The Big Picture: The Amazing Spider-Man - The Gwen Stacy Paradox

el_emmens

New member
Mar 23, 2009
145
0
0
FightingFurball said:
JAR JAR BINKS YOU TRAITOR!!!!!
it's made more hilarious by this;
Jar jar wouldn't have gotten his position on the senate if he weren't a war hero,
he wouldn't have gotten to be a war hero had he not participated in that big battle for that on place I can't quite remember the name of,
he wouldn't have gotten to be in that big battle had he not gotten into a life debt with Qui Gon Jin.
and he wouldn't have gotten into that life debt with Qui Gon Jin had he (Jin) saved his life.
Ergo Qui Gon is the cause of every thing that has gone horribly wrong in the time line of the star wars movies.
 

Darth_Payn

New member
Aug 5, 2009
2,868
0
0
Can Mavel please please PLEASE Retcon away that Green Goblin & Gwen thing? Not him killing her, that other thing. The one we dare not speak of without making out minds vomit.

And what's all this "Marvel not advancing through time" stuff? I thought they went through some big changes in recent years.
 

Mangod

Senior Member
Feb 20, 2011
829
0
21
Darth_Payn said:
Can Mavel please please PLEASE Retcon away that Green Goblin & Gwen thing? Not him killing her, that other thing. The one we dare not speak of without making out minds vomit.

And what's all this "Marvel not advancing through time" stuff? I thought they went through some big changes in recent years.
You mean that thing were Green Goblin got Gwen preggers? That thing?

And status quo is God; "changes" in comic books, especially Marvel and DC, are retconed once every 3-4 years, if not more often, to be as though they never happened.
 

Mr_Terrific

New member
Oct 29, 2011
163
0
0
Still haven't seen the first Spider-Man and I'll probably skip this one as well. AS a matter of fact, I''ll be skipping all non-Marvel studios films on the Marvel side. Kinda sucks because WB and really the heads of dC can all go to hell (aside from the ARRow and Flash guys).
 

MatParker116

New member
Feb 4, 2009
2,430
0
0
malestrithe said:
MatParker116 said:
Where the hell can they go with these spin off movies without giving Marvel reason to revoke there licence?
Disney wanted to make a Spider-Man cartoon. Sony was the obstacle preventing that because the license at the time gave Sony control of every Spider-Man appearance outside the comic books. So, Sony and Disney renegotiated the license that allowed Sony to keep the movie license in exchange for the television portion of it.

Basically, Sony has the Spider-Man movie license as long as they keep using the characters. They could keep making "bad" movies from here on out, but as long as they use the franchise, it remains in Sony's hands. Sony will not give up on it until a string of movies are not profitable, which will never happen. As long as production costs are down to about 100 million dollars, it will be profitable worldwide.

I am sorry, but you are going to have to get used to the idea that Spider-Man is not going to appear in the current popular vision of a Cinematic Universe anytime soon.
I thinking in terms of creatively
 

The_Darkness

New member
Nov 8, 2010
546
0
0
malestrithe said:
My understanding of Gwen Stacy is that her clone is more interesting and complex of a character than the real person ever was.

Yes, she has a clone going back to the original Clone Saga, one that had all of Gwen's memories, but more personality. She decided that she could not be around Parker because he would live a lie. So she went to live in France, a place the real Gwen wanted to visit, but never got around to at the time.
And in recent comics:
Gwen-clone got killed off at the start of the Spider Island series for... no real reason at all. It didn't even seem to drive up tension or anything. It was just a way of reintroducing the Jackal and his backstory.

Anyway - Bob, that hint you dropped of doing a "Comics Are Weird" episode on Mary-Jane? Do that. PLEASE. Given that she's almost a second protagonist for large chunks of Spidey canon (no matter how hard Marvel tries to get rid of her), I'd love to see your thoughts on her background - both in and out of universe.
 

Gerardo Vazquez

New member
Sep 28, 2013
65
0
0
Raesvelg said:
For some reason I've come to enjoy Bob's ongoing nerd-rage over the Amazing Spider-Man movies. Not because I think he's right; the first movie was a notable improvement on Raimi's disastrous Spider-Man 3, and for as many points as ASM missed, Raimi's series missed just as many and had horrifically bad casting on top of that.

