Sony and Marvel have yet to officially announce who will be taking over as Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) in the upcoming Untitled Spider-Man Project and will first enjoy a cameo appearance in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War, but the field seem narrowed down to Tom Holland (The Impossible), Charlie Plummer (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Matthew Lintz (Pixels). However, whether it was just online hope for something different or the perception it was a very real possibility, many thought the next iteration of the webslinger might be that of Miles Morales, the comic book iteration of the character that was of African American and Puerto Rican descent. As it turns out, that appears to have never been in the cards.
Among the information obtained from the email hack at Sony, Gawker has come across licensing agreements between Sony Pictures and Marvel that dictate the specifics of what the character must be, among them include details that he must be “Caucasian and heterosexual”.
It will never cease to amaze me how set in their ways people seem to be with fictional characters. What allegiance is there to race and sexuality when it comes to a fictional character that’s bitten by a spider. I’ll look beyond the fact the character is also required to be male since that’s the target character here, but at the same time, would audiences completely ignore the same story if it revolved around a female version of Spider-Man? I just find that so hard to believe.
When it comes to Spider-Man, at this point, any kind of change would be nice and I guess they believe they’re giving that to us by making him a younger Peter Parker than previously. Well, in a way. The goal is to keep him in high school longer, but haven’t we pretty much always started with Parker in high school?
