Mary Jane Had Options

Photo: Mary Jane “MJ” Watson (played by Kirsten Dunst) and Harry Osborn (played by James Franco) in Spiderman 3 (2007).

Traveling down the memory lane archives has taken me back to watching the Tobey Maguire Spiderman trilogy that was released during the early-2000s.

Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman was my masked hero of choice from the time I was in high school until the end of college. I had a very innocent, school-girl crush on Maguire’s Spiderman and was devastated when the first rain-drenched, upside-down onscreen kiss between MJ and Spidey took place in an alleyway. For years, Mary Jane was my direct competition, that was until Gwen Stacy appears in the third installment, Spiderman 3 (2007), and Peter Parker’s attention split in two.

The storyline changes for all the main characters in the third movie. Peter Parker now has to decide between MJ, his first unattainable crush, or Gwen, his science lab partner in college. The film throws a curveball when—Harry Osborn, aka “The Green Goblin’s Son” has suffered a head injury, and like all Soap Opera Dramas, he takes on the same personality that he had at the start of Spiderman (2002).

There is a scene in Spiderman 3 when Mary Jane calls up her long-time high school friend, Harry Osborn, for emotional support when she needed a break from Peter Parker. Eventually, what ensued was one of the most fun and theatrical scenes in the whole movie that mirrored 1940s swing dance, rockabilly beats of the 1950s, and classic Hollywood. The scene was a turning point of my own feelings toward Mary Jane. At first I had seen MJ as competition for Spiderman, but she was given romantic options when Harry Osborn turned into an eligible bachelor that she could date. Mary Jane’s ability to have a choice made her so much more independent and likeable. Her story arc was no longer tied to Spiderman’s fate regardless of who he was dating.

I am really happy the Mary Jane and Harry Osborn romantic story arc existed. It is canon in the original comic books, I checked.


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