So Much for Distancing Yourself From Raimi - Spider-Man Sequel to Feature Mary Jane Watson & Harry Osborn
Wed, October 10, 2012 
Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborn were two vital components to Spider-Man lore and had big roles in the Sam Raimi iteration. So when The Amazing Spider-Man came along, it was all about starting over anew. Don't bring on direct comparison unless it's unavoidable like Uncle Ben's death. So the new Peter Parker was an asshole, douchebag loner with no friends. Hence no Harry and Gwen Stacey, one of Parker's early loves from the comics and memorable only for her infamous death at the hands of the Green Goblin, is the new love-interest. It helped that they hired Emma Stone, who had great chemistry with Andrew Garfield during and between takes.
Even with those changes, which had to be made, it still drew ire for retreading territory covered before (and better) by Raimi. Per Variety, those criticisms won't end for the untitled sequel. MJ and Pete's best-frenemy are returning.
Shailene Woodley (quite good in The Descendants and whose weekly drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager was just announced to end – timing!) is in talks for Mary Jane. No word on Harry and rumor-mill also pegs Electro as one of the new baddies. That I like - a weird Kingpin/Electro amalgam was the heavy in James Cameron's 1993 "scriptment" for you trivia nerds out there. Then again, implementing Harry and the looming shadow of Norman Osborn in Amazing Spider-Man (who the filmmakers chicken-shittedly implied wasn't harassing Curt Connors in that jail-cell when it clearly was) suggests they'll settle on someone for Green Goblin.
So... are we going to pretend this isn't lazy? Judging by the reaction, that's a bingo.
Reader Comments (1)
I know that Webb had the entire franchise and it's characters to play with, so I wasn't worried. But it seems that he's going the route of playing it safe with characters that will pull in some form of demographic. If we have Harry Osborn & Mary Jane in the picture, what does this mean for the Gwen Stacey character? Will she be dying at the hands of the Goblin, and MJ will be there to console Peter? It seems like a hint at that, but hey, we've been wrong before. But then again, we thought we were going to get the story that was never told of Peter Parker in Webb's first movie and we saw how that went... sigh. -Bruce