Mary Jane Watson May Have a Tan

So, Nerd Rage is beginning for the upcoming Spider-Man movie.  Why?

Well, it appears that a character known for her model level good looks:

Will be played by a person with model good looks:

So, Mary Jane Watson will be played by Zendaya.  Truth be told, I know little about her.  I actually did not know who she was at all until earlier this year, style folks at the Oscars condemned her choice of hairstyle.  She was cast back in March, but even though Entertainment Weekly claimed it was for the Mary Jane role, it appeared to go under the radar.

While some fan reaction has been very “DON’T TOUCH MY TOYS!”  Creators have reacted a bit differently.  Long Time Spider-scribe offered this after one angry tweet that came his way:

First, no, it does not spit in the face of the source material.  That is a ridiculous assertion on it’s face.  Some have tried to paint Slott as a hypocrite, because he dismissed the the idea of making Luke Cage white as racist.  But there is a large canyon between making a white character black, Asian, Indian, etc and making a minority ethnicity white.  There is no shortage of solid roles for white actors.  There is no shortage of white characters in movies or comics.  Race-bending a character like Luke Cage when there are still so few black characters damages what we see.  And of course white people do not understand the power of seeing “yourself” on TV.  We are the overwhelming majority of what people saw when growing up.  We have always seen “ourselves” in film and television and books.  Heck, the Hunger Games had a character who was explicitly black, and people still were upset when a black actress was cast.

But Guardians of the Galaxy director put it best: