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What's that? Discussing the Homecoming supporting cast? How did this can of worms get here? The central problem I have with it is that the supporting cast is written like a bad RPG writer who shoehorns references even when they don't fit, just to sneak an established name in there. (Hey, that kettle over there looks pretty black; maybe I should say something...)
Seriously, though. Ned is just Ganke. But they didn't want to use the name Ganke, so eh, just take a name from elsewhere in the supporting cast gallery. Who cares? (Hint: this guy.) Michelle is a fine character, but there's no reason to call her MJ; even if you try to walk it back and pretend it was just a wink. If Flash Thompson is going to share absolutely nothing in common with his comic counterpart except that they're both dicks to Peter, then why not give him his own identity? Even the little girl on the morning show has to be called Betty Brandt, even that though defies all logic. (Sure, I'm splitting hairs on that one, but it's a symptom of the "disease.")
There's an almost pathological fear in inventing new characters, even though characters created outside the comic pages have sometimes done just fine for themselves. Harley Quinn, to name the obvious one. Phil Coulson, to stick within the MCU.
What's the point of reboots, reimaginings and remakes if they're going to just rehash everything they've already done? We've seen the usual versions of the Spider-Cast, some of them in two different reboots now. If they had simply made all of these characters into entirely new ones, you'd get the fanbase in an uproar:
'Why is Peter dating this girl and not someone from the comics?'
'Who is this nerd and why is he bullying Peter instead of Flash?'
'Why would you use this boring new sidekick guy when you could've used Ganke from the comics?'
We love the idea of adding new characters to the mythos. Until we don't. Miles Morales originally received a great deal of hate for replacing Spider-Man, despite the fact that he turned out to be an honest-to-goodness interesting character.
Coulson filled a pretty niche role that no major comic book character could've filled- and as far as the movie-going audience knew, the man was dead by the end of Avengers. Replacing Spider-Man's entire core support cast with new faces is a whole lot different than adding an original character in an original role.
Spider-Man: Homecoming was not a perfect movie. Hell, it's not even the best Spider-Man movie Amazing Spider-Man 2 takes that spot ///s. But I don't think it's writers were just trying to sneak in references to the comic books. MJ and Flash fit pretty tightly into the roles they were meant to serve in the comic books; having someone knew in their place would, in my opinion, feel even stranger than what we have going now. If I were to take a shot in the dark at guessing their intent, they meant to modernize rather dated (still great, mind you) concepts for a new, young audience that wouldn't so easily be able to identify with the Spider-Man of the 60s and 70s.
Did they succeed in their goal? Dunno! Probably not! But I appreciate that they tried it, regardless. We've had two previous iterations of the mythos. I'd say it wasn't the wrong call- exactly- to try and shake things up.
You could even say that they were...
Ultimatizing it.
I'm glad RPG doesn't have a thumbs down button all of a sudden
