In 1973, there was an uproar in the comic world as it was revealed that Spider-Man, for once, did not save the day. On the contrary, his act of attempted rescue perpetuated the death of his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. The act was so controversial, issue 121 is sometimes used as reference to be the catalyst for the end of the Silver Age of comic books. Needless to say, the death of Gwen Stacy is a pivotal and concrete part of not only the Spider-Man mythos; but of the comic book industry.
But should Sony follow suit?
I, for one, have been
vocal about my disappointment with
The Amazing Spider-Man, debating (sometimes, too intensely, and for that, I hope you accept my apology) that the film was lacking in many areas; one being that of the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. I found it to be incredibly underdeveloped for the sake of being "cute" and found that Peter's decision to abandon his promise to Captain Stacy to be against the character the movie worked so hard to establish. That being said, this editorial is not about what I thought about
The Amazing Spider-Man. I want to open up discussion about if the death of Gwen Stacy should be used in a set of movies announced by Sony to be a trilogy.
Take this into consideration; it is often easy for us to pass over the importance of Gwen Stacy's death because, by this point in time, we've been given time to "cope" with the loss. Not to make it too sentimental, but we're able to justify the loss of Gwen Stacy with decades of new Spider-Man characters, stories, and relationships and able to hold issue 121 reverent for the fact that it morphed many a favorite's superhero into the icon he is today. Case in point; the death of Gwen Stacy could be argued to make Spider-Man, as a character, one of the greatest of all time, as we've seen him develop from the incident.
That being said, we are not the "general" audience. As comic book fans, we expect Gwen Stacy to be die, Peter to become a hero, and Peter to start a relationship (and eventual marriage) with the character of Mary Jane Watson. And we expect Peter to develop from his loss of Gwen to become a stronger, more developed character. The problem is this: we're only getting three movies, and we've already had one.
I'm trying to view this issue as a general audience member,
not a comic fan who sees the death of Gwen necessary for Peter to become who he is today. If Gwen dies in the second film, will their relationship be developed enough for people to care? Of course, we won't know until the film comes out, but it will be a difficult task based on the information we know from the first film (she likes Peter because he's quirky, smart, and Spider-Man...even though she knows a minimal amount about his personal life; he likes her because she's quirky, pretty, smart, and notices him). So, let's analyze this a bit more in two scenarios.
1) If Gwen dies in the second film, the movie will have to work harder to develop the relationship into something more than what's cute to watch. Which means we could get a Spider-Man sequel that ups the romance and minimizes everything else (theoretically, this could be disputed). The pro to her death in the second movie is that we get to see Peter cope, develop, and become more of the icon that he is in today's cultural standing. Peter becomes more than just a hero attempting to seek revenge and gets a chance to forgive himself.
2) If Gwen dies in the third film (excluding that it happens in the beginning), then it almost defeats the purpose of seeing their relationship develop in the second movie
if Peter has no time to adequately be developed. If the middle of the movie, or especially the climax of the trilogy is Gwen Stacy's demise, then that leaves us with a disgruntled, depressed (albeit, I suppose "real") Peter Parker. And quite frankly, it leaves the audience with a sour taste in their mouth. To put it simply, Sony would have to have some big cojones to pull off that kind of ending, and if it wasn't done flawlessly and tastefully, it could really put off the general audience to Spider-Man. Let me put it in this perspective: it would be like the last Spider-Man comic you would ever read would be issue 121 or 122.
One might say, "Well, they killed off Rachel Dawes, Batman's love interest, in the second movie." And you're right. They did. But the filmmakers also went out of their way to make Dawes a character by her own right, not one whose romantic relationship to Bruce holds together an enormous part of the movie. Plainly, Rachel's relationship with Bruce was always more
implied than
played out. Maybe I'm heartless, but Rachel's death is not what I remember from
The Dark Knight. The same should not be said of the character of Gwen Stacy.
To put it simply, at this point in time, Sony's Spider-Man films have the problem of keeping things too underdeveloped for Stacy's impact to truly
leave an impact on audiences the same way it did with comic readers, or the problem of developing it to the point where we don't get a chance to see Peter Parker develop
from the event.
So, what if Sony didn't kill off Gwen Stacy? What if they kept her around, developed her relationship with Peter, and allowed for the story-telling to take Peter to new heights as Spider-Man? I know, on the surface, it somewhat seems like blasphemy. But at the same time, the comics didn't introduce Gwen Stacy to be nothing but a plot device to develop Peter, so why should a new trilogy?
I'm interested to hear your thoughts about the "Stacy" problem, and I ask that you look at it not merely from a comic book fan's perspective, but from that as a filmmaker and general audience member.