Saturday, December 25, 2021

Spiderman romance: When the archetype drives the avatar

I’d been thinking recently about my exchange with Petri Mähönen around mythical entrepreneurs when I came across a comment about successive pairs of leading actors in Spiderman films falling for each other in real life.

In a NYT interview by Brooks Barnes with Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal on the Future of ‘Spider-Man’ and the M.C.U., Amy Pascal (the top movie executive at Sony from 1999 to 2015, responsible for the first five live-action Spider-Man movies, and producer on the last three) had this to say:

Tobey and Kirsten. Emma and Andrew. Tom and Zendaya. Why do all your lead actors end up falling for each other in real life? It can’t just be the spandex. 

PASCAL   I took Tom and Zendaya aside, separately, when we first cast them and gave them a lecture. Don’t go there — just don’t. Try not to. I gave the same advice to Andrew and Emma. It can just complicate things, you know? And they all ignored me.

Maybe the archetype they were acting out was just too powerful.

In a similar way, perhaps, the Trickster role that Elon Musk plays has come to inhabit him.


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