The Amazing Spider-Man 2 actually cut two major female characters - Shailene Woodley's Mary Jane and Felicity Jones' Black Cat. Back in 2014, Sony Pictures believed Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man films would successfully launch an entire shared universe. There is perhaps some alternate universe where that was indeed the case, but on our Earth, Sony's plans collapsed with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014.

Ironically, the core problem was that Sony became too optimistic about the franchise's potential, and as a result, they overstuffed The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with setup for future movies. All this naturally affected the film's flow, and even the best performances of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone couldn't save it. And yet, for all the overcrowded mistakes Sony made with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, there were actually two female characters who were cut (or mostly cut) from the final theatrical release.

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The Amazing Spider-Man films center upon the relationship between Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy, but The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was originally intended to introduce two of Peter Parker's other love interests from the comics. Shailene Woodley was cast as Mary Jane Watson, and she even filmed a number of scenes. "There was one little scene at the beginning where she is next door and it took place right around the montage where he comes back and there was another little moment between Gwen and MJ," Marc Webb told Movies.com. "But it just tipped over. The relationship between them [Peter and Gwen] is so sacred and so powerful, that it just didn't feel right. And it sucks because Shailene is such a f**king great actress and so cool and magical but it was just about having this obligation to this romance that I thought was sacred. It was just one of those things." In his view, the problems were impossible to predict during scripting but became clear during editing. He hoped Shailene Woodley would return as MJ in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but that movie, of course, never happened.

Shailene Woodley

Felicity Jones, meanwhile, was introduced as Harry Osborn’s assistant, and she was given the name Felicia Hardy, the alter-ego of Spider-Man lover/nemesis Black Cat. Where Woodley's MJ was supposed to be set up for a major role, Jones' Felicia Hardy seems to have been a character whose future was much more uncertain. "There was never anything written down that that would definitely happen," Felicity Jones reflected years later. "It was more just…I like playing characters where there is a little bit extra to play with and it was just fun to play someone who has this other identity as Black Cat, Felicia Hardy. I just loved the idea of that character, I just think it’s really fun."  Jones actually did make it to the final theatrical cut, but so many of her scenes were removed that she may as well not have.

In both cases, the characters were largely viewed as extraneous, and so they were removed. The decisions are somewhat surprising, given how many things were left that frankly should have been cut. It's hard not to feel Marc Webb originally wanted to make something that was more of a character piece, and that it was distorted by studio fiat. Hopefully future Spider-Man films will learn from Sony's mistakes with The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

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