The Black Cat in Spider-Man 4?

Latest rumor is that Rachel McAdams is in talks to take on the role of Felicia Hardy aka the Black Cat in the upcoming Spider-Man 4. In a way, this may not make real sense since the Black Cat is not really a villain in the comic books, more of a femme fatale love interest. I also don’t see Sam Raimi going back to the villain-by-committee trick he used in Spider-Man 3 with nearly catastrophic effect. However, the Felicia Hardy character would give Spider-Man a new love interest and infuse a breath of fresh air into the franchise as well as give Sam Raimi interesting options down the road such as maybe, just maybe writing out the goddamn Mary Jane character (bye bye Kirsten Dunst please!). I would definitely not be surprised if we see a whole lot less of MJ in the upcoming movie.

A little background on Black Cat: First appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #194, Felicia Hardy is New York’s most famed cat burglar and she manages to escape Spider-Man every time due to some “bad luck” befalling him. It is revealed later that she doesn’t really have any supernatural power and she was just using her wits to place little traps at opportune locations so she could escape. She becomes a bit obsessed with Spider-Man and steals stuff just to get his attention. She goes as far as to let him capture her to profess her love. After some early resistance from Spider-Man, they end up having a significant relationship and she gives up her career as a burglar to fight with Spider-Man. However, after nearly dying at the hands of Dr. Octopus and fearing that Spider-Man would eventually get hurt trying to save her, she became desperate to have superpowers and made a secret pact with Kingpin for some advanced strength and agility abilities as well as a “bad luck” attribute. However, she unknowingly infects Spidey badly with her “bad luck” powers and she decides to dump him for his sake. She then became some sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor and helping Spidey numerous times in his fight against crime. As you can see, there isn’t a heavy basis to make Felicia more than a temporary semi-villain.

The way I see it, knowing Hollywood, Black Cat will only be a side-character and they will cast a male actor for the main bad guy role for your much more traditional action movie. Good guy versus bad guy with a spicy love triangle that serves as an introduction for a recurrent character. This would obviously be the safest and least exciting option. The other possibility is that there is no real villain in Spider-Man 4 and Black Cat would be the main antagonist. Very much like another villain easy to relate to, Spider-Man 2 ‘s Doc Ock/Dr. Octavius (by far the best movie of the franchise by the way), Felicia Hardy is a troubled but essentially good character that straddles both sides of the law and ends up redeeming herself. This alternative would obviously require much more significant development of the Black Cat’s character and would have a non-major bad guy come into the picture to advance the plot. Wouldn’t it be fun to see Spider-Man fight your street-level crime for once instead of chasing epic bad guys with insane supernatural powers? This would be more risky but have a ton more potential. It really wouldn’t be hard to make Black Cat an intriguing character that is intertwined with both Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Any way you see it, a simple but well-crafted story is what this franchise needs badly.

Much like switching from the lowly Katie Holmes to the much more talented Maggie Gyllenhaal in the Batman franchise, having Rachel McAdams would work out well for the Spider-Man franchise because she is an actress first and foremost and gets the job done consistently. If this ends up coming to fruition, Black Cat needs to be exponentially better written and developed than Catwoman and much more than a simple ‘girlfriend’ role. Else, just turn it down girl. It would not be anything new.