Mostly I think it's just an entertaining window into someone's personal blind spots.
I'm honestly bothered whenever anyone makes the argument that liking Raimi's Spider-man over TASM is wrong, because both series get things wrong, and are thus equally bad, or that ASM is an improvement. The thing is that Raimi's Spider-man came out in the 2000s, when the X-men looked more like a boy band than a superhero team(and were proud of it), Doctor Doom had super powers, and Galactus was a set of angry looking clouds, and while Raimi's Spider-man was never perfect it stood head and shoulders above the competition (Except of course, for casting). The Amazing Spider-man...... doesn't have any of those things going for it. It intentionally botches elements of the character the original got right, like the origin story, character motivations, and the costume while still trying to make competition with other Marvel superhero blockbusters, like The "actually getting pretty good" X-men, and the "Look everyone else, this how you're supposed to do it" Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Amazing Spider-man might have held up when I was 8, but in this day and age, it's level of bad in absolutely inexcusable.
 

Raesvelg

New member
Oct 22, 2008
486
0
0
Gerardo Vazquez said:
I'm honestly bothered whenever anyone makes the argument that liking Raimi's Spider-man over TASM is wrong, because both series get things wrong, and are thus equally bad, or that ASM is an improvement. The thing is that Raimi's Spider-man came out in the 2000s, when the X-men looked more like a boy band than a superhero team(and were proud of it), Doctor Doom had super powers, and Galactus was a set of angry looking clouds, and while Raimi's Spider-man was never perfect it stood head and shoulders above the competition (Except of course, for casting). The Amazing Spider-man...... doesn't have any of those things going for it.
Conversely, I'm honestly bothered whenever people say "Yeah, Spider-Man wasn't that good of a film by today's standards, but it was so much better than the other crap of the day" as an excuse for Raimi botching the casting, villains (well, the majority of the villains) and to be brutally honest, letting himself be too "Raimi" with his trademark bullshit camera angles and zooms(yet Bob find's JJ Abrams' lens flare so annoying) and intentionally hammy acting.

Just because the competition was worse doesn't make Spider-Man a great film.
 

badmunky64

New member
Sep 19, 2007
171
0
0
I kinda want this spider man series fail so that there might be a chance we'll get to see Spiderman join The Avengers.
 

Darth_Payn

New member
Aug 5, 2009
2,868
0
0
Mangod said:
Darth_Payn said:
Can Mavel please please PLEASE Retcon away that Green Goblin & Gwen thing? Not him killing her, that other thing. The one we dare not speak of without making out minds vomit.

And what's all this "Marvel not advancing through time" stuff? I thought they went through some big changes in recent years.
You mean that thing were Green Goblin got Gwen preggers? That thing?

And status quo is God; "changes" in comic books, especially Marvel and DC, are retconed once every 3-4 years, if not more often, to be as though they never happened.
BLEEEEEEERRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! HOOOOOOOWOOOOOOORFF!!! HUUUUUUUUURRRRROUGH!!! Oh my Jaysus, why is that allowed to exist?!
 

grey_space

Magnetic Mutant
Apr 16, 2012
455
0
0
Raesvelg said:
For some reason I've come to enjoy Bob's ongoing nerd-rage over the Amazing Spider-Man movies. Not because I think he's right; the first movie was a notable improvement on Raimi's disastrous Spider-Man 3, and for as many points as ASM missed, Raimi's series missed just as many and had horrifically bad casting on top of that.

Mostly I think it's just an entertaining window into someone's personal blind spots.
Thank you It's kinda how I feel about this. Spiderman 3 was a hot mess. Yes, 2 was good but personally I always found Tobey Maguire really fricking creepy more than anything else as both Peter Parker and Spiderman.

Garfield I feel kinda hits the nail on the head when it comes to both characters(to a greater extent than Maguire anyway).

While I like Kirsten Dunst as an actor and I feel she got the vulnerability of Mary Jane she completely missed the whole sassy, independent vivaciousness that I feel the character also portrays.

And dont talk to me about James Franco or putting a stupid mask over 'incredibly emotive face for the Green Goblin...
 

