounds more like bloodlust.

Weisman says the catalyst that brings Peter and MJ together is a "huge loss".



Weisman also said that Peter and MJ would have eventually gotten married.

https://s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?qid=10930

You're just so far ahead of me... but, yes, eventually.

it's not hard to read between the lines.

[blackspidey2099]

The ASM movies are still way better than the MCU films in basically everything.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

That movie is a deconstruction of romance and not bound by genre in the same way, so obviously it plays differently

That was a random example, but I can think of more off the top of my head. There are even examples similar to the one I brought up within Spider-Man:

1. The way Betty is played up as a serious love interest for Peter in the Lee/Ditko comics (like at the end of ASM#9 when they first hook up) even though Stan and Steve knew MJ was coming.

2. The way Gwen is played up as the main love interest and Peter's kinda-childhood friend in The Spectacular Spider-Man even though Weisman hinted he eventually wanted to get Peter with MJ in that continuity.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

1. The way Betty is played up as a serious love interest for Peter in the Lee/Ditko comics (like at the end of ASM#9 when they first hook up) even though Stan and Steve knew MJ was coming.

Not that early they didn't. Mary Jane wasn't mentioned until ASM#14, and even then she was basically an afterthought until ASM#25 (the first issue on which Ditko had plotting credit) which was when the story seemed to hint that she would be "the special one" when Liz and Betty both take one look at her and have the exact same thought about how she has them beat.

Ditko came to dislike Betty Brant as a character and campaigned to have her killed off. Blake Bell talks about this in the Ditko biography, Ditko came up with a story that Betty would die in a common domestic accident (i.e. slip and trip down the stairs) or something like that. Ditko wanted to do this partly to remove her from the books, but also because he found it weird that in superhero stories this kind of basic accidental deaths, the kind that happens every day, doesn't occur (And gotta say, until reading Bell's biography and having Ditko point this out it never occured to me either, but man he's right, you hardly ever see death by accidents in superhero stories). Stan Lee overruled him, and Ditko amazingly came to agree that Lee was right. Lee pointed out that Peter's just grieving over Uncle Ben and adding the death of the girlfriend (even by accident) would give him too much baggage at the time and change the tone of the story. But that sort of inspired Ditko to go to a break-up story and his run became an extended "We are never ever getting back together" breakup saga. Can you imagine if Betty Brant had died...would she have been the Gwen Stacy figure in comics lore if it happened? Would Spider-Man failing to be there and save Betty from a banal domestic accident have the same sense of survivor's guilt to it.

Anyway, in the case of Betty it's an instance where the creators introduced her as a Lois Lane copy (and Betty aside from the alliteration and working in a news office is very much a Lois Clone, even having a similar hairstyle to LL in the '50s) but quickly got bored with her and then making plans to introducing a longer term love interest.

2. The way Gwen is played up as the main love interest and Peter's kinda-childhood friend in The Spectacular Spider-Man even though Weisman hinted he eventually wanted to get Peter with MJ in that continuity.

This comparison between TASM-2 and Spectacular Spider-Man actually serves my argument.

In Spectacular, Weisman hints that Peter and MJ will be together right from her first appearance where after Peter fights the Goblin, he goes back to the school dance and finds her waiting him for him, having stayed late to save him the last dance. The rest of the show focuses on this flirtation between Peter and Gwen, with MJ as a friend, but the fact is that Mary Jane is there right from the start and the story hinted at her future direction, so that also meant that Peter/Gwen was set-up clearly as a serial romance and not the main romance.

In TASM we only ever see Peter and Gwen, so for all intents and purposes that is the main romance. What Weisman did was go the Spider-Man Blue manner and establish the eventual love triangle.

[HypnoHustler]

The ASM movies are still way better than the MCU films in basically everything.

Except in entertainment value. I’d rather watch either of the MCU films a dozen times again before sitting through the mess that was ASM 2 again even once.

[PCN24454]

Except in entertainment value. I’d rather watch either of the MCU films a dozen times again before sitting through the mess that was ASM 2 again even once.

The biggest merit the ASM movies have is that they're not in the MCU. THe MCU is a mess.

[SpiderClops]

We need to move on from One More Day. That includes Marvel and their staff. Just. Let. It. Go. It was almost two decades ago. Peter and MJ are already back together. If you really want to, get them married again. But we do not need to revisit OMD for that.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Not that early they didn't. Mary Jane wasn't mentioned until ASM#14, and even then she was basically an afterthought until ASM#25 (the first issue on which Ditko had plotting credit) which was when the story seemed to hint that she would be "the special one" when Liz and Betty both take one look at her and have the exact same thought about how she has them beat.

