This Spider-Man cartoon isn't very friendly to the original source material so much as it's woke
Entertainment Weekly fawned over the new Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man cartoon being produced for Disney Plus:
Predictably, if there's any left-wing apologists chiming in, it's at The Mary Sue:
Additionally absurd, as told by Comic Book Movie, is how one of the cartoon's producers says it's not set in the MCU because it's no longer fun:
What matters in the end is that this new cartoon's producers refuse to avoid reliance on wokeness to build a story, and refuse to save their diversity casting for a show of its own. And above all that, no matter what universe the cartoon's supposed to be set in, it doesn't differentiate itself in terms of filmmaking choices. All it does is demonstrate a disrespect for Stan Lee and Ditko's original premises. There's something wrong with our culture alright, and it's people who won't admit it's supremely silly to do all this woke race-swapping and gender-swapping.
Next month will mark the premiere of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, an animated Disney+ series that takes the web-slinger back to his comic book roots.Say, wasn't the Cho character a diversity-checkbox replacement for Bruce Banner as the "totally awesome Hulk" a decade ago? Just a beginning clue how this cartoon is only adhering to woke standards, along with how it clearly relies on stories like the Ultimate line for "inspiration" as much as cheap choices from little more than a decade ago. And as Cosmic Book News reveals, Norman and Harry Osborn, in case it wasn't mentioned before, have undergone race-swapping tactics:
Previously titled Spider-Man: Freshman Year, the upcoming show follows a parallel timeline in which Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man) is just beginning his heroic journey, but now he's also being mentored by tech genius Norman Osborn. Their relationship is not unlike that of Peter and Tony Stark in the MCU — except instead of living a double life as an avenging hero, Osborn is the alter ego of Spider-Man's archnemesis, the Green Goblin.
[...] Jeff Trammell (Craig of the Creek, Amphibia) is the project's head writer, with Mel Zwyer (Young Justice) serving as supervising director. Back in 2022, Trammell revealed that the series will feature plenty of characters familiar to comic book readers — some of which have yet to be featured in the wider MCU. Among them are Nico Minoru, Amadeus Cho, Lonnie Lincoln, Wakandan genius Asha, Dr. Chameleon, Speed Demon, Scorpion, Butane the Pyromaniac, Tarantula, the Rhino, and Dr. Bentley Wittman.
With the release of the Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man trailer it’s revealed that Marvel has introduced new Black versions of Norman Osborn and Harry Osborn.Wow, that could explain why black Harry Osborn looks so effeminate, in addition to sporting earrings. What are they trying to make him look like? A variation on Amanda Waller from DC's Suicide Squad? The character designs look even worse than some early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Ands then they add insult to injury by implying this "respects" Spidey's roots? No way. This is just more infiltration and ruination by modern social justice ideologues, and doesn't take Spidey back to his and the early cast's roots so much as it remakes them to suit a modern woke agenda.
[...] The images released for Spider-Man: Freshman Year at the time also led to fans questioning if the characters were indeed Black versions of Norman and Harry Osborn, which the trailer and IMDb now make clear.
[...] Jeff Trammell is the head writer who hasn’t previously worked with Marvel, according to IMDb. Trammell is known for Craig of the Greek, which according to Wiki “features themes of friendship, diversity, and LGBTQ representation that have attracted a broad fanbase.”
Predictably, if there's any left-wing apologists chiming in, it's at The Mary Sue:
Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, is consistently one of the most popular villains in the Spider-Man mythos. But now a whole lot of people who claim to be Spider-Man fans are throwing their toys out of the pram simply because this version of Norman—one of a great many—is Black.It's mighty peculiar how writers for a site as awful as the Mary Sue accuse everybody of "racism", yet never ask why it's such a big deal to do race-swapping of established characters instead of create new ones. All the awful writer of the puff piece is doing is indicating she doesn't give a damn about the characters to begin with. In other words, they're just soulless mannaquins that can be redressed at a whim, and she doesn't truly care about character development and drama. All she cares about is the politics the product is built upon, and that's the real reason for it's being. One could wonder, if Norman Osborn's a nasty criminal, does she actually want such a character to be black? Some could say this is an important clue that such leftists don't really give a damn about racial minorities, and it wouldn't make any difference if the character in question were depicted demonically. On which note, if it gets to the point where Norman murders Gwen Stacy in his Goblin guise, will that be considered insensitive to racial minorities? Based on politically correct conduct, the answer to that will possibly be "no". Proving where such leftists really stand, and that they never really cared about the dignity of black and Asian communities at all.
Yep, the same people who show up to comment “woke” and “DEI” on everything are now commenting on the Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man trailer with, well, “woke” and “DEI.” Not only is Norman Black, but his son Harry (Zeno Robinson) is as well, and people who probably don’t even care all that much about the characters are completely furious. Some are saying that changing Norman and Harry to Black contributes to “ginger erasure,” a so-called problem that is one hundred percent made up. “Getting real tired of all the racist raceswapping going on in comics, this is yet another historically ginger character replaced with a black one, it’s so tired at this point,” said one person, even though the Osborns’ hair color fluctuates from comic to comic and adaption to adaption.
