MJ wasn't the Liz Allen of the college years. Liz was the unattainable girl who got won over, during the college years, IIRC. MJ was down for Peter from the get go. Always has been. She just happens to be super hot, even though Peter didn't see it at first.
The Pygmalion concept isn't just about dressing up and looking nice for a Homecoming dance... everyone does that. It's about transforming who you are in order to get acceptance. By the time two leads of a film get to the end of the movie, they've already accepted each other. In Pygmalion, the physical change is prompted by outside forces early in the story (like in She's All That or The Little Mermaid or even The Breakfast Club), not from an internal change, like in every superhero flick ever, that manifests at the end of the story. This is why the idea that the reveal occurs at the end of the film not only avoids the basic Pygmalion plot in favor of the same physical transformation subtext from every movie ever, but also actually gives us the jackpot scene in a way an unattainable girl just can't. The only other way to do it is to do it the way the comics did, and simply have MJ be an unseen character. I think having her dressed down for school and 'clean up nice' is a much more artful, realistic and interesting way to do it. I really don't know why people are so quick to give up the power of MJ's iconic jackpot scene in favor of this unattainable girl schlock. Especially when we already have Liz around.
But to each his own.
Still not Pygmalion tho.
