Spider-Man 3: Serious Fanboy Anti-criticism
March 14, 2007
I felt it was finally time to weigh in on a couple ridiculous criticisms I’ve seen circulating on the net related to the upcoming Spider-Man 3 movie:
1) Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane appearing in the movie at the same time
It is absolutely true that Peter fell in love with Gwen before MJ. However, MJ was first referenced in Amazing Spider-Man #15 (1964) and fully appeared for the first time in #42 (1966). At this point they immediately begin dating. This of course annoys Gwen Stacy who first appeared in issue #31 (1965) and has a crush on Pete. Eventually Peter ditches MJ due to her apparent shallow superficiality. He promptly dates Gwen, and as MJ is dating Harry Osborn (Pete’s roommate) all of them hang out together regularly. MJ continues to show interest in Peter to Gwen and Harry’s disliking. Eventually Gwen is killed at the hands of the Green Goblin in issue #121 (1973). The writers do this because the seriousness of their relationship can only lead to marriage logically and they do not want Spider-Man to have aged this much so soon.
After this tragedy, Peter and MJ have a bit of a rekindling, but they never manage to get things together. It is not until issue #258 (1984) that MJ reveals that she knows his secret identity and she has matured to a point where they establish a solid relationship that has mostly remained to this day. The movie has certainly approached this in a slightly different way, but not as far off as some have claimed, nowhere near enough to “ruin the film” or make anyone “hate Raimi”.
Seriously though, can anyone deny Howard’s hotness as Gwen?
Actually, if we want to get all weird about this, Betty Brant showed up in Amazing #4 and was definitely the first significant girl Peter dated!
2) Venom’s teeth and tongue are too small
When Todd McFarlane (visual creator of Venom) first drew the character, it was without the large pointy teeth and tongue. Later, Erik Larsen adds these things plus a ton of green drool when he replaced McFarlane as the lead artist on Amazing. Since then these visual elements have always been repeated, as well as exaggerated, with each new artist that draws Venom. Raimi’s choice to use a fairly stripped down “original” Venom probably made for a much easier character to portray on screen.
On that note, here’s a new picture to enjoy of Spidey actually fighting with Venom:
Tags: amazing spider-man, Betty Brant, erik larsen, gwen stacy, mary jane, mary jane watson, movie, sam raimi, spider-man, spiderman, spiderman 3, todd mcfarlane, venom
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