Trishbot

New member
May 10, 2011
1,318
0
0
Uriel_Hayabusa said:
As someone whose only experience with the Spider-Man franchise are some of the movies and some episodes of the cartoons, I'd definitely love to see more elaboration on what makes Mary Jane so compelling. She never struck me as that special from the things I've seen her in.
I'll take a personal stab at this.

I'll preface by saying, like any character, it depends on who writes her. Spider-man has had his ups and downs in terms of good character development, as well as Mary Jane.

Mary Jane also went through several annoying cycles where writers and editors in charge absolutely despised the idea of Spider-man having a long-lasting love interest or wife, and they purposefully wrote stories intended to showcase Mary Jane in a bad light (such as making her a smoker, demanding Peter quit being Spider-man, running out on him several times, etc.)

BUT, that's not the girl she was created to be. I read a book just yesterday from Stan Lee talking about how Mary Jane exists because she is THE one, single person in Spider-man's world that serves as the reader's eyes and ears for how a normal human being can relate to a superhero like him. She knows his secrets, she supports his heroics, she bandages his wounds and accepts the dangers her relationship brings. She is what Alfred is to Batman; she is his means of having a foothold in normality, his anchor to a semblance of a normal life.

Chiefly, however, she broke from the "love interest" stereotypes of the time. Where 90% of love interests just can't seem to figure out that Clark Kent is Superman or Bruce Wayne is Batman, Mary Jane figured it out all on her own in the comics, and so for years Peter kept making excuses and trying to pull the wool over her eyes and she went along with it, waiting for him to love her and trust her enough to tell her himself.

She also was a bit of a fake. She portrayed herself as a bit of a bimbo party girl, popular and sugary sweet... like nearly every other love interest of the time. Only it was soon revealed to just be an act, a ploy she used to cover up her insecurities and a terrible home life with an abusive father and neglectful mother. She ultimately liberated herself and lived with her aunt, but she drowned her pain in parties and dating.

This is further driven by the fact that, at first, Mary Jane and him weren't dating. He was in love with Gwen and Gwen was her best friend. When Gwen died in the comics, BOTH of them had just lost one of the most important people in their lives. Though Mary Jane was in love with Peter, she kept her distance after Gwen died to allow him time to grieve and move on, not wishing to ever be a rebound.

Ultimately, they did hook up. And, more shockingly, their relationship became pretty much rock solid. Stan Lee got them married, moving the Spider-man mythos into the next stage of Peter's life from high school student to college student to young adult career man to supporting husband, as he had always intended.

It was in that marriage that some of my favorite stories were told, with the two being the most believable married couple in comics. Mary Jane's life as wife and career girl became just as important as Spider-man's job as hero and husband. She was the one fixing up his shredded costumes, helping him cope with the stresses of work and heroics, and standing by him when no one else around him would.

Probably my favorite story was when The Chameleon figured out Peter Parker's identity, disguised himself as Peter, and went to his home to try and seduce/kidnap/kill Mary Jane. But despite looking and sounding like the man she loved, she knew him better, outsmarted him, and proceeded to beat him senseless with a baseball bat until her "hero" showed up to discover she had already saved the day.

Their relationship was honed and perfected further in the Spider-Girl series that explored their daughter becoming a heroine... which, in a twist, Peter didn't want her to do, while Mary Jane secretly encouraged her to do what she needed to do.

All of that was erased when Joe Quesada mandated the marriage be retconned in "One More Day", a story that practically every Spider-man fan agrees was the worst story ever written for the comic that was out of character for everyone involved in the story.

I ignore it. Spider-Girl serves as the logical canon that followed the marriage and its ups and downs. It was never perfect, but no marriage is, but it lasted because the two of them committed to each other like no individuals in comics have.

There's a reason Stan Lee STILL insists Mary Jane is the only one for Peter (and why his newspaper Spider-man comic keeps them married). No other character in Peter's life has meant as much and worked so hard for him in return.

