The Amazing Spider-Man 2, like nearly every other big movie coming out in the next year, is making its way to San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, and we're still trying to figure out what surprises just-wrapped superhero sequel might offers us. Turns out, though, that one of its stars might have already let the cat out of the bag…. but not the Black Cat. Talking to View London, Felicity Jones admitted "it's all quite shrouded in secrecy," but admitted that she plays "the Goblin's girlfriend. I'm in a relationship with him, and his accomplice. I'm on the dark side."
If by "the Goblin" she means "the Green Goblin"-- and we can't imagine why she wouldn't-- that likely makes her character Lily Hollister, Harry Osborn's girlfriend who comes in contact with the Goblin serum that turns Harry's father into the original Green Goblin and becomes a villainess of her own called Menace (h/t The Playlist for making that connection). Dane DeHaan is set to play Harry in the film, but with Chris Cooper also on board as Norman Osborn, there wasn't much reason to believe that Harry himself would transform into the Green Goblin in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (if you remember, it took until the end of Spider-Man 3 for that transformation to happen for James Franco's Harry Osborn). Some recent rumors even suggested that Norman Osborn himself wouldn't make the transformation into the Green Goblin in the new film-- and with Jamie Foxx as Electro and Paul Giamatti as The Rhino, there are more than enough villains for Spidey to face without the Osborns coming in to muck things up.
The most common rumors about Jones's character suggested she would play Black Cat, another villainess character, but one who also wouldn't likely have much time to develop in the already-crowded cast of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In this post-Mandarin world fans are right to be skeptical about the information that superhero movies are feeding them ahead of time, and we've long suspected that there's more going on in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 than just an overload of villains, Spider-Man 3 style. Our resident Spider-Man fanatic Sean O'Connell has been laying out a theory that director Marc Webb is mapping out a massive Spider-Man universe beginning with this film, and the recent confirmation of two more sequels sure suggests that. But if Jones is right, and she's playing the girlfriend of Harry Osborn's Green Goblin, that means they're kicking off the Spidey universe with a massive change from canon, having Harry become the Goblin before his father does. Here's Sean, brought in special from a flight to San Diego, to explain why that's weird:
"If you are going to do The Green Goblin in a Spider-Man story, you need to start with Norman Osborn. The reason Norman's son Harry gets into a Goblin suit in the first place is to avenge his father's death at Spider-Man's hands. To change that linear narrative is to drastically change Spidey canon -- which is possible, but ill-advised. I'm not sure why you'd do the Goblin and START with Harry, but I guess we'll see what motivations are presented if this, in fact, is the direction this franchise chooses to go."
Is this radical departure from canon really happening? Is Jones giving us some Marion Cotillard-style misdirection? We're hoping for answers to that and a whole lot more at Comic-Con this weekend, so stay tuned as our Con coverage kicks off today.
