The following article contains a spoiler for Spider-Man: Homecoming, in the last paragraph.
Spider-Man: Homecoming hits cinemas this week, and the good news is that it’s ridiculously funny and charming, a sort of John Hughes teen movie in superhero duds. If you imagine Weird Science but with a guy wearing a onesie, you’re halfway there – and come to think of it, Robert Downey Jr appears in both films so that’s sort of perfect. But what you’re really going to low-key love about the film is the way its young female characters, played by Laura Harrier and Zendaya, emerge independent of Spider-Man’s shadow as two of the coolest characters of the year.
First of all, here’s what they don’t do. They don’t get kidnapped and hang about screaming for help. They don’t get used as bargaining chips or – mild spoiler – killed off so that Our Hero has a reason to feel bad. They don’t generally need Spider-Man’s help, in fact, but emerge as smart, independent women with their own lives. Liz (Harrier) and Michelle (Zendaya) both attend the same Midtown Science And Technology School as Peter Parker / Spider-Man (Tom Holland), and it’s clearly a school for the big of brain. It therefore seems logical that Liz and Michelle would be high-achievers in their own right, leading lights on the school’s Academic Decathlon team who hang around with Peter only because he’s bright enough to be of interest.
While Zendaya’s had more attention on the promotional tour it’s Harrier’s Liz who’s really the film’s female lead. She’s pretty, she’s popular and she’s the subject of numerous crushes – but she’s also very ambitious. This girl isn’t focused on becoming Prom Queen or leading a cheerleading squad but on getting ahead in life. She’s not just on the Academic Decathlon team: she’s the captain. But neither is she a ‘nerd’: she gossips with her friends, plays shag-marry-kill about the Avengers and throws a heck of a party. She even rolls her eyes at her dad, takes selfies and sneaks off for illicit swimming parties the night before a big test, proving that she is not averse to fun. It’s a break from the stereotype of the uptight overachieving girl, but not the blandly perfect golden girl stereotype either. Liz works hard for her success, and while she’s privileged she’s not living in a bubble.
But it’s the quieter, darkly humourous Michelle who’s maybe even more interesting. She’s averse to make-up (but then she looks like Zendaya so who needs it?) and shows no obvious interest in her personal appearance. Instead she’s generally to be found with a stack of books at hand, or sketching her fellows when they’re down on their luck (“I like to draw people in crisis”). On a school trip to Washington, she aims to fit in a spot of embassy protesting; when offered the chance to visit the Washington Monument she declines because it was built by slaves. This is what “cool” looks like to teens of today: someone of passionate conviction, someone who follows their own rules rather than the crowd, someone who can’t be intimidated. It’s immensely refreshing to see someone like this outshining a superhero with her ferocity.
This is all a contrast to Spider-Man’s on-screen ladies in the past. Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Parker in 2002’s Spider-Man may have had a cool upside-down kiss but there’s no denying that she was pretty wet– and not just because it was raining. She kept looking vaguely disappointed in the world, or in Peter, and she just wouldn’t stop getting kidnapped and kicked about by villains. None of that was Dunst’s fault, but the way she was written wasn’t nearly fiery enough for MJ, a comic-book heroine who figured out Spider-Man’s identity on her own, and who embodied the free-spirited ‘60s. MJ should be funny, cool and a little outrageous – the extrovert to match Peter Parker’s slightly introverted personality. And this Mary Jane was always a little too sweet.
Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey, in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, was a little better. She had sizzling chemistry with Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker (reflecting their real life relationship) and seemed to have her own sparky personality. But they made a fundamental error by casting her as a character called ‘Gwen Stacey’ – not least because Stone’s general screen and real-life persona is a 100% match to the comics’ Mary Jane. The real problem, as any Spider-fan can tell you, is a very famous comic called “The Death Of Gwen Stacey”. You basically can’t have that character around and not kill her off, it’s so well-known – and sure enough, in 2014’s sequel, she died. But her death left the franchise with nowhere to go. There was no other love interest who could have measured up to the Stone/Garfield chemistry: Shailene Woodley was rumoured as MJ, but they wisely realised she couldn’t compete. Yet if they’d called Stone Mary Jane in the first place we’d probably still be watching Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man franchise. It’s one of the great missed casting choices of the last few years.
So thank goodness they got better female characters this time, and didn’t write themselves into any painful corners. Now we come to the spoilers – so skip the next paragraph if you’re avoiding them. Just enjoy the film when you see it and look out for the women giving Spidey a run for his money.
Are they gone?
Towards the very end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Michelle reveals that she prefers to be called MJ, establishing Zendaya as the character who is – in the comics – Spider-Man’s best friend, true love and eventual wife. It’s a bold and brilliant reimagining of the 1960s original: if a ‘cool girl’ back then was a model in go-go boots and a mini, then Zendaya’s DGAF, artistic, bookworm, Black Lives Matter supporter (probably) is what a cool teen rebel looks like now. We’ve come a long way, and we can’t wait to see where this MJ goes next.