The latest news on Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 4” is that John Malkovich is in talks to play the villain, The Vulture, “who packs a punch despite his advanced age. The Vulture is able to fly through the air and brandish his sharp wings to attack Spider-Man”.
Anne Hathaway is reportedly the top choice to play Felicia Hardy, a “new super-powered figure called the Vulturess” instead of the Black Cat. This will indeed be a departure from the comic books. Other actresses rumored for this role include Julia Stiles, Rachel McAdams, and Romola Garai.
This is contrary to previous rumors that the villain of “Spider-Man 4” would be the Lizard, possibly played by Dylan Baker again as he’s had cameos in the last two Spider-Man movies as Dr. Curt Connors. Word is that “the suits simply can’t bring themselves to sign off on such an odd-looking enemy — instead, they’d rather hew closer to villains with a human face”.
[Source] Movieline
Oh boy… my 12 year old self is crying inside at this news. I mean come on, they’re really gonna change Black Cat. *FACE PALM*
The Vulturess?1? The Vulturess?!! Are they out of their Vulcan minds?!!? They’d rather have a flying harpy than a sexy cat burglar in a black latex/leather body suit?! And corporate suits wonder why regular people can’t stand them.
Somehow, I bet the studio wants to do a sexy bird-woman. :shakes head:
In Marvel Comics, they currently have a female Bullseye, a female Kraven the Hunter, a female Dr. Octopus, not one, but two She-Hulks, a red She-Hulk, at least 3 Spider-Women, X-23 (a female clone of Wolverine), two Ms. Marvels, and coming soon, Lady Deadpool. I think someone out there thinks it must be some kind of popular trend.
We’ll have to see what we can find out about why they made this decision to depart from the source material. Thank you for pointing out this trend in female comic book characters, DuJuan! It’s their way of diversifying their characters and to attract female readers, but it’s unclear whether this motivation is the reason why the filmmakers are pulling out a Vulturess!
Sales wise, the female trend isn’t doing too well. The Lady Bullseye storyline in ‘Daredevil’ sold out quickly so they will use her again. Ms. Marvel is getting canceled, and she was Marvel Comics closest equivalent to Wonder Woman. X-23 only lasted around 20 issues (and it was canceled several years ago). The last two Spider-Woman mini-series had crappy art. Every Hellcat mini-series failed because of consistently bad art. There’s currently a female Black Panther, but the customer response has not been too kind. There was a recent mini-series called ‘Marvel Divas’ which was a super heroine take on ‘Milly the Model’ and it was pure bovine feces. She-Hulk has had at least four series so far (each got canceled due to poor sales). Supergirl and Wonder Woman are still going strong. There’s a Black Widow mini-series which just started and it looks good so far (the storyline is layered with irony because as Marvel’s most sexually active female character [she's been "romantically linked" to several super heroes that I know of] she finds out that someone has secretly infected her with nanites which got pasted on and turned her partners and partner’s partners into mind controlled killing machines).
I know that these female characters are the comic’s version of affirmative action, but still, compelling storylines and quality art are what sells comic books, not just a scantily clad character with huge assets! I am a fan of Elektra (not the movies, the ‘Assassin’ series), but I haven’t kept up with her. Do you know what has been going on with her?
No Lilli, sexy-bird woman is full of fail. Horrible fanboy hating fail lol.
I know! I was trying to be positive! I hope that there is some good reason for this change in the story for the fans’ sake.
As a once very avid comic collector, and the most hard core spidey fan there could ever be, I will say they have messed up each movie more and more till they did this and now its not messed up, its destroyed… There could be no purpose for changing the characters like that. The only purpose is the ability to do so, so do it…. kinda like why people climb mountains.. because they can.
About a year and a half ago Elektra (for reasons unknown) was leader of the ninja assassin clan, the Hand. She got killed by Wolverine, then the corpse turned into a skrull. The real Elektra had been captured and replaced by an alien shape shifter. After the events in the extraordinarily bad ‘Secret Invasion’ mini-series, Elektra was captured by Norman Osborn’s H.A.M.M.E.R. agents where an examination revealed that Elektra was tortured by the skrulls for unknown reasons. In the recent Elektra mini-series, Osborn had her under ‘enhanced interrogation’ trying to learn what the skrulls wanted from her. Elektra escaped, leaving a bloody trail of broken bodies in her wake. Elektra surfaced last month in Hulk #14 where the Red Hulk hired her, along with a team of others (the Punisher, Crimson Dynamo, and Deadpool), for a search and destroy mission to kill the mutant know as Domino, who inadvertently witnessed the Red Hulk’s human form on some unknown surveillance mission. Domino went for help in the form of Cyclop’s secret mutant wetworks squad, X-Force (Wolverine, X-23, Warpath, and Arch-Angel). X-Force and the Red Hulk’s team clashed, Domino and Elektra fought in the streets until a gas line exploded. Out of the fiery ashes walked the Red She-Hulk, carrying Domino’s gun and Elektra’s sai. The storyline hasn’t finished yet, so Elektra’s whereabouts at the moment are unknown. I’ll fill you in when new developments arise.
OMG. What on earth did they do to her storyline? Wow. Thank you very much for the update on Elektra! Perhaps it was a good thing to have stopped reading when I did? I appreciate any updates you can come up with on her! As a side note, did you know that twirling a sai is harder than it looks? ;)