[This post was originally published at Bitch Flicks.]
I have now seen The Redundant Amazing Spider-man twice in theaters – the first time with friends, and the second time with my brothers when it was a rainy day and we didn’t have time to see The Dark Knight Rises. I liked the film more than the previous Spider-man movies, largely because of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, but I also liked the film’s treatment of Gwen Stacy.
Women in superhero movies don’t often get much to do. If they’re not completely invented for the film for the sake of throwing a bone to female viewers (Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins), they’re left in the role of damsel in distress who do nothing but get into trouble and get rescued (Mary Jane Watson in the original Spider-man trilogy). Female superheroes and anti-heroes, like the Black Widow in The Avengers or Catwoman in Batman Returns and The Dark Knight Rises, are more complex, but if you’re not a hero and simply dating one, forget it – no good characterization for you.
That is, unless you’re Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-man. (Note: I haven’t read the comics and this post will only talk about Gwen in the film.)
Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy
As far as superhero love interests go, Gwen Stacy is very cool. Here are three reasons why:
1) She’s intelligent for her own sake, not just for Peter’s.
In The Amazing Spider-man, Gwen Stacy is a student at Midtown Science High School with Peter Parker, as well as an intern at OsCorp. She’s gifted in the field of science, hard-working, and has a good sense of humor, gently ribbing Peter after Flash Thompson beats him up in front of the school.
But she doesn’t come across as the Token Smart Female, the one-dimensional character archetype who’s thrown in the story so the hero can have a love interest and the female viewers can stop complaining about lack of female representation. She’s smart in a way that makes sense to the character and to the plot. Of course Gwen Stacy is smart; she’s a student at a magnet high school! She’s also shown researching and working at her computer in several different scenes, and the direction indicates that she’s a girl with an active life outside of Peter Parker and Spider-man. We don’t get to see much of it, but we can tell it’s there.
Gwen in the halls of Midtown Science High School
2. Gwen helps save the day.
The main hero of the movie is, of course, Spider-man/Peter Parker himself, as it should be – it’s his name in the title, after all. But I was pleasantly surprised to see how active Gwen was in the plot of the film. When the Lizard tried to turn all of New York City into reptile-people, Gwen was the one who cooked the antidote. Captain Stacy passed it to Spider-man, who released the antidote in the air and cured not only the people of New York, but Dr. Connors/The Lizard himself.
Again, I’m not used to seeing the superhero love interest take an active role in saving the world. Spider-man could not have saved the world without Gwen’s help. She wasn’t just a participant in Spider-man’s plot; she played a vital role – and she did it using her brain and applied knowledge.
Gwen working at OsCorp
3. Gwen has Peter Parker’s number.
I loved that Peter told Gwen about his secret identity halfway through the movie. It felt like a fresh take on the story to have the love interest learn of the hero’s identity early in the story. But I groaned near the end of the movie where [spoiler alert!] a dying Captain Stacy asked Peter not to involve Gwen in his heroics anymore. I could see the plot of the next film playing before my eyes: Gwen would have hurt feelings that Peter was ignoring her, and there would be a Classic Misunderstanding between the two of them until the very end of the movie.
I should have given the screenwriters more credit. It takes about sixty seconds for Gwen to realize what’s going on after Peter tells her he can’t see her anymore. She understands very quickly that her father must have asked Peter to stay away from her and keep her safe. She doesn’t like it, but she gets it.
Gwen and Peter (Andrew Garfield)
I’m happy that The Amazing Spider-man made Gwen Stacy an actual character instead of turning her into a nameless, faceless love interest. I hope the writers continue with Gwen’s strong characterization and put equal care and attention into writing Mary Jane Watson, if and when they introduce her. (And if they can have a red-haired Emma Stone play Mary Jane as well, that would be great, because Emma Stone makes everything better.)
Blog Posts
Interviews
Novels, Fiction & Silliness
Reviews
Ironic that Katie Holmes’ Rachel was put in “Batman Begins” for female viewers, because I hated that character. She was obnoxiously self-righteous.
I thought Rachel Dawes was put in because they didn’t want to put Harvey Dent in Batman Begins.
The way they made Gwen Stacy’s character was one my favorite parts of the movie and really does set it apart from the original trilogy.
I haven’t yet seen Amazing Spider-Man, so I can’t comment on that – though Gwen Stacey being a good character sounds like another reason it’s a film worth me spending my hard-earned to go and see.
But I’d like to tentatively posit that she’s not alone in being a well-written female character in the latest crop of Marvel superhero flicks. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that the women of Joss Whedon’s Avengers were all interesting as characters. (There just weren’t very many of them, which was a shame.)
A couple of these characters were new to that film – Maria Hill notably. But rather than Avenger’s simply reflecting Joss Whedon’s celebrated feminist credentials, I think the lead-in films were also mostly positive in their portrayals of women.
The film Thor stands out particularly for me. The love interest played by Natalie Portman was in many ways as much the main character as Thor himself. Her fight to continue her research motivates about as much of the plot as does Thor’s issues with his dad and brother. She’s allowed to have a character beyond representing ‘the fairer sex’ encouraging Thor to see the error of his ways. She acts on her own motivations. In addition, there’s two sexually-attractive female characters featured prominently (Sif and Darcey) who – gasp – aren’t there to compete for Thor’s affections or in fact be romantically motivated in any way. With Sif, I know this is a big departure from the comics, incidentally, where she was created (in-universe and out-) to be The Rival to Jane for Thor’s love. Thor’s mum is a cool presence – it might have been nice if she got a bit more to do, and if Thor’s storyline wasn’t so very much Manpain writ large. But otherwise the film felt very refreshing to me.
The love interests of Iron Man and to a lesser extent Captain America were also better-written than I’ve been used to. I liked that Pepper Potts is professional without taking Tony’s shit, and again, has her own motivations, ambitions and interests that don’t involve Tony. When he’s a massive pain in the arse, she treats him as such, and because we understand her as a person we’re sympathetic to her perspective rather than regarding her as the whiney buzz-kill. I think the fact that both Tony and Pepper are well-developed characters means the films haven’t had a problem depicting a growing and changing relationship over the three films we’ve seen them in. Where the woman is objectified – just the motivation for the lead male, the thing to chase and to be rewarded with – there’s no where to go with the story when the reward of getting-together has been given. Because both Tony Stark and Pepper Potts are interesting, there’s a lot of mileage in following how their relationship moves on.
Argh! So sorry to go on and on. Basically, the point I’m trying to make is that I’m tentatively encouraged by the most recent depictions of women in the MArvel movie-verse.
This is what I absolutely love about Gwen Stacy. This is why I prefer her over MJ. After watching the second movie, I felt like I would enjoy films or a series that were about Peter and Gwen saving the city. They’re like a superhero duo that I’ve come to love after the second movie. I love that they touched upon Gwen’s father’s death and how breaking the promise affects Peter. I love that Gwen is so persistent with their relationship and I especially love how these two work together so well in the second movie especially!