So a black actor is considering role of Johnny Storm and nerdrage has turned racist again.

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I've seen this complaint here already so I'll just add my two cents. My main issue is that Johnny and Sue are brother and sister, and no level of suspended disbelief will make me look at Michael Jordan and think, 'yeah, one of his parents could've been white.' So if they change Sue's race too then it shouldn't be a big deal but being blood-related is a vital part of their characters so if they change THAT then it will have crossed over from 'odd casting choice' to 'bad casting and directorial choice'.

Also, why the buck would they cast Michael Jordan. I legitimately have not seen him act in anything since Space Jam. Secondly, no offense to mister Jordan, he looks good for his age, but the whole point of Johnny Storm's character is that he's a 'hot-headed young man with a lot to prove'. Michael just... doesn't look that young anymore. He'd actually make a better Ben Grimm to be honest but, personally, I'm still holding out for Ron Perlman for that role.

I think it's a different Michael Jordan, which is why the article specifies his middle initial -- just like Michael J. Fox, who had to add the middle initial because there was already a Michael Fox in the Screen Actor's Guild.

Ron Perlman as Ben Grimm would be, at least physically, pretty darned awesome. The only question is, can he do a convincing Brooklyn accent?

 

[Sixcess]

People are forgetting the true issue right now and that is they didn't cast a Native American as Warpath in Days of Future Past. Now that's a problem.

Johnny Depp being cast in The Lone Ranger suggests it really isn't.

Not saying that's okay. Just saying that Native Americans don't have enough clout in Hollywood, or anywhere else, to make it a problem.

 

[InfinityProject]

the only reason its a problem is because theyre related. why cant he be adopted and then that wraps it up into a neat little package.

 

[thehorror2]

I think the supposed "double standard" here comes from the fact that there absolutely are characters who are (in part or in whole) defined by their race. Someone born a minority (whether that's a rare black person among white people, a white person among black people, or any of a hundred other possibilities) will by definition have their character shaped by their race. Johnny Storm is not one of those people. You don't change anything about the Human Torch by giving him mildly darker skin when he's not on fire (I hasten to point out that HE IS ON FIRE A LOT OF THE TIME.).

So yeah, there's a different standard for actors of color. To touch on the whole Avatar controversy: no, none of the characters in the cartoon were really defined by their race (assuming they mapped to real-world races anyway) but given that the change took acting gigs away from non-white actors who would have had more trouble finding work than the white actors that ended up getting the roles. Moviebob has a video on this (sparked by the Thor/Heimdall thing, no less) that goes into greater detail, but suffice to say there are few enough roles for definitively non-white actors than there are for white ones, so losing one of those non-white roles to a white actor is that much more damaging. Is it fair? No. But things aren't "fair" for anyone non-white (and a lot of white people, too) right now, so being a bit unfair in the other direction is one of the only ways to start balancing these things out.

 

[KrossBillNye]

the only reason its a problem is because theyre related. why cant he be adopted and then that wraps it up into a neat little package.

To play devil's advocate, why does he need to be black?

To touch on the whole Avatar controversy: no, none of the characters in the cartoon were really defined by their race (assuming they mapped to real-world races anyway) but given that the change took acting gigs away from non-white actors who would have had more trouble finding work than the white actors that ended up getting the roles.

To be fair the ethnicity of the characters in The Last Airbender was the least of the major issues of that movie.

 

[xdiesp]

Guys, they are making Johnny black because they are so out of ideas that they are literally going after anything that could net them some publicity, good or bad. They could very well make Johnny a girl, if they suspected it could make them more money. If you want to have a saying in this stuff, just don't spend your money on such trash movies... have higher standards.

 

[themind]

I don't really get it. If you don't like how they reboot a movie or a TV show, than don't watch it. I didn't watch the Hugh Jackman X-Men movie reboots because Wolverine without the yellow and black suit, regardless of how silly it may look in the 21st century, was moronic in my eyes. It would be like Superman without a cape or Batman without a cowl, sacrilege, imo.

If enough people in the target audience don't support it, than the next time it comes up, they will stick closer to the original if that is what fans and paying members of the public want.

I don't like the Fantastic Four, so white or black or purple Johnny Storm, makes no real difference to me, but if people want characters to remain exactly like their comic counter-parts I don't see that as racist, it's just a passionate plea by members of the community to buck the trend of "modernizing" everything, and update something classic with some panache without having to rewrite the entire character.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

People do realise right that the only reason these characters are all white in the original source material is that they were created in an era of institutionalised racism, where no-one could base a comic around a black character and expect it to be popular?

So yeah... I really don't consider this one aspect of comic book 'authenticity' to be all that sacred. If Michael B Jordan is good in the role, just as Idris Elba and Samuel L Jackson were, then nobody has any rational reason to give a fuck about the change of colour.

That is the stupidest shit I have ever heard. Johnny was white because most of the population, and the consumers where white. Blacks aren't a giant consumer in any market unless it is marketed towards them.

