Further evidence is coming in that the “woke” movement in blockbuster films may be waning: Marisa Tomei apparently wanted to have Aunt May switch from heterosexual to a lesbian after the death of Uncle Ben. She thought this through so thoroughly that she took it to Sony executives and even proposed that Sony Entertainment executive producer of Spider-Man films, Amy Pascal, be the actress for Aunt May’s lesbian lover. But rather than lap up the opportunity, Sony’s answer was a hard “no”.
“There was a moment, where I felt that May — maybe she should just be with a woman because Ben is gone. And we were kind of talking about it. And so I actually really wanted Amy Pascal from Sony to be my girlfriend! I was like, ‘No one even has to know, Amy. I’ll just be in a scene and you’ll be over there. And I’ll just be like, “Hey!” It’ll just be a subtle thing.’”
— Marisa Tomei, Interview with Geeks of Color
The answer from Sony was resounding, however, and Jon Favreau’s MCU character, Happy, as brought in as a mentor to Peter Parker as well as a love interest of Aunt May. A re-orientation of a legacy character wasn’t given serious thought from executives, meaning that the Spider-Man MCU movies were protected from unnecessary controversy and fan division.
Soldier 76, a hero from the once-popular game, Overwatch, was retconned to be gay after two years. The fan response was divided at best.
In the past, we’ve seen studios jump onto the opportunity to diversify for the sake of diversity without giving thought to characters, legacies, canon, source material, or consistency. This has resulted in backlash from fans who often want diversity, but do not want erasure of legacy characters and their personas. That Sony made the decision to stick with a younger, more vibrant Aunt May… yet an Aunt May that keeps in line with the original character… it shows that studios may be deciding to avoid retcons that seek easy social points at the cost of fan response.
With Spider-Man No Way Home having already made nearly a billion dollars in profit, other studios may also be looking at that strategy seriously. There’s little room for error in a pandemic era where every dollar matters and no win is guaranteed.
