In a recent interview with Geeks of Color, Marisa Tomei revealed that she wanted Aunt May, her character in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” to be in a gay relationship.
“There was a moment, where I felt that May – maybe she should just be with a woman because Ben is gone,” she said. “And who should she be with?” The Oscar winner went on to share that she thought producer Amy Pascal could play May’s romantic interest. “And we were kind of talking about it. And so I actually really wanted Amy Pascal from Sony to be my girlfriend.”
Tomei claimed the massive transformation in the nature of the character could be understated, saying, “I was like, ‘No one even has to know, Amy. I’ll just be in a scene and you’ll be over there. And I’ll just be like ‘Hey!’ It’ll just be a subtle thing.” But she concluded by admitting that no one at Sony or Marvel “went for it at the time.”
While a few people on social media cheered the idea of Peter Parker’s aunt becoming a lesbian, Tomei’s suggestion received plenty of negative pushback from fans.
Conservative rapper and pundit Eric July commented on Twitter, “Hollywood brainlet, Marisa Tomei wanted MCU ‘Aunt May’ to be lesbian, because ‘Ben was gone anyways.’ These people have no idea who these characters are. Stop giving Marvel the benefit of the doubt just because they nostalgia-baited you.”
And as Bounding Into Comics first reported, novelist, comic book creator, and YouTuber Jon Del Arroz had a particularly scathing reaction. “Well, everybody was just cheering that the ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ movie was safe. They weren’t going to put any [social justice warrior] stuff in it and that makes it great. Let’s applaud,” he said in a video response.
He went on:
Of all characters to do that, to have a traditional character like Aunt May being pushed in that direction is really just a slap in the face to everybody. A trying to rewrite Spider-Man history just to stick a middle finger at you, the fan.
That’s what these people do every single time. They have no respect for any of the creations before. They have no respect for the way any of these characters were. And they just want to subvert and destroy everything they touch. Every single time.
To Del Arroz’s point, recent years have seen both Marvel the studio and the comic book publisher alter characters as they were originally created to transform them into LGBT representatives. Last year, for instance, the comic company announced that Guardians of the Galaxy’s Peter Quill (aka Star-Lord) is bisexual. Both the studio and the publisher made the same transformation with Thor’s Valkyrie. And in October, the studio unveiled its first gay superhero with “Eternals” Phastos. The movie went on to become the second box office bomb in Marvel’s history.
The latest Spider-Man, in contrast, made no changes to appeal to wokeness. The movie went on to break box office records, scoring the second highest-grossing debut in U.S. history.