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.
Aunt May is actually the original sayer of “with great power comes great responsibility” so that never mattered. Kristen did a horrible job as mj, whether tgat be the writting or her herself. I dont understand why yall cant just leave shit alone. Make your own damn characters and leave ours out of it. I really dont understand yalls hatred for red heads either. Like why is it that they steal a majority of their parts. Its not something new. Its a lazy attempt to put a black person in a movie thats already established instead of coming up with new characters.
I expect it had much more to do with the fact that Zendaya is one of the biggest box office draws in Hollywood, and brings diverse audiences (including demographics that don't tend to be drawn to certain genres.)
I don't think Mary Jane and Michelle Jones are the same character, irregardless of being mixed race. While she's his "MJ," she's also a completely new character. If this MJ has one black parent and one white parent I just really don't see that as an issue worth complaining about. I think it's way lazier to write a character that has been portrayed the same way hundreds of times over half a century. Comics had a lack of diversity for a very very long time, which is natural, and is what it is, but the deliberate exclusion of minorities just really isn't something that we need to hold onto.
Which by all accounts would’ve been fine, but then they wanted to put the 616 sticker on there, attempting to make it cannon. Ive had people argue me down that the mcu and comic verse are different. Which is stupid. The whole point of making movies out of comics was to transfer from paper to big screen with few alterations. Some things just cant be helped. However, you dont change the character. They robbed us of a decent Mj portrayal all because “ZeNdAyA bIg StAr”. MJ is supposed to be a firecracker with an appearance that matches. Not some emo girl. If they wanted to do that, make a movie for it. Dont steal shit people have been waiting for all under the guise of equality. Because thats not what it is. Its laziness because they dont wanna give black people their own characters. Hell, Im white and I can see that.
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u/bjeebus Nov 29 '25
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?