Pulled up the full quote because Discussing Film is clickbait trash and it's somehow worse:
"Spider-Man was one of my favorite characters growing up, If not my favorite," Joe Russo said in an exclusive interview with CBR's Sean O'Connell. "And what I related to was this idea of a kid with incredible responsibility, right? And I think you could manifest that responsibility through accidental death, right? And feeling the pressure, and the sense of loss in your life in a way that would keep the spirit that we wanted.
Russo continued: "[But] what Tom Holland is as an actor, if he blamed himself for his Uncle Ben's death, I think he becomes a very different character. So in our minds, no, he wasn't responsible for Uncle Ben's death. That would have been a different interpretation. A more intense interpretation of the character."
so Russo just straight up doesn't understand the character, got it
This isn’t just “just straight up doesn’t understand the character”. That’s Zack Snyder saying “Superman would let Jon Kent die”. This is not understanding the key thing about the character. This isn’t “Superman would let Jon Kent die”, it’s “Captain Ahab is motivated by greed for whale oil”. No man he wants revenge for his leg. Peter Parker wants to make up for letting Uncle Ben get killed. That is who Peter Parker is.
Specifically, the idea was that a BEFORE COLLEDGE AGE Peter who blames himself for his uncle's death PROBABLY wouldn't be able to go through high school and have wacky fun adventures.
Because grief crushes you and guilt crushes you even more.
This is why the end of the third movie, where he blames himself for his aunt's death, has him becoming the emotionally crippled peter living in a crappy apartment, having sacrificed everyone he loves and every one of his dreams to live a life of suffering and punishment.
Which is the canon Peter Parker that we know and loathe. The one so wracked with guilt that he self-sabotages everything he gets his hands on.
Peter Parker self sabotages long before he is Spiderman - see if you can find an archive of early comics. He believed he was unpopular, for example, but again and again people were inviting him to social outings.
Early Peter was a jerk, and he was responsible for his own unhappiness. He just had no clue.
He had to grow through the tragedy to become a decent person. He didn't start out that way. He was arrogant; very similar to a supervillain in fact.
The Holland movies are really strange to me; I just see them as an alternate world with no connection to Peter Parker from the comics.
Substituting his aunt so you can squeeze in the same canon arc of redemption makes absolutely no sense, and I just skipped those movies. I have liked scenes with the different Spidermen I have seen on the internet, but as an old Spiderman fan is - I have no idea who that guy they put on the screen is, anymore than I know how they justified Zendaya as MJ.
The body of research from scholarly sources on the history of comic books contends that Stan Lee’s original run of The Amazing Spider-Man in
"The comic redefined the modern American hero by making a flawed character, with a tenuous grasp on the moral high ground, the protagonist."
You cannot start with him as having a moral character, then have his aunt die, then have him continue with external factors different but his character unchanged, and call that spiderman.
Spiderman is the transformation from someone who was cold and selfish and convinced he was persecuted - again, he was not - into a hero through the recognition that his flawed nature meant that someone he cared about died.
The movie spiderman is not flawed except to be perhaps a little innocent, a little naive? That is radically different and should have very different outcomes. If anything, he might react against naivety and become a cynical and selfish antihero afterwards.
Get in the '60s spirit ahead of this week's 'Spider-Man: Life Story' #1!
"she remarked (in her head, of course) that he wasn't as husky as Flash Thompson and that he was quite attractive."
Peter was, at the time, a self saboteur - convinced he was unattractive. But the most beautiful girls of his area liked the way he looked.
The most attractive and prestigious males all fought over Gwen, but it was Peter who she wanted.
And if you look at Tom, he's sort of a de-aged Peter, without the charisma. He's likeable enough, but can you really imagine the beauty queens fighting over him?
MJ was an international model, from memory.
The idea that Peter was a loser came much later, and I expect it was from people who hadn't read the early comics. Peter thought, long before the bite, that he was a loser, that women didn't want him, and so on.
He was just immature, he had to grow out of it. That growth was something amazing to watch.
I don't think much of Marvel nowadays, but those thirty years, from the sixties to the nineties, man, they were somethin'.
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