NextActionHero
Junior Member
I haven't read all the posts, I'm just offering my reasons for voting no on Gwen Stacy making an appearance in the recent Spider-Man movies.
First of all, the filmmakers have opted to omit Gwen Stacy and go right to Mary Jane Watson. The key word here is "omit." The place in time where Gwen Stacy would fit into Peter Parker's life has passed, and to add her in now would only confuse things. Green Goblin is dead, and Spider-Man actually rescued Mary Jane in the film from a situation similar to the one that ended in Gwen Stacy's death. The Green Goblin also ended up impaled on his glider, as he was in the comics when confronting an enraged Spider-Man. So all the elements of Gwen Stacy's death have been presented, only without Gwen Stacy. To have Gwen's death on the conscience of Spider-Man is probably a lot for kids and casual fans to take, as Gwen Stacy is known primarily by comic book fans and that's about it.
I've never seen Gwen appear in cartoons or any other media other than the pages of Marvel Comics, whereas the same cannot be said for Mary Jane, Flash Thompson, J. Jonah Jameson, John Jameson, Joe Robertson, Betty Brant, etc. Gwen Stacy is treated like a dirty secret when it comes to Spider-Man making the leap to any medium other than comic books.
Ben Parker's death, until the first movie, was generally an off-screen event, a shocking discovery for Peter Parker to turn to fighting crime. But Gwen's death happened right in front of the reader, and it seems as though it is Spider-Man's fault that she died because he snagged her with his web and snapped her neck. Fairly intense in comics, so could you imagine live action? The person who got their image of Spider-Man from media other than comic books would be saying, "Who's that? I never knew about a girlfriend who died." So I can see the logic to omit Gwen Stacy, even if I don't necessarily agree with it.
If the filmmakers had wanted to use the Gwen Stacy character, she should have been set up in the first movie and killed in the second, thus setting up Mary Jane for the remaining films. Kirsten Dunst could have easily played either role, by the way. She's actually a blonde.
But given where the movies have taken Peter Parker's life (the films have basically "caught up" to the comics in a short time), Gwen Stacy just will not fit in this retelling of the Spider-Man mythology. These films are more like cartoons than faithful comic book adaptations. I'd imagine there will be restarts a la Batman Begins in the future, so I could see Gwen finally being portrayed onscreen in another film or television series, but not this continuity.