There were those of us who hoped that once Marvel Studios and Sony made their deal to share Spider-Man, allowing the Marvel Cinematic Universe to bring the character into their films, that perhaps Marvel would take this opportunity to do something with the character that five Sony Spider-Man films had yet to do by bringing their already existing character, Miles Morales, into the MCU as Spidey, making him film’s first Spider-Man of color. Sadly, this is not to be.
In a recent interview with Collider during a press day for Age of Ultron, Marvel’s Kevin Feige confirmed which Spider-Man we’d be getting when he joins the MCU:
“In terms of the age of an actor we’ll eventually to cast, I don’t know. In terms of the age of what we believe Peter Parker is, I’d say 15-16 is right.”
Well, OK then. That’s that. However, while they’re apparently not taking that particular page out of the Ultimate Spider-Man playbook, Feige goes on to talk about how important it is that Spider-Man be age-appropriate, so casting an actual teenager would allow them to focus on the character stuff that goes along with that, which is a focus of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics:
“We want to play with Spider-Man in the high school years because frankly there’ve been five Spider-Man films and the amazing thing about it is, even though there’ve been five Spider-Man films, there are so many things from the comics that haven’t been done yet. Not just characters or villains or supporting characters, but sides to his character. The most obvious being the ‘young, doesn’t quite fit in’ kid before his powers, and then the fella that puts on a mask and swings around and fights bad guys and doesn’t shut up, which is something we want to play with and we’re excited about.
I think it was midway through the first film that he graduated high school. At the beginning of the second Marc Webb film, he graduated high school. And some of my favorite Spider-Man arcs and Spider-Man stories, he’s in high school for a lot of it. We want to explore that. That also makes him very, very different from any of our other characters in the MCU, which is something else we want to explore: how unique he is when now put against all these other characters.”
I suppose it’s only fair that before they bring a new Spider-Man to the screen, they do everything they can do with the old one, and I, too, am excited to see a young, won’t-shut-up Peter Parker throwing a slight wrench into the Avengers’ works. Still, there’s a big part of me that’s going, Couldn’t they explore all of those traits and issues with a young Spidey of color?
Oh, well.
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