The only time it would matter in my mind is if skin color or race was crucial to the plot. If not then I probably would not care.
Poll: Would You Mind White Actors Portraying Typically Black Super Heroes?
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Let me put it this way: Would you like spider-man to be female? Batman? I'm not talking about spiderwoman or batgirl or anything. I mean literally.
...wouldn't a female Spider-man and a female Batman be Spider-woman and Batwoman...?katsumoto03 said:
As much as I love Samuel Jackson, his role as Nick Fury was simply not right.
And as much as I love Nick Fury being a total bad-ass, being played by Samuel Jackson was simply not right.
Now I wait here, silently, in one corner, while the News Media will start calling Nerds and Geeks racists, because all we wanted was to watch a movie with our old heroes.
And as much as I love Nick Fury being a total bad-ass, being played by Samuel Jackson was simply not right.
Now I wait here, silently, in one corner, while the News Media will start calling Nerds and Geeks racists, because all we wanted was to watch a movie with our old heroes.
I think that the whole issue depends on many things. For example in the OP I completely agree that Black Panther can't and should never be portrayed as anything other than African. That is an integral part of that character.
On the other hand if a non-white actor were to portray Doctor Strange I would really have no problem with it. The fact that Doctor Strange is white is a very minor part of the character, yeah I know there are issues of origin that would be different but thats all, nothing else important about the character would be changed.
I would still be disipointed at the Tahitian Doctor Strange because he is a different character in some ways, but as long as it is played the same its only a small change.
And that is what is important in this as long as the character is still going to be the same character in all the important ways(motive, personality, ect.) I don't see it as a big deal.
On the other hand if a non-white actor were to portray Doctor Strange I would really have no problem with it. The fact that Doctor Strange is white is a very minor part of the character, yeah I know there are issues of origin that would be different but thats all, nothing else important about the character would be changed.
I would still be disipointed at the Tahitian Doctor Strange because he is a different character in some ways, but as long as it is played the same its only a small change.
And that is what is important in this as long as the character is still going to be the same character in all the important ways(motive, personality, ect.) I don't see it as a big deal.
Yeah you can't have a white Isaiah Bradley for example, because being black is integral to the character.Nibblitman said:
It's pretty much the same with every other black or asian or gay or whatever minority character in comic books. They fall into a niche and so those traits tend to define their character. Oh he's the black superhero, or he's the gay super hero, it defines them. Perhaps it shouldn't but it does.
I'd be okay with a black Green Arrow if he was still a privileged playboy socialist, or a black Punisher if he was a veteran whose family were killed by gangsters in front of him, or a bunch of other comic book characters who are the default white.
However there are relatively so few asian, black, hispanic, gay, etc. characters that I would be upset if they took one of these characters and made them straight white males.
Yeah that was pretty much exactly what I was saying there, as long as the traits that make the character who they are stay then other stuff doesn't matter so much.octafish said:
On a side note I spent some time looking and I found only one black character that I would say doesn't revolve around the fact that they are black, Patriot(I don't know how do do a cool link thing so here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(comics)#Patriot_.28Eli_Bradley.29) Only part I could find was that he was the grandson of the black Capitan America, but then he could just as well be the grandson of any superhero and the role would still kinda fit the same way.
You need an option reading None of the above, because my opinion on the matter is too complex to be summed up by these four simple answers, but I'm still curious about the results and want to check them without interfering with them.
That said, I think it depends on the situation. In this instance, reinterpreting comic book characters doesn't bother me if done well. Comic books do this all the time, why shouldn't movies have license to do the same thing?
That said, I think it depends on the situation. In this instance, reinterpreting comic book characters doesn't bother me if done well. Comic books do this all the time, why shouldn't movies have license to do the same thing?
I suppose not, as long as the person is a good choice for it and not integral. I dont see the bad thing with the Thor god being black, cause gods can take whatever for they choose.
But if the guy is someone who grew up in Africa, faced the apartheid and racial segregations and things like that, then no, they shouldnt be white.
But if the guy is someone who grew up in Africa, faced the apartheid and racial segregations and things like that, then no, they shouldnt be white.
WARNING: Excessively long essay ahead.
I think the general consensus, and why people might have different standards about "non-white playing white" and "white playing non-white" is that white characters are rarely white because it's integral to their character that they be white; they're made white because white is the default. There are exceptions to this, of course, and some characters who wouldn't make sense if they were cast differently, but I'll get into that in a second. Non-white characters are almost always written to be non-white on purpose, and that usually makes it an important (if stereotypical) part of their character, again with some exceptions.
I mean, Captain America being white, Wonder Woman being white and Thor being white, just as some examples, make total sense because Captain America is from the '40s; non-whites weren't treated fairly back then and a non-white soldier damn sure wouldn't have been picked for a super soldier program. The army was still segregated back then. Wonder Woman makes sense being white because she's based on Greek mythology. You'd expect her to look Greek and physically resemble the Greek Gods. Likewise Thor, the Norse God. The famed God of Scandinavian mythology. You'd expect him to look Scandinavian as a result, wouldn't you? There are doubtlessly more examples like this, but I'd be here forever if I thought of them all.
So, yeah, there are characters on both sides where you would have to change their backstory and change their character and change their mythos if you altered their race, because it wouldn't make sense. If Black Adam was a white guy, he would be a ruler of Europe, wouldn't he? Or would he just be a kid like Billy Batson? And he would no longer get his powers from the Egyptian Pantheon, hence that changes his character and story completely, and you might as well just write a new one. If Storm were white, that would alter her whole backstory, wouldn't it?
