If you read the Spider-Man comic books, watched the cartoons or seen the movies and thought, “You know, I wish they made Aunt May younger and more attractive,” Marvel and Sony have listened to your (presumably) unvoiced desires.
According to Variety‘s Justin Kroll, Marisa Tomei is the top pick to play Peter Parker’s aunt in the new reboot of the Spider-Man film series. There has been no official announcement from Marvel or Sony, but for Variety to run the report indicates that it must be close to a done deal. (Soon thereafter, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Rebecca Ford reported that Tomei is in final negotiations for the role.) Kroll writes that an offer went out to her last week, shortly after the news broke that Tom Holland would be the new cinematic web-slinger.
I suppose if you were to point out that Tomei is 50 years old, then playing Aunt May might seem a bit more feasible. At least to my 12-year-old self. Think how old 50 sounded when you were a grade school kid. And when you consider that Holland is 19 years old, playing an adolescent Peter Parker (reportedly 15 years old in this rebooted version), Tomei isn’t too young in real world terms to play who’s essentially the mother figure in the Spider-Man mythology. But if you didn’t know Tomei was 50, would you have guessed that was her age?
Of course, the real obstacle for longtime fans of Spider-Man is that Aunt May wasn’t just a motherly figure in the comic books up until the 2000s. She was nearly a grandmother, in terms of how she was depicted on the page. (That also applied to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, in which Rosemary Harris, 74 at the time, played Peter’s aunt.) Writers such as Brian Michael Bendis smartly reinterpreted the character later on, to make her a younger, more vital authority figure for Peter Parker, rather than a doddering elderly woman whose dramatic value was in worrying about being unable to pay bills or becoming ill.
Older comic book fans (most certainly including myself) have to face the reality that we continue to get older while the stories and characters we grew up enjoying have to stay updated and fresh. To paraphrase Wooderson in Dazed and Confused (who said this from a more leering perspective), we’re getting older, they stay the same age. And that means actresses which some of us may have once viewed as something entirely different than mother figures are now going to portray those roles.
This has been happening before Tomei was attached to play Aunt May. Annette O’Toole (who was in her 50s at the time) played Clark Kent’s mother on the Smallville TV series. Diane Lane portrayed Martha Kent in Man of Steel in her late 40s (and played older on screen, thanks to makeup). Even Sally Field looks younger than mid-60s in the two latest Spider-Man films as Aunt May. Hey, it’s called acting. Deal with it. (I’m talking to myself here, as much as anyone else.)
To younger comic book and superhero movie fans, Tomei is plenty old enough (or should we say, age-appropriate) to play the maternal figure in Peter Parker’s life. This new Spider-Man is presumably supposed to be someone that segment of the audience can relate to, just as so many of us related to the adventures of Peter Parker in high school and college while reading Marvel Comics. Besides an adolescent Spider-Man being truer to the character’s comic book roots, he also presents a contrast to the older characters he’ll be interacting with as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has expressed his preference in seeing a far younger Spidey alongside the decidedly more adult Captain America and Iron Man. Maybe there’s also some comedic possibility in something like Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark meeting Tomei’s Aunt May and some chemistry igniting between the two. (OK, Stark is presumably still with Pepper Potts and May is a widow, but just go with it for a sentence.) That is definitely a storyline the comic books have never been in position to create. (Although Aunt May and Doctor Octopus were an item in the 1970s.)
Personally, it’s going to take some time for me to accept that an actor I’ve watched almost entirely as a female lead and love interest is going to play a character I grew up perceiving as a grandmother. (Will Uncle Ben be in this movie? My world will be further rocked if Keanu Reeves is cast in that part.) Maybe that’s what is really troubling here. Is an Academy Award winner getting to the stage of her career where it’s smart for her to take roles like this? (Surely, it’s good business to be in a superhero blockbuster.) I should probably watch Tomei as Jonah Hill’s mother in Cyrus to mentally prepare myself.
And by the time these movies get rebooted yet again, and someone like Cameron Diaz or Julia Roberts is cast as Aunt May or Superman’s mother, maybe I’ll have even outgrown them. (This is extremely doubtful, especially as superhero movies have taken over pop culture.) Or I’ll be taking my own child (or nieces) to a Spider-Man movie, and seeing actors I’ve watched for decades now playing parents won’t seem so weird anymore.
Marvel and Sony’s new Spider-Man film, which has yet to be titled, is scheduled for a July 28, 2017 release.
[Variety]
