"MJ with a different hair color"?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I actually loved that Gwen was able to be more than a damsel-in-distress. The recent Marvel movies seem to be doing a really great job at making strong female characters who serve a purpose beyond just being threatened by the bad guys. In the Raimi movies, MJ was useless. She had to be saved three times (that I can recall) in the first movie alone, and at no point in the trilogy did she ever get to be proactive or helpful in any way.
But all the Marvel movies since Iron Man have had female characters helping the heroes succeed. Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, Peggy Carter, Gwen Stacy - they've all been integral in the eventual success of the heroes. Even when they've been threatened, it's felt more like it was because they put themselves in harms way, rather than just because they're the love interests of the heroes, or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or anything like that. The women are treated with more respect than in past superheor movies.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.![]()
What I liked was that they made Gwen badass without making her badass. It seems like when many filmmakers try making a "strong female character," they try to make her physically kick ass alongside the guys, but they often bungle it and it comes off as trying too hard, plus "Kung-Fu Gwen Stacy" makes no sense anyway. Instead, and this is what I applaud them for, they make her brain badass, which is an actual trait of hers from the comics that nobody remembers.
I've actually seen people argue for killing her due to this, saying that she's "too perfect," a sort of idol that needs to be torn down, but that'd be taking the cheap way out, in my opinion. Amusingly enough, the "idol/perfect woman" description actually fits Stan's original intent for MJ pretty well.

Though I don't know what they are going to do for Mary Jane Watson in those movies what with Emma Stone basically playing MJ with a different hair color in the movie. I guess they could make them identical cousins or something but that would have a little too much of a Madolyn Pryor vibe to it and that just did not end well.
"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins