Quote Originally Posted by Kaitou D. Kid View Post
It is clear if we read the Lee/Ditko issues that the narrative was setting her up.
Mary Jane's appearance was certainly something built up and long expected by readers at the time. Gerry Conway talked about reading the Lee-Ditko run and wanting to know who MJ was, and feeling that obviously the story was setting her up to be "the one"...and then Romita Sr's introduction where basically the character built up as the special, cool, mysterious one not only lives up to the hype but exceeds it (which happens rarely).

She was first mentioned in ASM#15, and then a few more times...and then in ASM#25 (the first issue on which Ditko had plotting credit), he set her up in a big way with Liz and Betty taking one look at her and, simultaneously thinking how she has them beat (god I miss thought balloons, because that's an effect you can't pull off now).

Holland's Spider-Man is in a lot of ways MCU Hawkeye all over again. Disney/Marvel played it safe and based their Hawkeye on the Ultimate version which was just on its way out the door in the zeitgeist. Shortly after that Matt Fraction's Hawkeye came out and was a huge success. A decade later, 616 Hawkeye is still booming while the MCU struggles to help its Hawkeye stay afloat all because they made the wrong calculation with his characterization early on. They may have made the same mistake with Spider-Man - only time will tell but so far the details are the same.
Good point. The important thing to note about MCU Spider-Man is that he was hastily put together. The deal to bring Spider-Man into the MCU was done very quickly and on short notice all so they can put him in CIVIL WAR. So on very short notice they cast the actor, they cast Aunt May, and they featured him in Civil War...so the level of time, thought, consideration which Feige and others gave to other Marvel Characters wasn't extended to Spider-Man. Sam Raimi and others devoted a lot of thought and attention to Spider-Man in the trilogy and that shows, even in the weakest parts there's a coherence there. Whereas the Marc Webb movies were hastily put together, the Tom Holland MCU movies were hastily put together without any real consideration of a long-term idea.

So with the MCU Spider-Man, they cast a guy who is primarily a character actor and a supporting actor who plays off established stars Holland isn't a leading man, he can't command a movie on his own. He's good as a supporting actor but not as a lead (as is apparent in the recent Netflix movie with Robert Pattinson that he appeared in, which is pretty obvious if you see the bulk of Holland's career so far and in the upcoming Uncharted where Mark Wahlberg gets to mentor him). Holland's casting is good for Robert Downey Jr and Iron Man's character arc but it's not at all good for Spider-Man to be established as a leading player.

And I don't know if anyone can be blamed for that really. Sony need Spider-Man to survive as a major studio, lot of jobs are on the line with them holding on to those rights. So they had to make a Spider-Man movie and they had to dig out of the self-inflicted mess with the Garfield movies and those spinoff plans that are never to be. Feige wanted Spider-Man in the MCU. The deal between Disney-Sony is really fragile and can be walked away from anytime, so the producers making this don't really have the luxury to slow-walk and pace the movies and stories. I hope the next Spider-Man movie is the last one with Holland, and after that they James Bond it...they get a new actor as Peter when he goes to college...they don't redo the past and origin (they do the Don Cheadle thing in IM-2) and they continue onwards.