Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby TheSyrupNugget » Wed Aug 24, 2016 6:27 am

I actually like this casting choice. Zendaya's got the right tall, willowy look for a girl who's going to grow up to be a model/actress (albeit, an unsuccessful one in MJ's case iirc) one day, for one thing. I don't think she'd look bad at all with dyed red hair. I've never seen anything she's done, acting-wise, but Marvel has a pretty good track record for casting accuracy.

I dunno, I can get behind it.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby DoglovingJim » Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:44 pm

Grimstone wrote:
gregfrankenstein wrote:I've gotten to the point with casting controversies where I can't be bothered either way. Make an all-sloth version of the Godfather for all I care.


The Amazing Spider-Sloth, worst case scenario: it sucks and you have to wait a year or two before they reboot again.

Edit: So, I googled Spider-Sloth

Spoiler: show
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Spoiler: show
Image

Apparently, it's not a new idea.


Honestly, I'd rather see this Spider-Sloth thing. If instead of Peter Parker becoming spider-man it was a random sloth. Becoming a hero for a species that isn't his own, and instead of the stupid high-school setting you got like a zoo where he is a zoo exhibit. And to be Spider-Sloth he has to escape the zoo without the zookeepers knowing, trying to keep his identity secret from one grizzled ex-cop zookeeper that is hot on his trail and quickly connecting the dots.

He decides to become a champion of humanity, a species that often violently oppresses his own. And not to benefit from it in any way, but simply because protecting the innocent is the right thing to do.

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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Aquila89 » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:54 pm

Aquila89 wrote:At Comic-Con, it was announced that Zendaya would be playing a character named Michelle. She described her character as " she's very smart, very intellectual, always in her books". Which is nothing like Mary Jane. So, if we have a character who looks nothing like Mary Jane in the comics and acts nothing like Mary Jane in the comics - why call her Mary Jane?


An update: Zendaya has said that she's not playing Mary Jane, but Michelle, an original character who isn't Peter's love interest.

The movie is still doing what I described though, with Ned Leeds. Based on the trailers, Ned is Asian, Peter's classmate in high school and knows that he's Spider-Man. In the comics, none of those things applied to Ned Leeds, who was a white blonde and Peter's colleague at the Daily Bugle. It's not that I'm upset by this, but I really don't see the point of calling a character Ned Leeds when he's nothing like Ned Leeds.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Grimstone » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:06 am

Aquila89 wrote:At Comic-Con, it was announced that Zendaya would be playing a character named Michelle. She described her character as " she's very smart, very intellectual, always in her books". Which is nothing like Mary Jane. So, if we have a character who looks nothing like Mary Jane in the comics and acts nothing like Mary Jane in the comics - why call her Mary Jane?


Aquila89 wrote:An update: Zendaya has said that she's not playing Mary Jane, but Michelle, an original character who isn't Peter's love interest.


Aquila89 wrote:At Comic-Con, it was announced that Zendaya would be playing a character named Michelle.



Aquila89 wrote:The movie is still doing what I described though, with Ned Leeds. Based on the trailers, Ned is Asian, Peter's classmate in high school and knows that he's Spider-Man. In the comics, none of those things applied to Ned Leeds, who was a white blonde and Peter's colleague at the Daily Bugle. It's not that I'm upset by this, but I really don't see the point of calling a character Ned Leeds when he's nothing like Ned Leeds.


Maybe a different hair color/skin tone isn't a threat to Ned Leeds' identity. The only reason to be so much of a stickler for such superficial traits as far as I can tell is historical accuracy but this is a movie about fictional characters and not, say, a documentary so..
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Aquila89 » Wed Mar 29, 2017 3:56 pm

I don't see your point. Yes, at first (in July 2016) it was announced that Zendaya will play Michelle. Then in August came the rumors that her character is actually Mary Jane; that's when I made my first comment. Then Zendaya specifically denied those rumors in November. This is in the article I linked.

When Zendaya initially joined Spider-Man: Homecoming, she was reported to be playing fellow high school student Michelle. Then, one report revealed that she is secretly playing Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man’s longtime love in the comics. After months of fan discussion over the rumored casting, Zendaya herself said she is not playing the love interest and is has once again publicly stated she is not M.J.


