Wait, Where's Miles Morales's Spider-Man Movie?

Tuesday, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios announced Tom Holland will play Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the next Spider-Man reboot. Slated to hit theaters on July 28, 2017, this will be the third Peter Parker to grace movie theater screens since 2002. If your spidey sense is still a-tinglin’, it's with good reason; this casting decision isn’t the only major Spider-Man news of the week. As of this fall, alt-universe Spider-Man Miles Morales will take over main universe Spidey’s post in the comics.

Peter Parker has been Spider-Man for as long as Spider-Man has been fighting crime (aside from that Doctor Octopus switcheroo, that is), so yeah, this changing of the webby guard is a big deal. Moreover, it's a progressive and important move: Not only will he be the first non-Peter Parker Spider-Man, but the half-black, half-Latino Miles Morales will be the first non-white Spider-Man. In a June 21, 2015 interview with The New York Daily News, Ultimate Spider-Man writer and co-creator Brian Bendis said this about the switch:

Many kids of color who when they were playing superheroes with their friends, their friends wouldn’t let them be Batman or Superman because they don’t look like those heroes but they could be Spider-Man because anyone could be under that mask. But now it’s true. It’s meant a great deal to a great many people.

And:

Our message has to be it’s not Spider-Man with an asterisk, it’s the real Spider-Man for kids of color, for adults of color and everybody else.

Miles Morales THE Spider-Man, not alternate universe Spider-Man, is a huge step in the right direction. Call me Captain Duh, but the world of superheroes is predominately white and male. Yes, there are exceptions, and yes, change is happening, but we aren't out of the lack of diversity woods yet.

Before the next Spider-Man movie casting decision was announced, many fans crossed their fingers that we'd see a Spider-Man movie that'd depict a markedly different Spider-Man story: Miles Morales' story. How awesome would that be, right? Alas, it didn't happen.

I mean no disrespect to the character of Peter Parker or to cutie patootie Tom Holland, but I wouldn't have been mad if this was a Miles Morales movie. A relatively new character (Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man introduced Miles Morales in 2011) with a new story to tell would bring something, well, new to the table.

If I've learned anything over the past 10+ years, it's that there is no such thing as "too many Spider-Man flicks." When the next Spider-Man movie reboot inevitably happens, let's hope Marvel hands the webby reins over to Miles Morales.

Image: Marvel