Spider-Man: Homecoming has all the elements that has made the MCU so successful: a likable hero, funny banter, and spectacular action scenes. Unfortunately, it also contains that which makes the MCU so often frustrating: a tendency to disregard its female characters.
Spider-Man: Homecoming’s is yet another film that fails to include complex, engaging female characters. All the women in the film have largely unimportant roles with only vague — if any — attempts at characterization.
Aunt May is the hot parental-ish figure
My fellow Hypable writer Aaron Locke has done a fantastic job talking about the under-utilization of Aunt May in his article, How Spider-Man: Homecoming treats Aunt May and why it matters, and describes Aunt May’s role in the movie perfectly as inconsequential.
What I’ll add here is that what’s likewise disconcerting is the fact that nearly no mention is made of the likely very recent loss of her husband. Of course, I think that she is more than just someone’s wife, and I definitely didn’t need her to be rending her garments and wailing mournfully every other moment of the film.
But forgoing any mention of Uncle Ben’s death (other than a very minor, vague reference to what happened when Peter is pleading with Ned not to tell Aunt May) and neglecting to explore its impact on both Aunt May and Peter — and how it influences their relationship to one another — robs the film of the very ethos that makes Spider-Man so heroic and so likable in the first place: that with great power, comes great responsibility.
Instead, we have a superhero whose sole motivation seems to be impressing Tony Stark, vaguely parented by someone we essentially know nothing about.
Liz is the cool girl love interest
First off, credit where credit’s due: the film cast a black actress for a role that absolutely could’ve gone to a white actress without anyone at the studio batting an eye. What we know of Laura Harrier’s Liz likewise defies stereotypes: she’s a pretty, popular and kind senior girl who’s the captain of the Academic Decathlon team.
The problem, however, is that’s pretty much all she is. We essentially learn nothing else about her throughout the course of the movie, and her sole purpose in the story is as the object of Peter’s affection.
And even in this, she’s really less of a person and more of the “cool girl” that Amy Dunne spoke of in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl:
Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
Yes, Liz is nice; in fact, she’s apparently so nice that she is willing to overlook the fact that Peter is a bad teammate, a bad friend and a bad date.
Peter completely bails on the Academic Decathlon team’s bid at Nationals and team captain Liz is not only understanding of his non-excuse, but then goes on to accept his invitation to homecoming.
He then goes on to bail on her at homecoming. Afterwards, Liz – who at this point in the movie is being forced to move to Oregon while her father is goes through what is likely a very public trial – simply puts on her most understanding face and tells Peter she hopes that whatever he’s going through, he’ll figure out.
So, while I’m glad that a woman of color was cast for the role, it’s not exactly revolutionary or laudable to then have the character only be a one-note object of desire for the white male lead.
Michelle is the girl who’s…just kind of there?
Out of all the criminally underused female roles in the film, Zendaya’s Michelle is by far the most irritating and egregious to me.
While I’m a little old to have witnessed the rise of Zendaya on the Disney Channel, her career since then has positioned her as a talented, out-spoken and just plain cool actress.
When I heard that the film had cast in her a mystery role, I was both intrigued and excited, made more so by the fact that fanboys everywhere lost their damn minds when they thought she was Mary Jane (she isn’t, unfortunately, no matter what the throwaway line at the end led us to think).
The previews in the lead up to the premiere showcased her scene-stealing and hilarious one-liners, and the subsequent press tour — in which she was frequently opposite of Tom Holland — made it appear as though she would have a substantial role in the film.
This then meant that Spider-Man: Homecoming would have not one, but two women of color in a major roles. Finally, we all thought. Finally Marvel understands the importance of having diverse and female characters.
Wow, were we wrong.
If Aunt May is inconsequential, then Michelle is inconsequential to the point of being virtually non-existent. Liz might be one-note, but at least she has a note. Michelle is maybe a quarter-note, probably closer to being an eighth note.
It’s true that she has some of the film’s best lines. It’s also true that we saw half those lines in the trailers — that’s how little screen time she had. In fact, her entire role in the movie was to give those one-liners. We learn absolutely nothing about her in the course of two hours and she has no arc in the film at all.
I mean, yes, she goes from telling Ned and Peter that to she has no friends at the beginning of the film to then telling the Academic Decathlon team that her friends call her ‘MJ’ at the film’s end — but there is literally nothing that happens in between those two scenes to warrant the change.
She doesn’t interact with anyone in a meaningful way or show growth or engage in camaraderie — however faked and forced it might have been. She essentially just exists as a really snarky set piece.
But just wait, Marvel tells us — she’ll be really important in the next film. Which is also what they told us about The Wasp. And what they also told us about Black Widow.
In fact, by the time Captain Marvel comes out, we’ll have waited through twenty male-led MCU films to see a MCU film in which a female character gets a substantial role.
We live in a world where Wonder Woman is the summer’s biggest blockbuster and the last of the time lords is a woman. Next year, Storm Reid’s Meg Murray will save Chris Pine from an evil superbeing and 8 women will pull off a heist that previously took 11 men to accomplish.
Being told to “just wait” isn’t good enough any more.
It never was, really. And after 15 films, you’d think the MCU would’ve finally figured that out.
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