The_Darkness said:
Anyway - Bob, that hint you dropped of doing a "Comics Are Weird" episode on Mary-Jane? Do that. PLEASE. Given that she's almost a second protagonist for large chunks of Spidey canon (no matter how hard Marvel tries to get rid of her), I'd love to see your thoughts on her background - both in and out of universe.
As I mentioned above, I was pleasantly surprised to read a book by Stan Lee the other day, written fairly recently, about how Stan Lee insists Mary Jane is an essential part of Spider-man's life and his single, most important connection to a normal life. No matter what any editors say, or what retcons they do, Mary Jane remains the second most important character in the Spider-man series.

I REALLY hope they can do her justice in the next movies. No offense to the Raimi trilogy, but Mary Jane was hardly in as much danger in the comics; she was smart enough, resourceful enough, and stubborn enough to get herself out of plenty of binds without Spider-man's help.
 

faefrost

New member
Jun 2, 2010
1,280
0
0
The paradox with Gwen Stacey is she, like several other major comic character deaths, was and always will be far more interesting dead then alive. Dead she drove the story and provided meaning to the hero. She joins a short list of characters who really and truly were better off dead.

Barry Allen's Flash. Lets be honest with ourselves. Barry Allen is a nice guy. But for the fastest man alive he was boring as hell. There was nothing going on internally there. he was a true hero in every aspect of the word. His sacrifice led to a much better story. That of his much more deeply flawed sidekick Wally West taking up the mantle and struggling in every way with living up to Barry's memory and example. Wally was interesting. Wally was human. Bringing Barry back and then finally just wiping Wally from continuity was just the height of fanboy dullness. Because it once was so must it always be and always return to. The even sadder thing with Barry Allen was there was never any clear reason to bring him back. Because of the weird time looping nature of his life or death he was still available for short use if needed for a story.

Jason Todd's Robin. Dear Gods! Jason alive was a painfully awful character. In at least two separate incarnations. So much so that the fans voted to kill the little sh@t. Dead he was a driving force on Batman's psyche. Something both pushing him further into the darkness and holding him back. A narrow line that could snap at any moment. It added to the characters around him. Returning him as the "Red Hood". Like a poor mans Punisher ripoff. Ugh! No weight. No consequence. Nothing good came out of it.

Bucky. Bucky's death haunted and drove Captain America for years. Plus it was Stan Lee's ultimate FU to the very concept of "kid sidekicks" and child endangerment. It set the boundaries not just for the individual character, but the entire universe. 'Kids Do Not Belong in This Game!" Now to be fair, Brubakers return of Bucky in The winter Soldier was probably the most brilliant and succesful of all of these major character resurrections. Just as Gwen's death was a soft reboot of Spiderman, Bucky's rebirth was for Captain America. Brubaker never took away the loss, the sacrifice or the danger of the characters initial death. If anything he amped it up and added to its overall weight. The fact that both in comics and in our world everyone had almost 50 years between the events did not hurt. But it still had effects that did not outweigh the power and purpose of having the character die and leaving them dead.

Jean Grey, Pheonix. Ugh! Probably the second most powerful single comic death story after Death of Gwen Stacey. and by far the absolute worst Resurrection, and death again, and resurrection, and death again etc etc etc. Granted the character is called Pheonix, but damn. It is almost the best case study of the inmates running the asylum. Fans in house could not let go, and hence marketing kept bringing her back.

And then there is Gwen Stacey. Literally brought back because the editor in chief liked her better than the more developed and maturing better known Spidey Significant other. And brought back via a literal deal with the devil. Her return in comics was perhaps the biggest screw you to three full generations of comic fans in order to appease a handful of aging baby boomers who wanted the world back the way it was. There is so much social commentary and so much of an unwanted deep reveal of the current state of our society reflected there that it really is disturbing.

I kind of hope she dies in this movie. (Not that I plan on paying to see it in the theater. I am more than a little sick of Sony giving me the same recycled story over and over and over.) At least then maybe just maybe one run of the movies or Spiderman in some media will be allowed to grow a bit. (Ah who am I kidding this one will be rebooted with a new edgy hispanic black gay jewish kid or somesuch as Spiderman within 18 months tops. Just because the marketing department will go and get drunk again. (probably the same three day bender that leads to the creation of "Silk"!))
 

JMac85

New member
Nov 1, 2007
89
0
0
The only thing I'm excited about is the possibility of this franchise failing spectacularly, so Sony pictures would be forced to liquidate their assets, allowing Marvel/Disney to get the Spider-Man rights back.
 

twosage

New member
Oct 22, 2013
61
0
0
This is a really great video, Bob.

