As George Costanza would say, the new Aunt May is reportedly going to have a bit of a Marisa Tomei thing going on. According to THR, Tomei is in final negotiations to play Aunt May in the Spider-Man reboot starring Tom Holland as a younger-than-we-we’re-used-to version of Peter Parker. Furthermore, while others have speculated Tomei wouldn’t make her first appearance until the solo Spider-Man due in 2017 “THR hears that Tomei’s Aunt May may be making her first appearance in Marvel and Disney’s Captain America: Civil War.”
There are so many ways to go with this. I’ve already made the obligatory Seinfeld reference since George became partially obsessed with her in the later seasons and then blew his shot with her when Tomei actually guest-starred as herself. I could make a My Cousin Vinny joke, like what if Aunt May is an expert on cars for some reason. I could also go the pervy Seth MacFarlane route, as several others have, and point out how Marisa Tomei is all kinds of naked in The Wrestler, make for a confusingly attractive version of Aunt May. Or I could rail against this casting choice since Tomei is far too young for the part. Aunt May should always look like everyone’s little old grandma because that’s how it’s always been done, dangit!
But why? As a non-comic book reader, I never understood why exactly Aunt May and Uncle Ben had to be so much older than Peter Parker, suggesting that either his own parents had him later in life or there was a considerable age gap between his father and Aunt May. The classic white-haired version of Aunt May does make Peter’s continued efforts to protect her all the more adorable and endearing because, ahh, look – she’s just a little old lady. He’s such a good guy to look out for her like that. However, when I saw the Sam Raimi Spider-Man in 2002 I assumed the 75-year-old Rosemary Harris was playing Tobey Maguire’s grandma, and his insistence on referring to her as “Aunt” was part of some odd regional colloquialism, like how some grandma’s are only ever referred to as “Nana.” Of course, that assumption on my part made no real sense, but Harris was 48 years older than Maguire, who was actually playing several years below his actual age.
Now, Tomei will be 52-years-old when the next Spider-Man arrives in 2017, at which point Tom Holland will be 20, an age difference of 32 years.
At this rate, a couple of reboots from now it will be like the early seasons of The Vampire Diaries where the high-school-aged Elena and Jeremy Gilbert were raised by just-out-of-college-aged Aunt Jenna.
We know the new Spider-Man is being envisioned as a John Hughes version of a superhero movie. They clearly meant the teen comedies, but I’m suddenly imagining a version of Uncle Buck (which is a Hughes movie) with Marisa Tomei replacing John Candy and maybe little Macaulay Culkin fighting crime. Yeah, that’s probably not the John Hughes movie they’re going to mimic, although go back and watch it again – Uncle Buck could easily be turned into a good villain.
Moving on.
In recent years, I have circled back around to read The Ultimate Spider-Man comics where Aunt May is a fair deal younger, and the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series on DisneyXD has stuck with that, although they insisted upon her having white hair, albeit beautifully stylish white hair [as seen below]. If I’m not mistaken, at one point she even went on a date with Agent Coulson (or at least flirted with him). Oh, btw, Coulson was briefly the principal of Peter Parker’s high-school. Just thought I’d throw that in there if you’ve never seen the show.
What say you? Is the only good Aunt May old and grandma-like? Are you ready for a brave new world in which Aunt May will be played by the still stunning Marisa Tomei? While you ponder your response enjoy this nice clip of Tomei back in the day on Seinfeld.
