Why Marvel should keep Spider-Man’s casting a secret until Captain America: Civil War

Everyone’s fighting over who the next Spider-Man should be, but there’s one option that no-one seems to have even thought about. This was an option that hadn’t even crossed my mind until Josh Machan from Movie Pilot suggested it as a great stunt tool for bringing back Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man.

What if Marvel don’t reveal who the new Spider-Man is beforehand. What if the first time we find out who the actor playing the new Spider-Man is, is during the actual movie. Sure, the studio would have to keep their casting of Peter Parker quiet, so they wouldn’t be able to use it in promotional material, like putting the name on the poster or anything. But it would be awesome wouldn’t it?

And it would work too! If Spider-Man’s first big Marvel appearance is during the iconic scene in Civil War, which is the reason Spider-Man had to be in that movie, where Peter Parker takes off his mask and reveals that he is Spider-Man to support Tony Stark’s pro-registration stance, but if that moment also doubled as a surprise casting announcement the impact would be huge wouldn’t it?

And it makes sense, Marvel have already stated they don’t want to revisit the origin story and want to hit the ground running with Spider-Man. This is because everyone should know the story of Spider-Man by now. What if Marvel capitalised on that prior knowledge by giving the audience one of the biggest surprise moments in recent years.

This also works because it means that the audience doesn’t have time to judge, debate and nit-pick at the casting decision, they don’t have time to get bitter or twisted that their personal favourite actor didn’t make the cut, they don’t even have time to be disappointed if it’s Peter Parker or Miles Morales. Because the film is already happening right then in front of them. Their only choice is to go with it.

This allows the actor to win over the audience by just being Spider-Man! This means that his unmasking will literally be forgotten moments later as the film continues. This means that people will leave the film thinking that Person X has always been Spider-Man, like they’d been Spider-Man the whole time!

Also by not hyping Spider-Man’s casting, or promoting Captain America 3 around the Wallcrawler Marvel won’t be derailing who the focus of the movie should be on, Captain America. By pulling a surprise reveal with Spider-Man’s casting choice you can shock the audience momentarily but quickly get them back involved with Steve Rogers’ struggles by simply moving the plot along.

The more I think about it the more I simply don’t care who they cast as Spider-Man, as long as they pull a stunt like this. When else will a big movie studio get an opportunity to announce the casting of one of their biggest and most iconic characters in the middle of a movie where it actually makes sense to the plot? Make it happen Marvel!

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