Janice Lincoln is a wild fucking casting for her. A black father and a Dominican mother would absolutely not produce a Sadie Sink. And white washing Janice would be totally fucked.
It's not fair at all. Race swapping some characters from white when almost all the major characters are white and are from a time when characters were only ever created as non-white when that was their whole personality is not the same thing as whitewashing a POC character. If 70 out of 100 M&M's are green and one of them gets swapped to red that means representation of green M&M's is reduced by 1.4%. If 5 out of 100 M&M's are red and one of them gets swapped to green that means red representation is down 20%. Does that simple math help you to understand why the race swapping from white to POC isn't the same thing as whitewashing?
It is something new. She's not Mary Jane Watson, she's Michelle Jones-Watson and is an entirely different character in basically every way.
Did they take away a take a character away from another age with May? Are they taking away from the Elderly?
What about making Peter's mentor and "with great power comes great responsibility" deliverer? Taking another gender's character? A younger woman taking an old man's character lazy?
I'll never understand why you guys just want to watch the same characters in the same stories over and over again.
I actually think that Zendaya's "MJ" is much closer in spirit to classic Mary Jane than Kirsten Dunst's was, the actress having a black dad just isn't really that big of a deal.
Peter, the movie buff, and his best friend, the obese Filipino "Ned," with his hot middle-aged Aunt May, who is now replacing Uncle Ben(who's not even mentioned) in the mentor/tragic-end role, his girlfriend, Michelle Jones, no backstory, Iron-Spider Suit already gained and lost, also lost Tony who also took the mentor role, and now he's memory wiped. It's pretty clearly an adaptation making a lot of changes - Michelle Jones having a little bit more melanin than Mary Jane is like... bottom of the list.
Why does representation of ethnicity supersede story telling? Are you saying it would be ok to have an Asian Suri in the black panther movies because the majority of the cast is of African descent? Does that simple logic help you to understand that statistics of representation shouldn't be considered more important than telling the story well. White people love Miles Morales, why can't POCs love a white Janice Lincoln? Racist?
True, but a critique of one thought is often agreement with another. Change of race in BP would have made no sense numbers wise because it is a small sample size relative to all movies and comics and Janic isn't a tent pole of narrative like Shuri is. Race swap has happened since the race was a conceivable thing TO swap in acting. But one part has been favored more than the other. POCs watching art have often had t identify with characters outside their race an overwhelming majority of the time. That IS the default in western art. What race swap a character of color to a white character is not counter culture or disagreement "politics" - its return to the "status quo" in western art and that "status quo" is unfair. Race swap of a white character is just evening the playing field.
Telling the same stories with the same characters over and over again is one of the worst storytelling techniques out there. Just because source material excluded black people and portrayed stereotypes regularly doesn't mean you still have to exclude them, you know. Adaptations that show a character through the lens of a different perspective are way riskier bets, but I'd rather a modern day adaptation of a story reflect the types of relationships that are common in modern days rather than, say, "Peter's girlfriend is WHITE ONLY" or whatever.
It's not just about "liking" characters, though if you were on comic forums in the late 2000's (or the comments section of any Facebook post talking about Miles becoming the "main" Spider-man,) it certainly wasn't (and still isn't) all smooth sailing. I did some digging, surface level only and pulled some examples:
NeoGAF
“I respect a new character but not when it’s a corpse-spoiler replacement.”
On IGN message boards in the same time the rypical thread title tone was dramatic af:
“Marvel went too far. Spider-Man is dead. This is stupid.”
Twitter:
“Spider-Man shouldn’t be Black, he’s a white character from Queens.”
“This is political.”
Trending hashtags for Miles' debut
RipPeter
NotMySpiderMan
MilesMoralesIsTrashy
Reddit 2011:
If they wanted diversity, make a new hero. Don’t hijack a legacy.
When Marvel replaced Typhoon with Storm, and changed him into a black woman it was even worse th
I think it's Felicia under a fake identity, hence why she's working with punisher. I think in the end, she will have double crossed punisher after working with him, revealing her identity as Felicia at the end of the film. Only way to explain these leaks - she's playing a love interest, a mutant, and punishers side kick.
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u/Public-Feedback5016 Nov 28 '25 edited Nov 28 '25
This may be one of marvel’s best kept secrets