X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

The news is all over the place and I saw it first on BleedingCool, but Shailene Woodley’s role as Mary Jane Watson in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 has been cut from the film. There are several reasons this could have happened, two very big ones. Firstly, since she only filmed a couple of days it’s likely her role was just introductory and had nothing to do with the main plot meaning if they needed to cut something for time it’s that kind of sub-plot that would be the first thing to go. Secondly, as BleedingCool pointed out, since film makers are looking into the future now with probably two more films, they might want to hold off on MJ’s introduction instead of trying to cram her in.

Both are legit reasons that I’ll support.

However, there is one possible reason that I really hope isn’t it. You see, there was a lot of backlash against Shailene being picked to play Mary Jane. For some reason, a bunch of insolent fanboys have got it into their head that Shailene isn’t pretty enough. WTF? Here is a quote from the CinemaBlend article If You Think Shailene Woodley Isn’t Pretty Enough For The Amazing Spider-Man 2, You Don’t Deserve The Movie:

Yesterday we posted the first on-set images of Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, currently in production in New York. Because they were pictures of an actress walking from place to place on the set, not in costume, the notable difference was seeing her hair tinted to Mary Jane’s signature red. Honestly, the photos weren’t that interesting. Until the comments started.

“Omg she looks horrible I hope they can do something with that face of hers.” “Mary Jane is supposed to be hot.” “Looks horrible as a redhead.” The comments on our site weren’t actually as bad as they were elsewhere on the Internet, and not half as bad as the so-called satire posted at Comic Book Movie, with instructions on how to make Woodley hot enough to play “every nerd’s wet dream.” The “satire” was so close to the real thing that most of their commenters didn’t get the difference, and reading it makes your skin crawl because you just know that’s exactly how a strong handful of fanboys feel, no irony intended.

It is so bad that when I typed ‘shailene woodley mary jane’ into Google to get a photograph it auto-suggested ‘shailene woodley mary jane ugly’. I have never done a search on her name before so that was something Google pulled up from the internet itself.

Really guys?

REALLY?!?

Just when I feel the need to defend fanboys against rampant complaints of how sexist and hostile the fandom can be towards women, I run across something like this.

If the hate was more of a ‘we prefer Gwen Stacey’s character’ or ‘Dunst is a better actress’ then I can see that being a decent debate. I also understand that everyone has a slightly different view of beauty. But to just go off and say that this lovely young woman is ugly and that Mary Jane only exists as a wet dream for nerds? That’s not a legitimate complaint, that’s a request for a swift kick to the balls. One I’ll happily oblige.

Maybe I’ve been blissfully innocent, but I’ve never seen this amount of hate towards the casting of a character based solely on his/her looks. I’ve seen complaints about how someone can’t act or how someone looks nothing like their character (and by nothing I mean changing big stuff like race/gender) but not vehement complaints of how they are ugly and not pretty enough. So maybe the MJ fanboys are the ‘asshole in every group’, after all, the comic book world fandom is quiet vast and there is one is every group…

Anyway, if Shailene was nixed for time or to give her introduction a more solid foundation, then I’m cool with that. But if the filmmakers bowed down like some shameless sycophants… then stop the world cause I’m 110% done and I want off.