Over the years, the amazing Spider-Man has been a brainy Caucasian teenager, a mixed –race hero with African-American and Latino roots, single, married, and – most recently – deceased. So its safe to assume that Marvel has little issue with changing the core identities of Peter Parker and his masked alter ego. But does that mean mainstream comic book collectors and those who come to movies based on superhero titles are ready for the first gay Spider-Man?
It’s a question raised by Andrew Garfield, the young British actor who played Spider-Man in Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man and is preparing to do so once again in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. As part of its Comic-Con preview coverage, EW spoke to the actor and director about the upcoming adventures of old Web head, during which Garfield wondered aloud if Peter’s love interest, Mary Jane “MJ” Watson, could be a guy instead of a fiery redheaded girl.
“I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ,” Garfield tells EW. “And I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”
So THAT’S why Sony had to remove Shailene Woodley from The Amazing Spider-Man 2! They’re going to recast the role with a male actor. And Garfield even has an actor in mind. He tells EW:
“I’ve been obsessed with Michael B. Jordan since The Wire. He’s so charismatic and talented. It’d be even better—we’d have interracial bisexuality!”
That would turn heads, for sure. Will it happen? Unlikely. While comic book writers and artists have had flexibility to explore different sides of the men who have been tapped to play Spider-Man over the years, there’s not enough time to switch gears so drastically in a single film series, where it takes years to build up a stable franchise. Webb already has laid serious groundwork for his current Spider-Man franchise to build on the budding relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) – even while Mary Jane is being held in the wings for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and beyond to be a love interest in (and when) Stacy is killed off … hopefully by The Green Goblin. I mean, just look at this chemistry!
Could movie audiences be ready for a bisexual Spidey somewhere down the line? Sure. But I don’t think that will be part of Sony’s announcements from the stage in Hall H at Comic-Con next week. Expect a trailer and footage from the cast and crew of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with as much breaking news as you can handle. We’ll have all of it for you, so keep it here, Spider-Man fans.
