Oh boy.
Okay, so, Entertainment Weekly‘s cover for their July 19 issue has given us our first official look at Jamie Foxx as Electro in next year’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Clearly they’ve dropped the green and yellow spandex for a more industrial look as well as taken a page out of the Ultimate book by making Max Dillon look positively (heh) bursting with electricity. Personally, I think it looks pretty cool and at lot more intimidating that the weirdly snout-less Lizard from the first movie. The cover also gives a better look at the new costume for Spidey himself which seems to be taking the best of both worlds not just from the costume from the last film, but also the costume Tobey Maguire sported in Sam Raimi’s trilogy. Those big eyes look really dynamic.
But that’s not all that’s interesting about this. During his interview with EW, Andrew Garfield let this slip:
I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ… And I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?
Hear that? That’s the sound of a million nerds suddenly crying out in terror and being suddenly silenced. All kidding aside, I’m actually bummed out they didn’t go full steam ahead with this idea. Not only would it cement the series as a wildly different take on Spider-Man, for better or worse, but for a superhero icon like Spider-Man to be shown as gay? That would certainly be something. I know I love the character of Peter Parker because he was shown as being an outsider and a victim of bullying just like I was. If kids and teenagers growing up being the victim of homophobic bullying were able to find solace in a gay Spider-Man, I don’t see that as a bad.
Also, not for nothing, but Marc Webb did confirm that Shailene Woodley’s scenes as MJ in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were cut. I wouldn’t complain if they brought in MJ as a guy in a third installment.
