Spoiler Warning: This story contains spoilers for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Proceed at your own risk.
My biggest pet peeve with the Sam Raimi SPIDER-MAN trilogy was the handling of the Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy characters. Raimi all but butchered the famous Green Goblin bridge scene that forced Peter Parker to choose between his love and saving civilians. He even found a way for Spider-man to save everyone. While I was able to overlook it over time, once we got SPIDER-MAN 3, I was pissed.
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 is almost definitely going to feature Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson, but as previously reported she is also taking the lead role in Neil Burger’s DIVERGENT.
What allows her to take that lead role and the part of Mary Jane is that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 role is going to be a very small one. In fact, Marc Webb is looking to set events in motion with THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 that will lead to the third film focusing on the 1973 “Night Gwen Stacy Died” story arc from The Amazing Spider-Man #121-122.
The comic story goes like this: The Green Goblin abducts Gwen Stacy and lures Spider-Man to the Brooklyn Bridge and the Goblin hurls Stacy off the bridge. Spider-Man shoots a web strand at her legs and catches her. As he pulls her up, he thinks he has saved her. However, he quickly realizes she is dead. Unsure whether the whiplash from her sudden stop broke her neck or if the Goblin had broken it previously, he blames himself for her death. The Green Goblin escapes, and Spider-Man cries over Stacy’s corpse and swears revenge. The following issue, Spider-Man tracks the Green Goblin to a warehouse and beats him but cannot bring himself to kill him. The Goblin uses the opportunity to send his glider to impale Spider-Man from behind. Warned by his spider-sense, Spider-Man dodges, and the glider instead impales the Green Goblin, seemingly killing him. Later, a devastated Parker, back at home, encounters an equally shocked and saddened Mary Jane Watson, who has lost her close friend Stacy, and the two attempt to comfort each other in the wake of their loss.
So, you can see what Raimi used in SPIDER-MAN from the story. I highly doubt that Marc Webb will keep the story as similar, but the inclusion of Norman Osborn in THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN storyline does lead me to believe that the Green Goblin will likely be the villain of the third film. I would be very sad to see Emma Stone leave the series, but it has the potential to be a damn good movie if handled the right way.
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 is scheduled for release on May 2, 2014.