Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
You are correct in that this is indeed my contention about the franchise.
But the writers, director, cast, and Garfield Peter absolutely saw Gwen that way. They said many times in interviews that Gwen was more compatible to Peter, and so on. That might be promotional stuff to boost their movies and so on, and there's an element of that, but either way they wanted the audience to know that this is how Gwen should be seen in their movies and presented her that way.
They don't have to literally say that in dialogue but an entire history of romantic comedy and performance recognition created recognizable codes that audience instinctively recognize right away. The movies traffick in that so it's rather obvious. The presentation of the movie, the coding of the scenes and performances, the framing and staging of scenes, beats the spoken text of the movie, always always always (to quote Lindsay Ellis).
The problem is that the way Emma Stone was played up in the first two movies, no way any actress cast as Mary Jane in the third movie will register as anything other than a lesser character. And short of going SPIDER-MAN REIGN there is not any way to bring that Peter out of the hole the movies dump him in at the end of that.