Marvel
On Monday night, news broke that Marvel is joining forces
with Sony to make more Spider-Man movies. While it's easy to raise an
eyebrow at the prospect of more films featuring Peter Parker—there have already
been five, and the series has already been rebooted once in the last 15
years—the general consensus among industry reporters is that hitting the reset
button once again was basically a no-brainer. The unique character-sharing
arrangement struck by Sony and Disney lets the hero join the established
"Marvel Cinematic Universe" (where Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, et
al have been crossing over with each other for years) as well as appear in
a stand-alone film in 2017 produced by both studios (further Sony-produced spinoffs
may follow one day). Exhausting, yes, but lucrative.
Given the obvious motivation for this bit of corporate
cooperation—big-budget superhero franchises are all-but-guaranteed moneymakers
and studios want to cash in—it would be heartening to see Sony and Marvel take
a meaningful risk. Namely, the studios could take advantage of the relative
safety that comes with doing a superhero reboot and finally bring a non-white
Spider-Man to the big screen.
Moviegoers have reached a fascinating—some would say depressing—level
of studio awareness in this era of interconnected franchises. Just because
you're a Marvel Comics hero doesn't mean Marvel Studios can use you—Fox owns
the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four, and Sony will
continue to retain the Spider-Man license. Part of the magic of reading
comic books is watching a company's heroes appear in each other's titles, and
that's magic Marvel and Disney have replicated with their criss-crossing Avengers-centric
films. But until now, they haven't been able to incorporate Marvel's flagship,
web-shooting character.
Given the obvious motivation for this bit of corporate
cooperation—big-budget superhero franchises are all-but-guaranteed moneymakers
and studios want to cash in—it would be heartening to see Sony and Marvel take
a meaningful risk. Namely, the studios could take advantage of the relative
safety that comes with doing a superhero reboot and finally bring a non-white
Spider-Man to the big screen.
Moviegoers have reached a fascinating—some would say
depressing—level of studio awareness in this era of interconnected franchises.
Just because you're a Marvel Comics hero doesn't mean Marvel Studios can use
you—Fox owns the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four, and Sony
will continue to retain the Spider-Man license. Part of the magic of
reading comic books is watching a company's heroes appear in each other's
titles, and that's magic Marvel and Disney have replicated with their
criss-crossing Avengers-centric films. But until now, they haven't been
able to incorporate Marvel's flagship, web-shooting character.
From a PR standpoint, the move could be a huge win for
everyone involved if played the right way. More specifically, this is an
immense opportunity for Marvel to address growing complaints about diversity
and hit the home run Sony missed out on when casting Andrew Garfield. In 2011, a jokey Twitter campaign
to cast African-American comedian and actor Donald Glover as Peter Parker
turned into a serious drumbeat, and eventually a debate over whether just
because most superheroes were created decades ago means they have to be forever
portrayed as white. As Glover put it in interviews, why wouldn't
a contemporary Peter Parker be a person of color? "It's 2011 and you don't
think there's a black kid who lives with his aunt in Queens … who likes
science? Who takes photography?"
Marvel Comics and writer Brian Michael Bendis acknowledged
this criticism by creating Miles
Morales, a Black Hispanic teenager who took up the mantle of Spider-Man in
its "Ultimate Marvel" titles. Morales has been rapturously received,
and that success would be easy to re-create on film, especially since it's
unlikely that these new films will replay Spidey's origin on screen for a third
time. If Spider-Man swings on-screen in some random upcoming Marvel movie,
it'll be hard to avoid the depressing whiff of corporate synergy. It'd help if
this iteration could bring with it a genuinely new kind of hero.
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