Different versions of Gwen Stacy’s death.
Gwen Stacy, whose full name is Gwendoline Maxine Stacy, was born in the adventure If This Is My Fate…!, published in The Amazing Spider-Man #31 (1965), a comic that we talked about extensively at the time. , by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Seemingly inspired by the comic book’s Joan Boocock Lee, this young woman appears as a college classmate who soon becomes attracted to Peter Parker, though he doesn’t pay much attention to her at first. Who cares about the poor health of his aunt who is on the verge of death.
But, despite his occasional fling with Mary Jane Watson, the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy was going downhill and going serious until the vengeful Green Goblin and the George Washington Bridge got in the way and prevented anything from happening. The likelihood of the relationship continuing.
This is where we arrive at The Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973), scripted by Jerry Conway and drawn by Gil Kane, in which we find the adventure The Night Gwen Stacy Died, the comic we talked about earlier. More than once on this website. However, what we haven’t paid enough attention to, both in animated versions and in live-action, are the various adaptations of such a fateful event. As you will see if you continue reading this article to the end, this is what we want to address in the following paragraphs.
Spider-Man The Animated Series: Turning Point (1996)
We start our review with episode 14 (the complete series 41) of Spider-Man, the animated series, although it shows some differences from the original story, without a doubt, it is one of the best. As we mentioned at the time, this episode is a free adaptation of the comic mentioned at the beginning of the article, in addition to replacing Gwen Stacy with Mary Jane Watson and defending George Washington’s death on top. Bridge, in the midst of his downfall, having been swallowed by an interdimensional portal.
This change was confirmed by the censors at the time, as you can count the number of dead characters on the fingers of one hand in the 65 episodes that were animated, as the masses reverted to the same path. Or else. Of course, the changes do take away from the intensity that radiates from beginning to end, but that doesn’t detract from the chapter.
Spider-Man (2002)
As of the 21st century, the only audiovisual reference we have to a live-action Spider-Man is Nicholas Hammond, who as far as we know has never met Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane Watson. However, everything changed when the Spider-Man movie starring Tobey Maguire came along.
Interestingly, part of the plot of the film, which also involves the Green Goblin, since he is the main villain of the film, takes place on the George Washington Bridge, although the damsel in distress is again played by Mary Jane Watson. Kirsten Dunst instead of Gwen Stacy. This time they again opted for a happy ending, even though the movie didn’t have the same censorship issues as the animated series, but that didn’t detract from the film’s greatness one bit.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2: The Force Awakens (2014)
To finish our review, we have the best of all the adaptations of the death of Peter Parker’s girlfriend, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: The End of Electro, which shows us the first one starring Andrew Garfield. The version where the victim is Gwen Stacy, played by a very convincing Emma Stone, and the ending is very similar to what we all know if we’ve read this character’s comics.
However, to be honest, we have to admit that the death of Gwen Stacy would have been a more faithful adaptation if it had stuck a little more to the elements of the comics and kept the George Washington Bridge as the location of the events. At the clock tower. Also, the murderer was supposed to be Norman Osborn, like in the comics, instead of his son Harry, but in that movie they decided to downplay the guy we all know is the first to don the Green Goblin ribbon.