It seems that Twitter is all the twitting about a grassroots campaign to get Mystery Team/Community actor comedian Donald Glover an audition for the role of Spider-Man/Peter Parker in Sony’s attempt to reboot the franchise.
While the whole thing is a gag, and Glover himself doesn’t see it happening, it’s got some buzz and does make you think. 3k people are fans of the Facebook page illustrating the campaign and #donald4spiderman was the third highest trending topic on Twitter for a while there.
I don’t know if fans would accept a non-white Spider-Man, but I don’t really care. It’s not an affirmative-action move. It’s asking the question: is there anything inherently white about Spider-Man’s story? Yes, Stan Lee wrote Peter Parker as a white character, but is there anything about that character’s story that wouldn’t work for a man of any non-white ethnicity?
And I couldn’t agree more. While some characters are built around their ethnicity, Spider-Man is not one of them. In the end I still think they will cast some white kid, but its worth considering.
Do I think it should be Donald Glover? HELL NO.
While Spider-Man is not a comedian or a comedy flick, his snappy banter is a part of his appeal – but I just can’t see Glover doing it. But they want a high school Parker, and this guy is 27. He doesn’t have Ralph Macchio’s boyish looks to play a high school student at that age. College kid maybe. Still, my opinion against him has nothing to do with him being black.
Could they make a black kid play Peter Parker? Why not?
I think the reboot is a fine idea and I am not against it. Without Raimi you might as well start over, because moving forward without those actors and without Raimi, its going to be a whole new feel to Spidey anyways.
They want to go younger, gloss over the origin and have him still in highschool. That’s fine. None of those things say he can’t be black. Or hispanic (Superman was played by a hispanic actor) or even an Asian. It doesn’t matter.
As long as he has Parker’s insecurities, MJ is a hot redhead, Flash is a bully, Osborne is kind of a prick and we have an agile superstrong hero in spider pajamas cracking the wise… It’s Spider-Man.
But as mentioned in the Collider article, its going to be hard to get people interested in this if they dont show something fresh.