Ditko came to dislike Betty Brant as a character and campaigned to have her killed off. Blake Bell talks about this in the Ditko biography, Ditko came up with a story that Betty would die in a common domestic accident (i.e. slip and trip down the stairs) or something like that. Ditko wanted to do this partly to remove her from the books, but also because he found it weird that in superhero stories this kind of basic accidental deaths, the kind that happens every day, doesn't occur (And gotta say, until reading Bell's biography and having Ditko point this out it never occured to me either, but man he's right, you hardly ever see death by accidents in superhero stories). Stan Lee overruled him, and Ditko amazingly came to agree that Lee was right. Lee pointed out that Peter's just grieving over Uncle Ben and adding the death of the girlfriend (even by accident) would give him too much baggage at the time and change the tone of the story. But that sort of inspired Ditko to go to a break-up story and his run became an extended "We are never ever getting back together" breakup saga. Can you imagine if Betty Brant had died...would she have been the Gwen Stacy figure in comics lore if it happened? Would Spider-Man failing to be there and save Betty from a banal domestic accident have the same sense of survivor's guilt to it.

Anyway, in the case of Betty it's an instance where the creators introduced her as a Lois Lane copy (and Betty aside from the alliteration and working in a news office is very much a Lois Clone, even having a similar hairstyle to LL in the '50s) but quickly got bored with her and then making plans to introducing a longer term love interest.



This comparison between TASM-2 and Spectacular Spider-Man actually serves my argument.

In Spectacular, Weisman hints that Peter and MJ will be together right from her first appearance where after Peter fights the Goblin, he goes back to the school dance and finds her waiting him for him, having stayed late to save him the last dance. The rest of the show focuses on this flirtation between Peter and Gwen, with MJ as a friend, but the fact is that Mary Jane is there right from the start and the story hinted at her future direction, so that also meant that Peter/Gwen was set-up clearly as a serial romance and not the main romance.

In TASM we only ever see Peter and Gwen, so for all intents and purposes that is the main romance. What Weisman did was go the Spider-Man Blue manner and establish the eventual love triangle.

You're not getting my point in regards to Betty and SpecGwen. I mentioned earlier how simply being in love and having great chemistry or compatibility doesn't mean that:

1. The couple is "meant to be".
2. That the writer is somehow contradicting themselves if such a romance doesn't go anywhere in the long run.
3. That it is somehow inconsistent with the protagonist if the protagonist moves on / finds someone better.

Webbseries' Peter's love for Gwen was intense and real, but there is nothing to suggest he can't move on or that Reign would be the next logical step. I'm sure if Spectacular Spider-Man kept going, that Peter's love for Gwen would have been just as intense if not more due to the longer buildup to it. Still, that Peter would have still eventually moved on and it wouldn't have been a character error.

Also, Webbseries' Gwen is still...well, Gwen. She has none of MJ's qualities except for maybe her confidence (which isn't unique to MJ...lots of women Peter dated are very confident, like Black Cat...616 Gwen was written pretty confident too). What they and Greg Weisman both did is essentially take parts of 616 Gwen that were previously seen as superficial (I.E. her being a science student) and expand on them. But it's still Gwen as we know her (as opposed to Ultimate Gwen or Spider-Gwen, who aren't Gwen as we know her) and not parts of MJ being given to Gwen.

So technically Webbseries' Peter is still missing his MJ and eventually has to meet her. Yes, this is film we're talking about and it would have been hard to find an actor to top Emma Stone and match the chemistry she had with Garfield. But there is a difference between raising the bar and closing the door, and the points you're bringing up sound more like raising the bar than the conclusion you're deriving from those points.

[Spider-Tiger]

Webbseries' Peter's love for Gwen was intense and real, but there is nothing to suggest he can't move on or that Reign would be the next logical step. I'm sure if Spectacular Spider-Man kept going, that Peter's love for Gwen would have been just as intense if not more due to the longer buildup to it. Still, that Peter would have still eventually moved on and it wouldn't have been a character error.

The emphasis on the pairing being star-crossed lovers suggests otherwise. Not that they couldn't somehow throw MJ into the mix later (just like they threw in Harry Osborn/GG into TASM2 and tried to retroactively make him Peter's best friend), but that the crux of the story was the Peter-Gwen tragedy and it would (logically) always be the Peter-Gwen tragedy. MJ would have been secondary to that.

