The good news is that no one cheered. I’ve written before of my concern that the inevitable death of Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (from the Sony Corporation) would bring cheers from the audience, as hardcore fans would applaud the somewhat iconic story turn. They didn’t cheer. Even with painfully obvious foreshadowing starting with Emma Stone’s "I could die at any moment!" high school graduation speech, it stands to reason that the vast majority of general audience members who saw the film this weekend were actually surprised when Spider-Man tried but failed to save his girlfriend from said death plunge inside a clock tower. But in terms of killing off Peter Parker’s girlfriend to mimic a story that was groundbreaking 41 years ago, Marc Webb, Emma Stone, and company spent so much time being excited that they could that they didn’t stop to wonder whether they should.
I made a point not to discuss said plot turn in my initial review, both because it was a massive spoiler and because it was a plot turn that I disapproved of on principle, and thus it would be unfair to be too hard on a film offering what many fans in fact wanted to see in one form or another. Truth be told, it was a ripping action climax, with Spidey and newly established Green Goblin doing swift and brutal combat as Gwen kept falling in and out of mortal peril. The moment offered the best kind of suspense, which is the horror of knowing how a moment is going to play out even while hoping that things go differently. But the adherence to comics dogma opens up a gigantic can of worms for upcoming Amazing Spider-Man films, harming the would-be appeal of future installments by turning its most popular character into a "woman in refrigerator."
The phrase "woman in refrigerator", coined by future comic book writer Gail Simone 1999, referred to the tendency of comic books to do harm upon the girlfriends, wives, or female siblings of a male hero for the sole purpose of making the hero feel bad and/or seek vengeance. It was named after an incident in a 1994 Green Lantern comic where Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend was murdered and stuffed in a refrigerator. It soon became the de-facto phrase for the pattern in comic books by which the female supporting character in a male-centric title would be raped, murdered, assaulted and/or de-powered so that the male here could "have a sad." And that’s really all the death of Ms. Stacy is for this second Spider-Man film. Emma Stone gave us a rather amusing and engaging female character, the filmmakers did their best to sell the notion that she was her own character with her own agency, then she got chucked down a clock tower so that Peter could feel bad.
Never mind the young woman who was on her way to Oxford, a perfect example of how to realistically write out a major character without having to resort to a now-cliched "shocking death". Never mind the fact that Gwen helped Spidey save the day from Electro’s blackout and then was immediately murdered as de-facto punishment for her heroic pluck. The most important thing about Gwen Stacy will be that she died. Her death only matters in how it affects the male superhero and how he grows or changes as a result. Even as the somewhat fantastically perfect girlfriend, her life was meaningless save how her murder affected Peter and established the Green Goblin as an arch-villain for The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Filmmakers like to talk up the allegedly positive qualities of the hero’s girlfriend as an excuse for not having female superheroes, but in the end Gwen lived only to die violently.
The "Woman In Refrigerator" trope is a constant presence in mainstream entertainment, even in entertainment I would classify as "really good." It’s how 24 chose to end its first and last seasons. The Blacklist recently dispatched of a supporting character’s estranged wife just a few episodes after introducing her. Lost killed off two major female characters in season 2 purely to make their respective island boyfriends feel bad. I love Chris Nolan films as much as the next critic, but Memento, The Prestige, and Inception eventually revolved around the violent death of a female character solely so that the hero could be tormented by said violence. The sheer number of films that start or end with a male hero traumatized over the recent death of his wife and/or kids is too numerous to count (Dante’s Peak, Law-Abiding Citizen, Casino Royale, End of Days, Lethal Weapon, just to name a few). I don’t accuse Marc Webb and company of any ill-intent, and I defend on principle their rights as artists to tell any story they choose, but what was groundbreaking 41 years ago is not just cliched but indicative of a cultural issue, in terms of how females are utilized and valued in pop entertainment.
But even if you’re not bothered on a broader cultural sense about the commonplace treatment of female characters as injured/raped/murdered props in the male-centric narratives of mainstream entertainment, or you think I’m picking on Amazing Spider-Man 2 in a way that I didn’t pick on, for example, The Dark Knight, the implications for this franchise are specific and problematic. Thanks to the violent murder of Gwen Stacy, the third Amazing Spider-Man is left without the very thing that audiences and critics claim to love most about the first two films. Even those who didn’t like either of the films will tell you that they enjoyed the quirky romantic banter between real-life couple Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Stone is dead, which means that we won’t get that key component the next time around.
There is a reason why Han Solo didn’t stay frozen in Return of the Jedi,why Jack Sparrow eventually came back in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, or why Optimus Prime didn’t stay dead in Revenge of the Fallen. You don’t make a sequel by taking away the very thing the audience came to see. And this film was all about setting up future sequels. With Gwen now deceased, the third film will find a new replacement girlfriend for Peter (because nothing takes the mind off your murdered ex like bumping into your hot red head neighbor who calls you "tiger") and/or put even more emphasis on its villains, which is the one thing most everybody agreed was most problematic. Few moviegoers walking out of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were excited about the prospect of seeing more of the Green Goblin, more of the Rhino, a resurrection for Electro and/or a return of the Lizard.
Sony's obsessive focus on crafting a kind of "universe" around the various Spidey foes is both the core narrative flaw of this sequel (Peter had no real arc) and the likely path for a third film. The choice to write out Emma Stone was (to my knowledge) an artistic one as opposed to a corporate one. But the gaping hole left in her absence allows future installments to further set up what Sony desperately wants to be the end game for this franchise, a big "Sinister Six" smack down. The problem is that no one particularly likes the villains in this specific franchise. They like the hero and they like the hero’s plucky girlfriend. But said girlfriend just bit the dust, which means that the third Amazing Spider-Man movie, which in turn follows two installments that were somewhat liked or tolerated without being loved, will enter theaters in June 2016 with less of what you liked and more of what you disliked.
The fact that Amazing Spider-Man 2 made $369 million in 19 days of worldwide play with no buzz shows how potent the Spider-Man character still is. But Sony and company just played their trump card, offering the iconic "death of Gwen Stacy" scene that many hardcore fans were waiting for ever since the character was announced. And unlike Iron Man 2 or Star Trek Into Darkness, which were also somewhat dispassionately received sequels that made about as much as the original worldwide, there is no would-be Avengers or 50th anniversary to boost interest for the third installment. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will live or die by the cards it has dealt itself, and, like Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, it just gave away its trump card. I won’t predict box office doom for Amazing Spider-Man 3, but at some point audiences are going to notice that they aren’t all that crazy about these films.
And on a cultural level, millions of young audience members, male and female alike, just got a profound lesson on the value of female human life in pop-culture entertainment. You can talk all you want creating "strong", "independent", female characters who are "strong role models" for young girls in otherwise male-centric entertainments, but if the plot negates those qualities by turning her into a victim, taking away her agency, and/or punishing her for those very qualities, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. Gwen Stacy may be a great character, mostly only because Emma Stone is a great actress. But in the end she’s irrelevant save for the fact that she died.
