Captain America: Civil War was released over a month ago and fans are still reeling in glee from what may be the best entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Aside from the impressively grounded plot and superb pacing of the film, a few individual performances managed to successfully steal the show and delight comic fans. Perhaps the best of these was the debut of Tom Holland's Peter Parker/Spider-Man, who finally entered the MCU. Unfortunately, it turns out that Russian audiences weren't so thrilled with Spidey, and for good reason.
Russian audiences are reportedly very unhappy with the voice actor who dubbed Spider-Man in Russian. The actor apparently sounded extremely young, which ruined the coolness of Spidey and the ability for the audience to take the character seriously. The dubbed Spider-Man sounds as young as 10 years old, rather than a witty and wise-cracking teenager that Peter Parker is meant to be.
This outrage and disappointment with Peter Parker's Russian dub has led to Russian audiences starting a petition on change.org urging the studio to change the voice actor for future installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the point of writing this story, the petition has garnered a total of 1,188 supporters out of the goal 1,5000 signatures.
Spider-Man's strangely young voice presumably was rather distracting when Russian moviegoers finally got to see Captain America: Civil War. Both international and domestic audiences had been eagerly awaiting Civil War, which was built on eight years of films and character development. After seeing the previous 12 films, having one factor throw off the big airport fight would be infuriating.
Additionally, MCU fans had been waiting for Spider-Man to join the universe for a long time. Marvel's deal with Sony was cause for celebration, and the almost complete lack of Spidey in Civil War's marketing material only served to build up anticipation for the web slinger. So for the voice not to match the actor would probably drive me bananas, too.
Personally, I'm dying to hear the strange 10-year old voice in Civil War. While I can empathize with audiences, it's hard to truly understand their frustration without hearing the ridiculous voice for myself. Tom Holland's performance has been referred to as perhaps the best part of the movie, so it's hard to imagine a version of Captain America: Civil War where Spider-Man wasn't utterly awesome. But with much of Peter Parker's screen time occurring while in the Spidey costume, I'd imagine a child voice would really take me out of the moment.
Of course, we'll continue to update you as more signatures accumulate, and if it actually affects positive change in the Russian dub of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America: Civil War is still in theaters, so if you want to see Spidey done right make sure you fly into the movies soon.
