Leaked: Sony’s guidelines for ‘Spider-Man’ depictions in movies
A leaked memo document’s Sony’s guidelines for how Spider-Man is to be depicted in movies. A lot of people are up in arms about it, but truthfully — nothing in the guidelines should fucking surprise you. Disappoint you? Yeah, maybe. But it’s all standard fare.
Leaked documents continue to surface following last fall’s illegal hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Gawker has published parts of a alleged licensing agreement between Marvel and Sony centered on marquee movie superhero,Spider-Man. As is fairly typical in such an agreement, it lays out “musts” for the character, along with what the character absolutely can’t be shown doing.
Notably, the document separates “Mandatory Spider-Man Character Traits” from “Peter Parker Character Traits” — establishing that what’s true for Peter Parker may not be true for other characters that have taken on the Spidey role over the decades in Marvel’s comic books. The Spider-Man traits are fairly rigid; the Peter Parker ones are not. For instance, it’s listed clearly that Peter Parker is “Caucasian and heterosexual,” but a non-Peter Parker Spider-Man is described as “not a homosexual (unless Marvel has portrayed that alter ego as a homosexual).”
Effectively, the agreement reveals that the goal is to maintain the Peter Parker character as recognizable from his 1962 origins as created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko — bitten by a spider, raised by Aunt May and Uncle Ben. “Spider-Man,” on the other hand, can potentially mean different, more diverse things — as seen in recent years of Marvel’s comics with the introduction of Miles Morales, the “Ultimate Spider-Man” of African-American and Puerto Rican descent. Thus, Gawker’s headline, “Spider-Man Can’t Be Gay or Black,” isn’t quite accurate — it’s Peter Parker who in accordance with the character outline can’t be gay or Black, not the Spider-Man guise itself.
Still though, some Spidey characteristics must remain constant no matter who wears the mask. According to the agreement, Spidey is a male who doesn’t torture, kill other than in self-defense, smoke tobacco or abuse alcohol, or has sex before the age of 16. Which for the most part, is all to be expected from consistent depictions of the Friendly Neighborhood hero.