Peter Parker was the first person to put on the mask of Spider-Man, but he wasn’t the last. The wallcrawler has had multiple secret identities over the years – including Peter Parker’s blonde clone Ben Reilly (ugh) – but the most popular substitute for the original is definitely Miles Morales, the half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man who premiered in the mini-series Ultimate Fallout in August 2011. So, will Miles Morales ever take over as Spider-Man in Sony’s rebooted Amazing Spider-Man franchise?
According to producer Matt Tolmach…
“No.”
In a recent interview with Playlist (via Coming Soon), producers Matt Tolmach and Avi Arad both indicated that Spider-Man will forever be Peter Parker in the movies. Tolmach was pretty straightforward about it (as you may have noticed), but Arad had a somewhat more involved explanation.
“The one thing you cannot do,“ Arad said, “when you have a phenomena that has stood the test of time, you have to be true to the real character inside – who is Peter Parker? What are the biggest effects on his life? Then you can draw in time, and you can consider today’s world in many ways. But to have multiple ones… I don’t know if you remember, but Marvel tried it. And it was almost the end of Spider-Man.”
We hate to admit it, but Avi Arad has an argument here. Not a very well supported argument, perhaps, but an argument nonetheless. Marvel Comics only changed the man (and sometimes, the boy) behind the Spider-Man mask after many decades and hundreds, if not thousands, of published stories about Peter Parker. Even if Sony rushes through these Amazing Spider-Man movies (and they sure seem to be trying to), they’re not going to run out of Peter Parker stories anytime soon.
That said, Andrew Garfield can’t play Spider-Man forever, and when the time comes to recast the character, it would be a groundbreaking decision to change the identity of the hero instead of the person playing them (or to reboot the franchise all over again). There’s nothing wrong with Miles Morales as a character, and there are plenty of fans who would like to see Tolmach and Arad reverse their decision in some way down the line.
But for now, it’s Peter Parker or bust, right Matt Tolmach?
“As far as we’re concerned. The guys who take it over after us… Who knows…”
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
