alright here's a hot spider-man take- i always see people shitting on the mj of the raimi movies, including people who would normally be on the side of defending female characters like that, and i genuinely don't understand the hate for her. i used to think i did, but i don't.
there are a couple issues with her writing (but no more than for any character, really), like-
i don't love that they made disloyalty an mj character trait. as far as i know from what comics i've read, mj was never disloyal and PETER was the one who could veer into that territory from time to time so i don't like them switching that to make the woman worse. it's not that i can't handle some fictional cheating/disloyalty, but making it so consistent for a character like mj is annoying- comic mj has always been the independent type, she wouldn't need to tie herself to a man so much that her relationships consistently overlap. however, if i separate that grudge over the comic differences, i don't actually mind this trait for her in these movies and all the instances make total sense in their separate contexts đ mary jane is clearly a woman who grew up being invalidated by the men in her life, having an abusive father, so it's not surprising that she would fall into bad relationships with men who don't treat her well, then fall head over heels for a man (peter) who shows her true care and kindness, then look for that kindness in another man when peter rejects her, and then finally commit herself fully to peter after realizing she can be her own person and make her own choices.
i dislike the damsel in distress trope so yeah, watching her be lorded over peter's head every hour is annoying. even this isn't taken too far though- when given the chance, she gets up and tries to fuck up doc ock herself- obviously she fails because he's wearing a powered suit with giant mechanical arms and she's a regular human woman, but she's not shown to be completely helpless. any other regular human man would've failed there too.
and mj watson should always be a bit of an off-putting weirdo, she talks so funny and uses so much dorky slang in the comics and gets away with it because she's very charming. raimi mj wasn't weird or silly enough unfortunately.
that's really all i can think of ??? her character is genuinely pretty great. the scene where she thinks he's about to make fun of her wanting to be an actress because every other man in her life has belittled her life choices, and he praises her and talks about her childhood performances that he loved đ and it has to be relevant that he specifically mentioned cinderella, a story about a young girl escaping her condescending and abusive family and finding love... it's one of the best scenes in those movies if not the best, right beside the upside down kiss, the sm3 ending, and her finding out that he's spider-man. yeah, yeah, mj is the best part of those movies, idc idc! i'm standing on business!
i don't know why people are always saying peter deserved better than a cheater when peter was a cheater too!!! he cheated on her right in her face and then tried to propose to her after without even thinking about how she'd feel because he was getting too arrogant!!! same argument for when people say she was annoying for being jealous of him in sm3 but like she wasn't just jealous of his accomplishments, she was upset because he was getting overly cocky (literally lead to him cheating on her) and inconsiderate of her feelings. AND people who say she was leading him on are completely misremembering because he's the one that rejected her and kept switching up on her, rejecting her then wanting her back then rejecting her and wanting her back again!!!
like i want to say it's mostly misogyny that makes everyone hate her so much but i can't even tell at this point because i hear the same takes from people who are usually SO anti-misogyny đ