This is exhausting to watch and it happens every time a Black person takes a role previously written as white. Look at what happened when Halle Bailey was cast to play Ariel in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid—she was abused online by racists. “As a Black person, you just expect it and it’s not really a shock anymore,” Bailey said in 2023. But that itself speaks to something very wrong with our current culture. And to make things even worse, it’s not even just when a Black actor plays a “white” role – Black people have been attacked for simply daring to be visible in popular franchises. Moses Ingram was subject to racist abuse when she played the villain in Obi-Wan Kenobi back in 2022, to the point where Disney had to release a statement supporting her.
Spider-Man promotes a message of unity. The cast of the comic book has grown over the years to include more diverse characters and this isn’t even the first time an animated adaption has changed the race of a important character—The Spectacular Spider-Man, which debuted in 2008, changed Liz Allan from a white blonde into a Latina. It’s absolutely ridiculous that people are throwing tantrums over some iconic characters being a different race in an adaption that was always going to do things differently. Still, if they’re storming off, we can safely say that the fandom is better off without them.I think fandom would be better off without woke propagandists like the Mary Sue blabbering about, because their arguments aren't merit-based, and likely won't take an objective view of the new series on Disney Plus, if they even watch it at all. Besides, what "unity" is to be found here? As for changes to Liz Allan? Even that was decidedly trivial pandering for its time, because again, what's so great about changing an established cast member's background that isn't so great about creating a new one? If the studio wanted to, they could create new characters, and it's not like older adaptations pre-2000 didn't try this. I vaguely recall the Hulk cartoon from 1982-83 featured a father-daughter duo named Rio and Rita, who were new characters not featured in the comics proper, and ran a diner near the Gamma military base where Bruce Banner and Betty Ross worked. What's so hard about creating new characters for the movies and TV shows of modern times? Some live action productions, possibly as far back as the early 90s, may have set the tone for this modern absurdity too, where we're apparently supposed to marvel at merely seeing characters from the comics, but not judge whether the finished product is any good. Which could partly explain why the 1990 Flash TV series starring John Wesley Shipp failed. In the case of that series, it cast actress Amanda Pays as Christina McGee from the 2nd Flash volume of 1987 as Barry Allen's girlfriend instead of Iris West. In the case of that TV series, one of the mistakes made artistically was relying on a cobbled-together setup of very recent creations, as though that alone makes a great production. Unfortunately, no, and while there was at least one character who was new there (a Latino scientist at Barry's lab, IIRC), the way they went about with such a cheap "easter egg" approach was trivial, and didn't make for much merit.
Additionally absurd, as told by Comic Book Movie, is how one of the cartoon's producers says it's not set in the MCU because it's no longer fun:
We'd later learn that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was set in its own reality, with the wall-crawler set to don all manner of costumes while facing the likes of Chameleon, Scorpion, and Doctor Octopus. As for the hero's new mentor, it's Norman Osborn in place of Tony Stark.Why do they think SJW-pandering will be any improvement over where the Marvel movieverse has since gotten? No matter how Peter Parker will be portrayed, they failed to explain why Osborn pere et fils have to undergo race-swapping, and maybe even gender-swapping for LGBT pandering. One more reason why the claim this draws from items as far back as Ditko's days is unintentional comedy.
Marvel Television boss Brad Winderbaum was recently asked about the decision not to set the animated series on Earth-616 and explained, "It started out as 'Okay it's Spider-Man’s freshman year, he’s going to be a freshman, can we get away with this being entirely in the MCU?' and very early on in the development process, we realized how locked in that actually made us."
"We couldn't really use his rogues gallery, we couldn't really use his origin. It was not fun, honestly. We would've had to put so many limiters on our story to get it to lock into canon."
Winderbaum noted that attempts to make Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man MCU canon put the team working on the series in a "hard place" and added, "Every single project I’ve worked on, they've all had a life of their own. You have to let them live their own lives and go where they want to go."
"It does have a lot of DNA that is very similar to the MCU depiction of the Tom Holland Spider-Man, but it really also draws all the way back to Steve Ditko," Winderbaum promised. "It's adjacent to the main continuity but really speaks to what is inherent about the character."
What matters in the end is that this new cartoon's producers refuse to avoid reliance on wokeness to build a story, and refuse to save their diversity casting for a show of its own. And above all that, no matter what universe the cartoon's supposed to be set in, it doesn't differentiate itself in terms of filmmaking choices. All it does is demonstrate a disrespect for Stan Lee and Ditko's original premises. There's something wrong with our culture alright, and it's people who won't admit it's supremely silly to do all this woke race-swapping and gender-swapping.
Labels: animation, golden calf of villainy, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Spider-Man