And sure they could hit the fast forward button to the JMS status quo as you mentioned earlier, but that would have qualified as a soft reboot rather than a logical continuation of the story in the first two movies. And the fact that they were even considering doing so is more indicative of the corner they painted themselves in.

Also, Webbseries' Gwen is still...well, Gwen. She has none of MJ's qualities except for maybe her confidence (which isn't unique to MJ...lots of women Peter dated are very confident, like Black Cat...616 Gwen was written pretty confident too). What they and Greg Weisman both did is essentially take parts of 616 Gwen that were previously seen as superficial (I.E. her being a science student) and expand on them. But it's still Gwen as we know her (as opposed to Ultimate Gwen or Spider-Gwen, who aren't Gwen as we know her) and not parts of MJ being given to Gwen.

They took that one superficial element and exaggerated it to the point of idealization, and again this was used against MJ in promo. In Spec, Gwen is intelligent, but her intelligence isn't pedestalized, and it's tempered with flaws (such as her insecurity and lack of confidence.) And again you have MJ in the mix with positive qualities of her own.

A big part of Gwen's character is that she didn't know and likely wouldn't have approved of Peter's vigilantism, and eventually grew to hate Spider-man after her father died. The first time Peter revealed his secret ID, she flew into hysterics (and that was well before her father passed away.) So this idea that Gwen liked Spider-man, but loved Peter more and would come to function as Spider-man's confidante...its not a Gwen thing, its the antithesis of Gwen's story and is entirely unique to Peter's relationship with Mary Jane.

[Voices From the Eyrie]

Weisman says the catalyst that brings Peter and MJ together is a "huge loss".



Weisman also said that Peter and MJ would have eventually gotten married.

https://s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?qid=10930



it's not hard to read between the lines.

Host of the Spectacular Radio podcast here... twenty-six interviews with Greg Weisman so far, one for each episode.

He's never stated he wasn't going to kill Gwen... all he has ever said was "Gwen doesn't die in High School".

They recently did a Spectacular reunion with Weisman, Josh Keaton, Vanessa Marshall, etc... and Mike Vogel (who was their boss) was a part of it and asked Weisman to share the masterplan for Peter and MJ that was pitched for Spectacular but never came to fruition. Weisman chose his words very carefully, but he did mention "great tragedy".

Yeah, read between the lines.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

The emphasis on the pairing being star-crossed lovers suggests otherwise. Not that they couldn't somehow throw MJ into the mix later (just like they threw in Harry Osborn/GG into TASM2 and tried to retroactively make him Peter's best friend), but that the crux of the story was the Peter-Gwen tragedy and it would (logically) always be the Peter-Gwen tragedy. MJ would have been secondary that.

Isn't 'star-crossed lovers' another way of saying 'meant to be'?

And sure they could hit the fast forward button to the JMS status quo as you mentioned earlier, but that would have qualified as a soft reboot rather than a logical continuation of the story in the first two movies. And the fact that they were even considering doing so is more indicative of the corner they painted themselves in.

I don't know if this had anything to do with Gwen though, but with the reception of TASM2. The initial plan was to make direct sequels as planned. The idea to deviate from TASM1&2 was first brought up (to our knowledge) only after TASM2 came out and it wasn't received so well.

They took that one superficial element and exaggerated it to the point of idealization, and again this was used against MJ in promo. In Spec, Gwen is intelligent, but her intelligence isn't pedestalized, and it's tempered with flaws (such as her insecurity and lack of confidence.) And again you have MJ in the mix with positive qualities of her own.

A big part of Gwen's character is that she didn't know and likely wouldn't have approved of Peter's vigilantism, and eventually grew to hate Spider-man after her father died. The first time Peter revealed his secret ID, she flew into hysterics (and that was well before her father passed away.) So this idea that Gwen liked Spider-man, but loved Peter more and would come to function as Spider-man's confidante...its not a Gwen thing, its the antithesis of Gwen's story and is entirely unique to Peter's relationship with Mary Jane.

Yes and no. Weisman said his approach to Harry and Gwen was to "work backwards" and imagine what they would have been like in high school. The idea was that Gwen would grow more confident and be somewhat similar to 616 Gwen and Emma Stone's Gwen towards the end of the show. The movies skipped that and gave her her the confidence she had in the comics, but the show was kinda on its way there.

You are right that Emma's Gwen is significantly more approving of Spider-Man than Gwen in the comics and even more than SpecGwen would have been (I imagine she wouldn't have been too fond of Peter's life as Spider-Man). Even then, I think they turned her from being hostile towards Spider-Man to simply being lukewarm, to sometimes outright dissapointment that she fell for a guy who risks her life in a similar way to how her dad had to as a police officer. It's hard to tell how she would have processed her boyfriend's life as Spider-Man in the long run granted they couldn't have dated for more than 1.5 years and were still in the infatuation stage of love (which doesn't mean it wasn't love - just not the most mature form of love like Peter and MJ have).

