Emma Stone’s character had a date with comic book destiny in the Spider-Man sequel. Here’s why it stung.
Columbia Pictures
In one sense, it's silly to warn people off what happens to Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Peter Parker develops powers after getting bitten by a radioactive spider. Gwen Stacy dies. It's what she does. She's Peter's first love, and, famously, at least in comic book terms, she was killed off — in 1973, in a story arc written by Gerry Conway that was one of the signals that the medium as a whole was taking a turn for the darker and grittier. Her absence has been as important as her presence, the shocking intrusion of the reality of death into Spider-Man's world after he's become a superhero, a dramatic upping of the stakes and proof of his fallibility.
In having the latest incarnation of the webslinging superhero, played by Andrew Garfield, fall for Emma Stone's Gwen rather than the more familiar but not yet introduced Mary Jane, The Amazing Spider-Man signaled that it was setting itself up for eventual tragedy. Is Gwen Stacy really Gwen Stacy if she isn't doomed? The potential was there from the beginning, when Peter told Gwen his secret, kissed her, and leaped off her family's 20th story balcony to battle the Lizard, as she gasped, with accidental prescience, "I'm in trouble."
Columbia Pictures / Via therockdiaries.tumblr.com
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