Bryce Howard: Fans Will Like Gwen Stacy
Filed under: Action, Casting, Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
After the first Spider-Man movies, most fans were sold. Even True Believers, although we had a few nitpicky complaints (we wouldn't be real fans if we didn't, right?) Probably the most egregious change made to Spider-Man canon was the story rewrite which gave Mary Jane a good chunk of Gwen Stacy's back story. Despite her death quite some time ago (possibly even because of her death), Stacy remains a very popular character among fans. We could understand the choice to skip over her existence in the interest of translating the story to a movie, but it was tough to swallow the bridge scene if you knew how the real story went. Nonetheless, we took it in stride because hey -- it was a great flick.Then came the announcement of Gwen entering the picture for the third film. This rankles a bit more, because her story has already been given away. True Believers worry it will cheapen her character. Bryce Howard, the actress who will play Gwen, disagrees. Howard says despite the story issues, the basic core of the character will remain true to the comics. According to Howard, the character will be brought to life "in a way that will both be surprising and appropriate and will fulfill people's expectations." You can color this blogger highly skeptical, but the movies haven't disappointed me yet, and I don't expect them to start now.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-12-2006 @ 5:28PM
Cath said...
Since both prior attempts sucked, I'll dispense with vain hopes for this one. And, for the record, Gwen Stacy was a popular character before she was killed off, such that it took a great many years before they could convince fans to accept Mary Jane.
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7-12-2006 @ 7:18PM
Dan said...
Just for fun, you could link to the Zap2it story that the Coming Soon story links to, rather than linkin' to the Coming Soon story:
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/zap-howardgwenstacyspiderman3story,0,4747991.story
Or not. Whatev...
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7-12-2006 @ 10:53PM
Finished.Law.School said...
Any effort at permanently removing Dunst from the Spider Man films will be much appreciated by the masses.
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7-13-2006 @ 10:53AM
Mike said...
Why when making a comicbook inspired movie do actors/directors ALWAYS say they are staying true to the character even when they are radically altering the character backstory/ablities and personality? Who buys this? Might as well just say "It's not about the money" like ballplayers.
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7-13-2006 @ 11:12AM
mike said...
let me guees, u thought they were lying when they said that about sin city, huh? there were probably like 5 panels that weren't in the movie. And congrats on being one of the freeks that dosn't like spider-man.
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7-13-2006 @ 12:47PM
KJ said...
I saw the distinctive black headband on the blonde in the Spidey3 trailer, but didn't think they'd ACTUALLY backtrack like that. I thought they would have chosen to add Black Cat to throw a kink into MJ and Peter's relationship--not Gwen. How on earth are they going to pull Gwen off now now when they've already taken part of her story, done the bridge scene, AND killed off the guy who kills her in the comic book? I mean, they could go with the OTHER Green Goblin doing the deed, but that's just getting messy. I liked Gwen, but I must admit I'm a bit skeptical about her placement in these movies.
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7-14-2006 @ 2:16PM
Mike said...
Sin City did not radically alter the history/ablities of it characters, so that's not a valid counter-point. Sin City used the comics as a script. Sin City also was not made in Hollywood so it did not have to go thru the BS concept to screen that Hollywood films do.
Hollywood does not use comicbooks as scripts. The only use them for character names and basic coustuming. Character often are taken on completely different tangents than the comic book version. In the previous Superman movies characters have new ablities never before seen ablities. LXG bore no real resemblance to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Other comic inspired movies the characters have different back stories, often invalidating key elements to the characters original development. If a movie version character has different history and/or different ablities and/or different personality they are not 'True' to comic book.
And if you were refering to me, I didn't say anything about whether I liked or disliked Spiderman. Your mind reading needs work.
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