The skin tone and hair color are the least important part. Yes, those aren't a threat to Ned Leeds's identity; but making him Peter's schoolmate and secret keeper is.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby iMURDAu » Wed Mar 29, 2017 4:44 pm

Dammit Aquila these are the compromises that we have to live with. Otherwise we'd be looking down the barrel of a Sinister Six movie that absolutely nobody was asking for. Ego is Kurt Russell, Ultron was a one hit wonder, The Mandarin wasn't Ben Kingsley unless you're me and think the whole thing was a layered ruse, Pepper and Jane seem to not be around Tony and Thor unless the story needs them to play a larger role than "she existed in this place, at this time". Don Cheadle isn't Terrance Howard but I'm supposed to believe they're one and the same.

All this along with the different actors playing Howard Stark it isn't imo a big deal to twist a comic character into something else on the screen for the Cinematic Universe.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Aquila89 » Wed Mar 29, 2017 5:31 pm

Again, I'm not upset. I just find it odd that they're using the name Ned Leeds when the character they're adapting for the screen seems to be Ganke Lee.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Matthew Notch » Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:36 pm

Casting controversy, oooh aaah! It didn't occur to me until I actually saw the film that, yeah, a high school in Queens is gonna have a lot of brown skin just by default. So there's actually a solid reason to have changed so many of the aspects of these different characters, and while perhaps it would have been more interesting to just make new characters who aren't named after existing individuals in an existing universe... meh. I totally don't care. I don't need Ned to be anyone to enjoy Spider-Man, and I've yet to hear any Spider Fan say Spider-Man is nothing without his main man Ned. And Mary Jane is maybe a little more important but you know, the way comics go, if the movies want to completely rewrite "history" then please, by all means, do it. I think it's safe to say that Marvel has stopped claiming to make "adaptations" and has just started writing new stories (such as they are) with existing mythological figures, and that's good because some of those existing myths are just terrible.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Blackfish » Sat Jul 22, 2017 4:00 pm

Spoiler: show
She might not necessarily be Mary Jane Watson, but apparently she is "MJ". I had forgotten about this whole thing and really liked Zendaya in the movie but this part annoyed me a bit. I dunno why scriptwriters still think this kind of name reveal is a good idea. It was dumb when it was done with Blofeld in Spectre and it didn't work with Benedict Khanberbatch in Into Darkness.


DoglovingJim wrote:But it's Iron Man, not Iron Woman?

I'm just low-key salty it wasn't "Iron Maiden".
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby 52xMax » Sat Jul 22, 2017 8:05 pm

Spoiler: show
The only thing that annoyed me about the movie was her character. Having no idea who this Zendaya person is before the fact, I just assumed she was the other girl, who's actually loosely based on Liz Allan from the comics. Personally I didn't mind the color swaps at all, and while I think it was a bit dumb that unlike every single other high school movie ever made the characters don't use their surnames (except for 'penis' Parker), it was worth it if only for that reveal, which I would've characterize as cheap and lazy writing, except it was really well made. The character of Michelle is just there to be annoying and make 'clever' quips about how 'woke' she is, though. And just because she suddenly makes up her own nickname in the end we're supposed to sympathize? GTFO. Never mind Blofeld and Khan, since we knew all along it was going to be them. The name drop on this movie felt more shoehorned than even Joseph Gordon Levitt's middle name being 'Robin' at the end of Dark Knight Rises.

This is the first time I hear about Ganke, and it sounds like they took a page from the Supergirl TV show (where they made Jimmy Olsen Guardian and Toyman's son gets to be the Jimmy), but I think it was clever to give Spidey a sidekick like that even if he was borrowed from Miles Morales. I'm also glad to see that the movies are finally making use of the vast repertoire of supporting characters from the comics (even if they are retooled) rather than just giving us the Parkers and the Osbornes yet again. Speaking of Miles, I hope you all caught the reference to him when the Prowler (Donald Glover) said he had a nephew living in that neighborhood. And hey, who knows? Maybe in a future movie we get to see Miles, and he has a white friend called Ganke that becomes the Hobgoblin.
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Re: Zendaya is Mary Jane Watson in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Postby Matthew Notch » Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:16 am

I can see why she would have annoyed you some, specifically you :) but I don't think it was so incredibly distracting necessarily--she was just pretty confident in her own skin. I don't think I have a strong opinion on her character one way or the other. Now if they'd given her pink hair... mmboy, that would be cause for rage.
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