Well, it really wasn’t so much a racial thing. The main ‘interest’ is Liz Allan*, (*not her actual last name, but the character is obviously based entirely off of Liz Allan in the comics), and unfortunately, the script gave her VERY little to actually do.
Unlike previous Spider-Man movies where Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacey were tied up in the plot fairly heavily, in Homecoming, Liz was more the ‘object’ of Peter’s affections. You can see on screen that they don’t really have much chemistry between the characters… just interest that never really blossoms. Yes, they have attraction, and yes, it’s mutual, but compare Liz Allen’s scenes to the type we got for Mary Jane or Gwen in the other Spider-Man films: in those, the love interest is a key activator for who Peter Parker is deciding to be. They directly affect his needs and wants scene to scene, and are a lynch pin in who he is as Spider-Man. Liz, on the other hand, is the high school crush. Peter is WAY more tied up in what Tony Stark and Happy have in store for him and what they think about him. That’s the relationship that drives most of Peter’s actions through the movie.
And for the record… I actually liked that. A lot of high school ‘romance’ is simply having a crush on someone else, but when you get to know them or their family, you realize you’re not right for each other. Most of Peter’s attraction is tied up in how Liz looks, and how he himself feels about that. His crush has very little to do on actual conversations and chemistry between them, or anything we really see them do together. We can tell she think he’s cute too, but it’s the same level of attraction, just from the opposite direction. Neither of them really know anything about the other. I’m okay with Homecoming moving the story away from romance if it helps define this new version of Spider-Man in this film.
With that being said, I do believe Liz could have been utilized a little more strongly.
That takes care of Liz. Now, if you were talking about the character “MJ”, played by Zendaya, that’s a very different ball of wax.
Mary Jane Watson is a BELOVED character in the Spider-Man canon… she’s been around since issue #42, and after the two characters married in the 80’s, she really became the ‘one-and-only’ for Peter in many fans’ minds.
So with over 40 years of history tied to the character, fans can be… tentative… about new versions of a character. The director of “Spider-Man: Homecoming” went on record saying that “MJ” is a new creation and untied to “Mary-Jane Watson”, which sounds a bit like a cop out. Calling this new character “MJ” immediately brings a torrent of comparisons, (fair or not) between classic love interest Mary Jane Watson and Michelle.
Either way, this new character, “Michelle” is… well… abrasive, to say the least. She’s very much a product of millennial thinking when it comes to character: she’s ethnically diverse, extremely liberal, she’s into protesting, rude at times, (like when she flips Peter off at the dance), and possibly a bit of stalker, considering how she constantly keeps tabs on Peter, (despite her denials), going so far as to voluntarily go to detention. She doesn’t care for her appearance, (probably a stylistic choice from the director, makeup designer, and costumer to help show the difference between her and Liz, who is VERY well put-together),
She’s also smart, observant, and (when she wants to be), pretty. But it’s been hard for me to like the character because rude people aren’t attractive to me, and it’s hard for me to see a self-sacrificing polite kid who spends his free time trying to help others somehow falling for the woman who is constantly calls him a loser, stalks him slightly, and spends her free time… well, I’m not sure how she spends her free time.
Likely, they’re building up an arc for her as the love interest to Peter Parker, and pulling a bit of a “When Harry Met Sally” move… they aren’t right for each other when we first meet them, but over the course of time and how the two characters change, they will be brought together and seem to have more in common.
So in the end, really, I don’t think people hated Liz or Michelle for the color of their skin. The biggest problems with the characters were that they didn’t get a lot of depth, (Liz), and Michelle is pretty much the polar opposite of the person we could see Peter being with; it doesn’t help that they stuck her with the nickname “MJ”, which immediately made for some negative comparisons.
Thanks for Reading
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