Before I start this, I would like to apologize for what I said last night on Twitter about the situation I’m about to dive into. There was no racism intended, when I said “don’t call me racist,” that was a signal saying, “I’m not trying to be racist, but this is something I don’t see as a necessity.” If I hurt anyone in the black community, I meant no harm, I only criticized a casting choice, nothing more.

Last night, it was revealed that Zendaya (K.C Undercover, Shake it Up), will be playing Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Many fans of the comics lost their minds over this for multiple reasons. The most common reasons included the actress being black, and the actress not being a redhead. What do I think about Zendaya as Mary Jane? Read below!

I never read one Spider-Man comic book, but I know enough about them to back up my statements. I’d like to start off with the redhead thing. While I get why fans are complaining over the hair color, there’s a simple solution to that. Just dye it! Either that or paint it red or something! I mean, if you look at Kirsten Dunst in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, the actress herself was never a redhead. Although if you look at the character in the movie, her hair is red because some changes were made to the actress. As far as the skin color goes, that’s a different story.

I don’t want to sound racist, and if I do, I’m sorry. In the comic books, Mary Jane is a white woman, not black. With that in mind, that already sets Zendaya as an odd casting choice in a movie like this. I mean, I never complained about Black Panther being played by a black guy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but that’s because I didn’t really pay much attention towards Black Panther. If anything, I see why the people behind this movie want Zendaya in the film, that reason being for diversity. I get why that’s the case, but it doesn’t work in a movie like this, where basically everyone who is a fan of the source material wants this final product to look like the source material. Not to mention in general, I would call something like this lazy. If there’s a reason behind this, I want to know. Remember the new Ghostbusters movie? Everybody was complaining that there were women as the starring roles. It was said that some of these people were just outright woman haters. I didn’t approve of the casting choices either, but not because I hate women. It’s just that women as starring roles in a Ghostbusters movie doesn’t entirely fit depending on how the characters are written, and after seeing the trailer, I came to that conclusion. Oh and that reminds me, I don’t mean to digress, but Amy Pascal, one of the producers of Ghostbusters 2016, is producing this movie. She better not be behind another childhood destroyer. I could be wrong about this, maybe Zendaya could kill it as Mary Jane and make me not care about the whole lack of source material reference thing, we’ll just have to wait. I mean, Tom Holland made Spider-Man look awesome in Captain America: Civil War, so at least you have that being brought to this movie!

If there were an alternative cast member to Zendaya as Mary Jane, I wouldn’t have a final answer yet. However Zendaya is DEFINITELY not my first choice. If I offended anyone, I’m sorry, I’d be willing to have an open discussion about the casting choice, but if not, that’s fine. You do you. Is all hope lost for Spider-Man: Homecoming? No. Only some of it is, I’m still gonna go see the movie, but this dropped my hype for the movie. If they try to stick to everything else being like the comic-books, I might be OK in the end, but I don’t like this. If you don’t like Zendaya being Mary Jane simply because it doesn’t resemble the character we’ve gotten from source material, I get where you’re coming from. However if you don’t like Zendaya being Mary Jane simply because she’s black, and you absolutely hate black people, I don’t appreciate that behavior. I’m seeing Suicide Squad today, I’m gonna have a review of that movie up pretty soon. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!