I've seen TASM2, but Gwen's status in the comics is much much more interesting. Of course, the video's right: Gwen isn't an amazing character in her own right, but she becomes one after her death, in a sense, because of her effect on Peter. One of my favorite Gwen-Related stories is in Alex Ross's Earth X. A much older Peter Parker is sucked into an illusion that is supposed to reflect a person's greatest wish. May Parker (the grown-up daughter of Peter and Mary Jane) goes in to save him and sees her father's ideal world: Her father is married to Gwen Stacy, her mother is married to Harry Osborn, and she does not exist. Instead, Peter has a blond-haired son named Ben who grows up to be the second Spider-Man. It's brutal and beautiful and tragic to see a daughter face the simple fact that she (and her mother) were the second choice by default. Gwen Stacy was Peter's one true love (at least that's what he believes). This idea has been repeated several times in other "what if" style stories like M-Day. I'm sure Earth X wasn't the first to touch on it.

Peter Parker's flaws are what make him such an interesting guy. He struggles with the guilt of his failures and punishes himself more than anyone else ever could. When you read the history of Spider-Man in broad terms, it's not just the tragedy of losing Gwen in the first place that hurts, but the ongoing trauma of longing for her that undercuts his relationships with Harry, as well as his later-girlfriend/wife/whatever-she-is-now and their daughter of complicated-canonical-nature. The Green Goblin doesn't drive MJ and May away, Peter does. It's great stuff.

(I haven't read the thread yet, I just wanted to comment on Bob's video first. If I comment again, it will be once I've gotten caught up. Forgive me if this retreads ground someone has already covered.)
 

Evonisia

Your sinner, in secret
Jun 24, 2013
3,257
0
0
Eh, I don't really get the impression that people will care about the characters all that much going into the new Spiderman anyway. Gwen Stacy, dead or not, will have little impact on the audience's impression of the film.
 

Mangod

Senior Member
Feb 20, 2011
829
0
21
malestrithe said:
MatParker116 said:
Where the hell can they go with these spin off movies without giving Marvel reason to revoke there licence?
Disney wanted to make a Spider-Man cartoon. Sony was the obstacle preventing that because the license at the time gave Sony control of every Spider-Man appearance outside the comic books. So, Sony and Disney renegotiated the license that allowed Sony to keep the movie license in exchange for the television portion of it.

Basically, Sony has the Spider-Man movie license as long as they keep using the characters. They could keep making "bad" movies from here on out, but as long as they use the franchise, it remains in Sony's hands. Sony will not give up on it until a string of movies are not profitable, which will never happen. As long as production costs are down to about 100 million dollars, it will be profitable worldwide.

I am sorry, but you are going to have to get used to the idea that Spider-Man is not going to appear in the current popular vision of a Cinematic Universe anytime soon.
What really pisses me off about this is that, Civil War sucking aside, as long as Spider-Man and X-Men remains outside of Disney's control, I'll never get to see this acted out on the big screen:



Or this:




Which peeves me off something fierce!
 

twosage

New member
Oct 22, 2013
61
0
0
Windknight said:
Andrew Siribohdi said:
Windknight said:
To put it simply, being female and not having powers are, individually, good signs your death is permanent... put them together, and its almost guaranteed, especially if its going to be a big motivational point for a male hero (look up 'women in refrigerators' for lots of examples).
...Except even now, civilian deaths can be retconned to never have happened. Remember Aunt May and the whole Mephisto and One More Day stuff?

That's the thing; how can ANY major character death stay permanent?
If the creative staff don't want to bring them back/don't care enough to bring them back. And again, being female, and having no powers are two pretty good indicators your not coming back.

As for ret-conning... lets look at Lian Harper, the four year old daughter of DC supehero Arsenal, who's death for pure shock value was widely derided, and with the news of the New 52 making the story that killed her having not happened in the New 52 gave hope that her death would be retconned... instead her whole existence was retconned.
As much as I get tired of stuff like this, if I was magic-wanded into an editorial position at Marvel, I'd have plans to revive Ben Reilly on everyone's desk within the hour...