Marvel's New Spider-Man Is Our Third White Peter Parker In 15 Years

Our long national nightmare is over, as Marvel and Sony Pictures have finally cast their all-new Peter Parker in their all-new Spider-Man movie. And the winner is Tom Holland. He will be playing Spider-Man first in a glorified cameo for Captain America: Civil War and then again in a stand-alone Spider-Man movie that is due to be released on July 28th, 2017 and directed by Jon Watts (Clown, the Kevin Bacon thriller Cop Car). He will be following in the footsteps of Toby Maguire who played the role in the three Sam Raimi films from 2002 to 2007 and Andrew Garfield who played the character in Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 and Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. When Civil War opens next May, he will be the third actor to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man in a live action film franchise in 15 years. He will also be the third white guy to play the role in 15 years. And yeah, that is ever-so-slightly disappointing.

For the record, Tom Holland was terrific in The Impossible, and I am sure he’ll do an excellent job as the iconic web-slinger. Also, for the record, Marvel, Disney, and Sony can cast their own movie however they please in light of whatever artistic and/or commercial considerations they choose worthwhile. There was talk back in February when Marvel and Sony came to their arrangements that our third Spidey would be a minority actor and/or a minority actor playing Miles Morales. In the end Marvel, Walt Disney , and Sony went with the traditional choice, even casting yet another British actor as an American superhero. But to be fair to all parties, it was unlikely that Disney and Marvel would pass on the opportunity to put their personal mark on their most iconic character in their most well-known variation. Racial politics aside, it would be like Joel Schumacher bringing on Robin in Batman Forever but going with Tim Drake the first time out. For most people, Robin is still Dick Grayson, young orphaned circus acrobat turned Batman’s junior partner, as opposed to Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and/or Damien Wayne. The first Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man was always going to be Peter Parker, at least initially.

There are two reasons the fact that we are getting our third white Peter Parker in 1.5 decades “matters,” and it’s a little more complicated than the conventional (and important) “representation matters” argument.

First of all, this is the third time we’ve seen a Peter Parker/Spider-Man live-action franchise since 2002 (yes, I am intentionally reiterating that fact). Yes, there will be some excitement over the notion that he will be hanging out in the Marvel Universe this time around and will rub shoulders with the likes of Iron Man and Captain America, but the stand-alone Spider-Man movie will still be the third “new” Spider-Man movie in 15 years. The Sam Raimi film was arguably as candy-coated bright as you could go without going camp while Marc Webb’s first film was as “dark-n-gritty” as you could go without going full grimdark. Both had heaping helpings of somber emotional melodrama, but I digress. There will certainly be things about the new Spider-Man that will be different from the prior two franchises, but at the end of the day it will still be “scrawny white kid swings around town as Spider-Man, makes wisecracks, does the superhero thing, deals with romantic entanglements” deal. We’ve seen that twice now with a white actor. By default, it would automatically be different and “new” with an actor of color in the lead role and it would make the film different in a way that merely having different villains or even a different stand-alone story would not.

Now you might argue that merely changing the skin color of a character does not make that character “different,” and in a utopian situation I might agree with you. But if that is true, then why does it happen so infrequently? Why is it still a big deal, in 2015, that the second or third lead hero in a Fantastic Four movie happens to be played by Michael B. Jordan? Why is it still noteworthy, in 2015, when CBS ’s Supergirl makes Jimmy Olsen black, or when the Zack Snyder Superman films cast Lawrence Fishburne as Perry White and Tao Okamoto as Mercy Graves? You do not need me to tell you that the so-called standard for significant roles in mainstream cinema is white and/or white male. As sad as it may seem, we are still at a point where merely casting an ethnic or racial minority (or even a female in a conventionally male role) still counts as both a big deal and a chance to change up the content of the story being told.

And if Hollywood is going to insist on rebooting the same franchises over and over again, then they really need to make more of an effort to make them at least try to update these decades-old stories beyond the demographic realities (or presumptions) of their Eisenhower/Kennedy-era (or even Roosevelt-era) origins. The young audience that won’t care as much that this is the third bloody "new" Spider-Man movie being made also won’t care as much if the new Peter Parker isn’t a white kid. And the audiences old enough (or racist enough regardless of age) to care about such a thing probably wouldn’t have lined up for a third Spider-Man “part 1” anyway. And the (not necessarily racist) die hard fans who go crazy at any perceived change in the dogma doesn't represent the fanbase that Marvel is chasing, but I digress. Yes, I too read that stuff about how Peter Parker couldn't be a minority (or gay) in the movies from back in 2011, but rules (like promises) are made to be broken.

The other reason this “matters” (with the always present caveat that racial and ethnic parity in superhero movie casting is pretty low on the list of priorities in terms of America’s racial issues) is what this new Spider-Man movie supplants. Back in October when Marvel did their whole “Phase 3” announcement event, the three big “new” movies heading towards Avengers: Infinity War were of course Dr. Strange, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther. Without discounting potential excitement over Dr. Strange and its delightfully art-house cast (Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor), the big events were Captain Marvel (the first female-centric superhero movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and Black Panther (the first minority-led superhero movie in the MCU).

But now, thanks to Marvel and Sony reaching an agreement over Spider-Man, the would-be significant event for general moviegoers and the media in Phase 3 is presumably going to be our third Spider-Man movie. So, come what may, the would-be importance of our first MCU female-led superhero movie and our first black-centric MCU film is being potentially lessened and placed on a lower news rung (if probably not lower narrative importance to the overall MCU story) than the third "white kid plays Peter Parker" franchise. Marvel (with Sony still acting as producers this go-around) is in a position right now to basically do whatever it wants. That they decided, as is their right and privilege, to go with the conventional Peter Parker even as Miles Morales is now the official comic book Spider-Man is wholly a matter of choice. Any commercial considerations are arguably negated by the fact that they are Marvel and can do whatever they want. So yes, I am slightly disappointed.

Without arguing against artistic choice and without casting a drop of judgment on an unproduced and unseen film coming two years from now, we’ve seen a white actor as Peter Parker in a big-budget blockbuster franchise twice already. The relative commercial safety of a Spider-Man movie within the Marvel Universe offered a certain protection against whatever commercial price might have been paid (presuming there was any cost at all) for going against the grain in terms of casting their third Spider-Man. If Hollywood is going to keep telling the same stories over and over, the least they can do is make an effort to update those stories to reflect our current racial reality and the current movie-going demographics. No, it’s not automatically Walt Disney, Sony, or Marvel's responsibility to expand the conventional wisdom of what kind of skin color denotes a leading actor in a blockbuster franchise. But with great power comes… you get the idea.