[Spider-Tiger]

Isn't 'star-crossed lovers' another way of saying 'meant to be'?

I think both are confused in casual conversation, but star-crossed lovers traditionally implies that the couple is destined "not to be" due to fate or circumstance getting in the way as in the case of Romeo and Juliet (for which the trope originated.)

In both instances, the audience is sort of manipulated into wanting the couple to overcome their obstacles and end up together, but in the star-crossed lovers scenario they (traditionally and) tragically do not.

Edit: Classically, the protagonists of a star-crossed lovers tale end up self-destructing either in a physical or metaphorical sense as a result of their passion for one another. TASM1 and TASM2 use a lot of elements from a traditional star-crossed lovers tale: the passionate rush into courtship, Captain Stacy's hostile relationship with Peter and class differences establishing a "forbidden love" dynamic between Peter and Gwen, Peter's broken promise to Captain Stacy and Stacy's ghost coming back to haunt them in TASM2, the symbolism of the Clock Tower and time running out in TASM2, Gwen's acceptance to Oxford and Peter's attempt to thwart fate by joining her, etc.

Even all of the scenes where Peter sneaks onto Gwen's high rise balcony in TASM1 are straight out of the Romeo and Juliet playbook.

I don't know if this had anything to do with Gwen though, but with the reception of TASM2. The initial plan was to make direct sequels as planned. The idea to deviate from TASM1&2 was first brought up (to our knowledge) only after TASM2 came out and it wasn't received so well.

That could be true. But then I don't think it's fair to argue that they intended to make MJ significant to the story and using the JMS idea as evidence while arguing that they deviated from their initial story ideas due to poor reception of TASM2.

Yes and no. Weisman said his approach to Harry and Gwen was to "work backwards" and imagine what they would have been like in high school. The idea was that Gwen would grow more confident and be somewhat similar to 616 Gwen and Emma Stone's Gwen towards the end of the show. The movies skipped that and gave her her the confidence she had in the comics, but the show was kinda on its way there.

Perhaps, but that's still a character arc based on a flaw that Weisman gave Gwen Stacy. Something that Gwen could grow out of much like MJ grows out of her party girl persona.

The movies just sort of envisioned Gwen as this idealized character. I wouldn't even say confidence is really a defining character trait of hers so much as being the perfect girlfriend for Peter Parker is.

You are right that Emma's Gwen is significantly more approving of Spider-Man than Gwen in the comics and even more than SpecGwen would have been (I imagine she wouldn't have been too fond of Peter's life as Spider-Man). Even then, I think they turned her from being hostile towards Spider-Man to simply being lukewarm, to sometimes outright dissapointment that she fell for a guy who risks her life in a similar way to how her dad had to as a police officer. It's hard to tell how she would have processed her boyfriend's life as Spider-Man in the long run granted they couldn't have dated for more than 1.5 years and were still in the infatuation stage of love (which doesn't mean it wasn't love - just not the most mature form of love like Peter and MJ have).

I think they pushed it just a step further than lukewarm since Gwen begins a full-fledged romance with Peter and they share their first kiss just after he reveals his secret to her.

Mary Jane herself has had moments of frustration, but in the end, she accepts it because she understands that Peter's heart and heroism is what she loves about him. I don't see much difference between MJ's stance in the comics and Gwen's stance in those movies. Regardless, I think these alterations to Gwen's character undermine Mary Jane's role in the story.

[Spider-Tiger]

Host of the Spectacular Radio podcast here... twenty-six interviews with Greg Weisman so far, one for each episode.

He's never stated he wasn't going to kill Gwen... all he has ever said was "Gwen doesn't die in High School".

They recently did a Spectacular reunion with Weisman, Josh Keaton, Vanessa Marshall, etc... and Mike Vogel (who was their boss) was a part of it and asked Weisman to share the masterplan for Peter and MJ that was pitched for Spectacular but never came to fruition. Weisman chose his words very carefully, but he did mention "great tragedy".

Yeah, read between the lines.

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing!

[PCN24454]

We need to move on from One More Day. That includes Marvel and their staff. Just. Let. It. Go. It was almost two decades ago. Peter and MJ are already back together. If you really want to, get them married again. But we do not need to revisit OMD for that.

I would like that too, but people want to punish Marvel through Peter.