Wondering why Marvel is so obssesed with making Peter a teengaer/child to be protected while they have never give Johnny an opportunitiy to show his origin story as a teenager/ child being raised by his old sister
Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons why, for both -- and not that I agree with these reasons so much as that I get why it happens, and it's not because Marvel hates me specifically. This time.
I think with Peter at least Marvel is, to some extent, always chasing that initial high of success. It doesn't matter that Peter only spent an initial 28 issues in high school and that Spider-Man has largely seen success as an independent, adult hero -- and that part of that fame comes from his very successful and popular romantic relationship with Mary Jane. What matters is that Peter initially became wildly popular as a teen hero, as a high school kid, and so I think Marvel continually traps themselves in that cycle where they need to revisit those high school years again and again.
And there's problems with that, because most of the popular Spider-Man characters weren't in that high school cast. So they reinvent MJ and Harry and Gwen and force them into boxes they were never meant to fulfill. You know, MJ has to become the literal girl next door, or a high school best friend. And I think it also ignores what made Peter so wildly popular as a teen hero -- that independence. Peter did everything on his own. That made him appealing to readers. He didn't need to be apprenticed to an adult, or follow in someone's footsteps as a sidekick. Spider-Man was always standing on his own two feet, without any help from anyone. That's how he broke that teen hero mold.
And I think you see that to a certain extent in how audiences are excited for the new MCU movie, because people want to see Peter stand totally on his own. I have no interest in the MCU, but I think it's interesting to see people commenting on that just from the perspective of seeing how fandom reacts to things. People want that independence from Peter. They want to see him as a solo hero.
Johnny, by comparison, is not a solo hero, and at least in 616 continuity really can't function as one on a permanent basis. He can have solo adventures, sure, but part of Johnny's character has always been a social animal. He's a heroic person on his own, but he's a spacefaring superhero adventurer because that's what his family does. Left alone, Johnny tends to spiral. But that's kind of beside the point. The point is, why, when Johnny's origin is just as rooted in his youth as Peter's, do adaptations consistently erase the age gap between him and the other three? Why do they always either age him up or age the others down?
(I'm not really clear on how old he's supposed to be in First Steps at the time of the accident, but it didn't look like 16.)
So I think in adapting the Fantastic Four, the original origin story always seems to present a problem. I think because, first, it requires the Fantastic Four to steal that spaceship. This is not a government-sanctioned flight. They stole that thing. Second because it requires Reed to be wrong.
Fantastic Four introduces us to the smartest man in the world and then it tells us that in his hubris, his first act is this terrible mistake that changes his family forever. Now what he does after that -- I think that really does show that Reed is a genius. But that's not the narrative movies want to go with, generally. They would rather skip the theft, save for Fant4stic, a movie that has a whole host of other problems. And even in Fant4stic, Reed and Sue and Ben are aged down closer to Johnny, and absolved of some of the responsibility of their actions because of that.
Basically, I think no one wants to try to explain why three smart, competent adults went "this is fine" and brought a 16-year-old on their dangerous space flight theft mission. There's other issues here. I think that nobody wants to make Johnny 16 for reasons besides that, like Fantastic Four (2005) and its decision to play up the skirt chaser reputation, or not wanting the team to look unequal. I think there is worry about the teen sidekick aspect always -- I mean, look at Batman adaptations. Peter, being a solo hero, I think largely escapes this, although it does make me kind of side eye some of the earlier MCU Spider-Man choices more, particularly in how they utilized Iron Man.
I think the closest we get to teen Johnny in a live action is the unreleased Roger Corman Fantastic Four film. You do see him there as a child while Reed and Ben are boarding at Johnny and Sue's aunt's house. (And there is a very cute scene in the beginning, if you've never seen it, where college Ben is playing video games with itty-bitty baby Johnny, and where Reed later picks him up.) The downside there is that they were leaning into Byrne's origin story, which aged Sue down considerably.
But I also feel like this is generally a problem where Marvel doesn't want to really dig into Sue and Johnny's backstory, and it's just kind of a shame. I think there's a lot to get into there that outlines who they both are as heroes, where Sue is used to shouldering immense amounts of responsibility, and feeling unseen, and Johnny is used to pretending like everything is okay, because he and his sister need to stay together. I would love a limited comics series about it, honestly, but I don't think Marvel would be interested in it.