Black Cat Rumors Create Interesting ‘Web’ Conversation for Spider-man 4
So yesterday I posted about the rumor that Rachel McAdams has met with Spider-man 4 producers about portraying Felicia Hardy/Black Cat in the next installment of the Spider-man movie franchise. What we didn’t tell you is that this wouldn’t be your average slide in the story character for fans but rather this is the second villain for the fourth film, at least that is what the tangled ‘web’ of the internet tells us.
Our friends at SlashFilm found a post in The Observer regarding actress/columnist Romola Garai, who revealed she had an audition for a role in Spider-Man 4 thus giving the McAdams rumor some meat meaning there is likely an appearance of the character in the film.
What the character is not is a “new female lead”, a juxtaposition of sorts, what this means is that besides Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), Felicia Hardy will play a role slighty greater than or equal to Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy from the third film. However you see the words, second villain, thrown around and you begin to wonder.
So what do we at Fused Film think?
There is probably going to be the character in the film that will ode itself to the film series’ popular formula of the villains troubling Peter Parker’s personal life while obviously entangling with his superhero life. Black Cat’s story includes a struggle with her unethical thieving ways and later a romance with Spider-Man.
Black Cat is a great character to bring into the series for a possible spin-off, the lack of feminine superheros in film mixed with their previous lack of success, make great arguments to bring her in. Secondly, Black Cat’s mythos is somewhat interesting and makes for a great platform and dynamic for a character driven Spider-man film. Her father Walter was a world-renowned cat burglar who, before his arrest, encouraged her to never settle for second best. During her freshman year in college, Felicia was date raped by her boyfriend Ryan. Hating the idea of being a victim, she decided that despite the consequences she would murder her rapist. She put aside her studies and began training in various fighting styles and acrobatics. Finally, after months of preparing, she set out for revenge, but before she could find him, Ryan was killed in a drunk-driving accident.
Furious that she was denied the chance to steal the life of the man who had stolen hers, and feeling reckless, Hardy decided to utilize her new skills to follow in the footsteps of her father. After amassing a fortune in stolen items, Felicia adopted her costumed identity, the Black Cat. When trying to break her father out of prison she meets Spider-Man. Unfortunately for Felicia, her father dies while trying to break him out so she then fakes her own death. Despite all her apathy towards men, she feels kinship with Spider-Man as the first man she felt she could trust even believing herself in love with him. Felicia looked for a way to earn his trust and continued with the Black Cat persona as a misguided attempt to attract his affection. Seeing the good in Felicia, Spider-Man made every attempt to have her criminal record expunged.
Knowing all that we certainly can say that makes for some interesting drama and dynamics for the Spidey, as she can prove to be a distraction for Spidey, stalking him all the time, but also her affect on his personal life with Mary Jane. You mix all of that with the true baddie of the next film and you have a nice character driven film or at least one hopes. I feel like this may run the risk of failing like Daredevil did. Still all of this is unconfirmed speculative information so once we know something we’ll update you all.
Please check out FS.net’s interesting take on all this as well, Alex and I, had a discussion on the last episode of the Mixercast about SP-4 and the villain they should use, though Black Cat never came up it adds some more insight into our thoughts on the film.
