This is my first post on this blog, so I’m gonna say hi real quick. Hi. Okay, enough chit chat.
The latest Hollywood trend is to take superheroes’ traditionally wholesome parental units and give them the thing we never think about our parents having– sex appeal.
This whole sexy parent trend started with Superman’s adoptive parents, the Kents. In movies and TV shows, they were always cast as lovable old folks in their late 50s/early 60s. But when it came time to cast the Superman prequel teen drama Smallville (2001), it must have occurred to producers that they could go younger with Jonathan and Martha. And not just younger– sexier. So they cast 41-year-old TV hunk John Schneider and 49-year-old Annette O’Toole (who had previously steamed up the cornfields of Smallville as Lana Lang in 1983’s Superman III). Watching the show, you kinda rooted for Clark in his romantic endeavors and kinda hoped he might get the girl eventually– but in the meantime, you were just drooling over his parents.
The tradition lives on even today in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013), with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane, the two of them as eyeball-meltingly enthralling as ever at 58 and 48, respectively. But the trend has not stopped at the Kents. Birds of Prey (2002) gave us 38-year-old Lori Loughlin as Dinah Lance’s mom, original Black Canary. And Gotham (2014) has bestowed on us the gift of 50-year-old Sean Pertwee as the gravel-voiced much manly Alfred Pennyworth. And let me say a few words about Spider-Man’s dear Aunt May.
Since her creation by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, May Parker has always been portrayed as a sweet old lady. And indeed, the first silver screen Aunt May, in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002), was the silver-haired 74-year-old Rosemary Harris. She was downright grandmotherly.
Ten years passed before our first big screen Spidey reboot, with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and this time they went with 65-year-old Sally Field. So now Aunt May is still in her twilight, but we are reminded that she is a woman. It’s almost like Aunt May got a year younger for every year that passed between origin movies. And if you think dropping ten in ten is something, how about fifteen in five? Because the latest word is that the role of Aunt May in Jon Watts’s upcoming 2017 Spider-Man reboot has been offered to the eternally alluring Marisa Tomei, who is clocking in at a nubile 50.
If casting Sally Field showed us that Aunt May was a looker in her day, casting Marisa Tomei unquestionably makes today Aunt May’s day. And the forecast for the day is hot.
And that’s okay. Because there’s no rule that says we can only appreciate the youthful beauty of a Black Widow, or just admire the supple bulge of a Batman’s codpiece. Maybe we want to think about what the guardians of our guardians are getting up to at night. Maybe we want to get a little peek under Alfred’s cummerbund. Or maybe we want to stop by Aunt May’s and see what tantalizing treats she has cooling by the window. Maybe it’s time we embrace the fact that Ma and Pa Kent are living, breathing, sexual beings– and we want to fuck them.
Jez Halley 