It's basically the same thing as if you made Hawkman or the Martian Manhunter or Superman or Starfire non-Aliens, or if the new Batwoman weren't a lesbian, or if Booster Gold weren't from the future, or if Dick Grayson weren't a circus kid; these changes may seem trivial, but they're so integral to the characters' backstories and how they wound up becoming the heroes they are today that you would have to rewrite everything we take for granted about these characters to explain where they came from, how they got their powers/skills/motivation to fight crime, and by that stage you may as well just be creating a whole new character, right? Because they're going to be equally unfamiliar to the audience. I mean, God, that would be just like if they made a DBZ movie where Goku was a white, American high school kid who always worried about whether Chi Chi would take him to the dance and--oh wait...
With other characters, like say a Spiderman or even a Batman, changing their race is a very superficial change, because Batman's mythos is more built into him being rich and losing his parents as a kid and using that motivation to fight crime than anything else, and Peter Parker's shtick was just being an ordinary, kind of nerdy high school kid and a photographer; you wouldn't sabotage that by changing his colour, necessarily. So I think that's where people start to draw the line. Does this alter the character? No? Then it's not that bad. And you can get away with it.
But, still, by the same token, there's one question that I and a lot of other people are going to ask of such a change: WHY? Why go to the trouble of changing a character for something superficial like race anyway? If it's having no impact on the character, then you're changing them just for the sake of changing them, and that is going to piss a lot of fans off, because you altered THEIR hero to make YOUR political point. And people don't like that. Are they going to be outraged? Well, not unless they're like those dumb ass Harry Potter stangirls who threw a hissy fit when they found out Blaise Zabini was black (and therefore *gasp* not hawt enough to be a pasty emo fanfic boy), but unless you did it because this actor of a different colour was absolutely the best possible guy you could have picked to play this part and his performance makes the character so much better, then the change is just going to cause a lot of headscratching.
That's what I think regarding this issue, and why people react to it the way they do. TL;DR? Changes that don't significantly affect the character are usually going to be fine, but what's the point of doing it if it's used just to make a quota rather than enhance the character?
I think the general consensus, and why people might have different standards about "non-white playing white" and "white playing non-white" is that white characters are rarely white because it's integral to their character that they be white; they're made white because white is the default. There are exceptions to this, of course, and some characters who wouldn't make sense if they were cast differently, but I'll get into that in a second. Non-white characters are almost always written to be non-white on purpose, and that usually makes it an important (if stereotypical) part of their character, again with some exceptions.
I mean, Captain America being white, Wonder Woman being white and Thor being white, just as some examples, make total sense because Captain America is from the '40s; non-whites weren't treated fairly back then and a non-white soldier damn sure wouldn't have been picked for a super soldier program. The army was still segregated back then. Wonder Woman makes sense being white because she's based on Greek mythology. You'd expect her to look Greek and physically resemble the Greek Gods. Likewise Thor, the Norse God. The famed God of Scandinavian mythology. You'd expect him to look Scandinavian as a result, wouldn't you? There are doubtlessly more examples like this, but I'd be here forever if I thought of them all.
So, yeah, there are characters on both sides where you would have to change their backstory and change their character and change their mythos if you altered their race, because it wouldn't make sense. If Black Adam was a white guy, he would be a ruler of Europe, wouldn't he? Or would he just be a kid like Billy Batson? And he would no longer get his powers from the Egyptian Pantheon, hence that changes his character and story completely, and you might as well just write a new one. If Storm were white, that would alter her whole backstory, wouldn't it?
It's basically the same thing as if you made Hawkman or the Martian Manhunter or Superman or Starfire non-Aliens, or if the new Batwoman weren't a lesbian, or if Booster Gold weren't from the future, or if Dick Grayson weren't a circus kid; these changes may seem trivial, but they're so integral to the characters' backstories and how they wound up becoming the heroes they are today that you would have to rewrite everything we take for granted about these characters to explain where they came from, how they got their powers/skills/motivation to fight crime, and by that stage you may as well just be creating a whole new character, right? Because they're going to be equally unfamiliar to the audience. I mean, God, that would be just like if they made a DBZ movie where Goku was a white, American high school kid who always worried about whether Chi Chi would take him to the dance and--oh wait...
With other characters, like say a Spiderman or even a Batman, changing their race is a very superficial change, because Batman's mythos is more built into him being rich and losing his parents as a kid and using that motivation to fight crime than anything else, and Peter Parker's shtick was just being an ordinary, kind of nerdy high school kid and a photographer; you wouldn't sabotage that by changing his colour, necessarily. So I think that's where people start to draw the line. Does this alter the character? No? Then it's not that bad. And you can get away with it.
But, still, by the same token, there's one question that I and a lot of other people are going to ask of such a change: WHY? Why go to the trouble of changing a character for something superficial like race anyway? If it's having no impact on the character, then you're changing them just for the sake of changing them, and that is going to piss a lot of fans off, because you altered THEIR hero to make YOUR political point. And people don't like that. Are they going to be outraged? Well, not unless they're like those dumb ass Harry Potter stangirls who threw a hissy fit when they found out Blaise Zabini was black (and therefore *gasp* not hawt enough to be a pasty emo fanfic boy), but unless you did it because this actor of a different colour was absolutely the best possible guy you could have picked to play this part and his performance makes the character so much better, then the change is just going to cause a lot of headscratching.
That's what I think regarding this issue, and why people react to it the way they do. TL;DR? Changes that don't significantly affect the character are usually going to be fine, but what's the point of doing it if it's used just to make a quota rather than enhance the character?