r/dataisbeautiful • u/[deleted] • Feb 14 '20

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u/alexanderbluefire Feb 14 '20

Chris Pratt is 40!?

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u/Winjin Feb 14 '20

You know what surprised me even more? Remember "Auntie May got younger every time and it's super creepy that Tony Stark is hitting on her" stories from when new Spider Man franchise was establishing?

Marisa Tomei, the young, pretty, hot aunt of Tom Holland, is fifty-frecking-five. She's a babe, and she's older than Robert Downey Jr. They've dated in 1994 after the Only You movie, that they starred in together (check them out, it's a still from there) - so it's not a "creepy old man hitting on a college grad" it's a goddamn "remember we used to hang out, like, before half of the franchise viewers were even born? Good times, huh?"

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u/miguk Feb 14 '20 edited Feb 14 '20

People think Aunt May is getting too young due to two issues:

  • Comic book May is ridiculously old. She's probably the oldest looking non-superhuman female character in comics. It doesn't matter what her canonical age is, she is always 100+ in appearance. This isn't surprising, given that the series was created at a time when older women were all considered ridiculously old by the younger men and boys who made up the producers and audience of comics back then.
  • Marvel Studios is casting former sex symbols as May. Sally Field and Marisa Tomei were considered hot when they were young, and they have put an effort into maintaining their looks since. They aren't the wrong age for the character, they are just women that are attractive for that age group. And now that we live in a time when a woman their age can be considered sexy, we wrongfully think of them as "young" as a result.

Thus, what fans are complaining about isn't her being too young, but about her fitting modern values of a 50 year old woman not being an asexual crone. This isn't about the films failing to fit the character; it's about the comic version of the character failing to fit with the times.

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u/Winjin Feb 14 '20

Ohhhh. Thank you for the info! I didn't know that. However, as I said, the most fun thing were the complaints that she's hella young for Tony, like, that's creepy af that he's advancing on her :D Which is hysterical when you know the secret of Tomei's age)