Why thank you for just proving my point. The vast majority of the consumers were white. Therefore, the characters had to be white because the consumers were never going to accept a character that had a different superficial skin tone to them.

Sounds a little bit like those consumers might have been racist, wouldn't you say?

 

[Buccura]

Unless they are going with the actor strictly because he's black and not because they think he would actually play the character well, I don't see any reason to get upset over this.

 

[Crispee]

I don't get it, race isn't integral to his character so there's no difference to me. It's like in Thor when they cast a black actor as a Norse God and he played the character really cooly because he had a scary voice.

Michael B Jordan is an excellent choice in my opinion, just watch the film Chronicle, his character has the exact same personality as Johnny Storm and he plays the character really well. Smug, overconfident, self centred and just bursting to use his powers, but also undeniably not a dickhead despite assumption you could make.

But yeah, if you don't want a black actor to play a previously white character, that's not caring about continuity, that is probably more likely to be racism. If people cared about Johnny Storm's appearance being consistent with the source material, then they would have been annoyed back in the previous Fantastic Four film when they cast the Brown Haired, Green Eyed mid 20's Chris Evans as the previously Blonde Haired, Blue Eyed, 18 year old Jonny Storm.

 

[CaptainChip]

Personally, I'd rather see more original black superheroes instead of just changing the race of white ones.

Speaking of which, has Luke Cage ever been in a movie? He's quite the badass.

 

[AgentNein]

Come on guys, no ones being weird about this! They just want the character to look like he does in the comics! It was the same when they cast a dark haired Johnny Storm to play the traditionally blonde character in the last set of FF movies! Oh wait... no one actually cared all that much about that did they?

Seriously, being white informs exactly zero percent of this character, and having him be black will change absolutely nothing significant about him.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I think the supposed "double standard" here comes from the fact that there absolutely are characters who are (in part or in whole) defined by their race. Someone born a minority (whether that's a rare black person among white people, a white person among black people, or any of a hundred other possibilities) will by definition have their character shaped by their race. Johnny Storm is not one of those people. You don't change anything about the Human Torch by giving him mildly darker skin when he's not on fire (I hasten to point out that HE IS ON FIRE A LOT OF THE TIME.).

So yeah, there's a different standard for actors of color. To touch on the whole Avatar controversy: no, none of the characters in the cartoon were really defined by their race (assuming they mapped to real-world races anyway) but given that the change took acting gigs away from non-white actors who would have had more trouble finding work than the white actors that ended up getting the roles. Moviebob has a video on this (sparked by the Thor/Heimdall thing, no less) that goes into greater detail, but suffice to say there are few enough roles for definitively non-white actors than there are for white ones, so losing one of those non-white roles to a white actor is that much more damaging. Is it fair? No. But things aren't "fair" for anyone non-white (and a lot of white people, too) right now, so being a bit unfair in the other direction is one of the only ways to start balancing these things out.

But wait a minute. If being a minority can in part define a character, how can being a member of the majority not? If by no other method than marking them out as /not/ a member of that minority? And how does changing that character to a member of a minority not change him?

The people calling "racist" in this thread are displaying a fascinatingly contradictory mixture of color blindness and ethnic awareness, and I mean that from a sociological standpoint.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

But wait a minute. If being a minority can in part define a character, how can being a member of the majority not? If by no other method than marking them out as /not/ a member of that minority? And how does changing that character to a member of a minority not change him?

Being a minority can in part define a character, doesn't mean it has to. I can think of plenty of characters - black, white, Asian, whatever - for whom their ethnicity doesn't really impact who they are in any meaningful way. Johnny Storm is one of those characters. I mean, does the fact that he's white get brought up ... ever?

Well, the use of "can" was actually wrong on my part. To show the relevant part of what I was responding to:

I think the supposed "double standard" here comes from the fact that there absolutely are characters who are (in part or in whole) defined by their race. Someone born a minority (whether that's a rare black person among white people, a white person among black people, or any of a hundred other possibilities) will by definition have their character shaped by their race. Johnny Storm is not one of those people. You don't change anything about the Human Torch by giving him mildly darker skin when he's not on fire (I hasten to point out that HE IS ON FIRE A LOT OF THE TIME.).

.

So if you phrase it that way, you really have to ask: why does the race only matter if it's something other than white?

Edit: And why does changing from white to non-white change nothing about a character unless that character's race is explicitly mentioned as a plot point, but changing a character from non-white to white does change something inherent to the character, because it's something that apparently comes with the territory of growing up a member of a minority? There's a hole in the logic there somewhere, in that being a member of a minority either automatically makes things different, or it does not. You can't have it both ways.

 

[Vacher2]

Hoping for a character's appearance to remain the same as it has in all source material is perfectly acceptable. We have seen before that fans DO complain when a tiny aspect is changed in a character so to do so here is no different; it is not racist, they simply want the character they have invested in to look as he always has. These fans are not racist, it is not as if they won't accept any character who is not white and demand for them all to be changed. Why can't the fans want the white characters to be white and the black characters to be black, without being branded as racist?

It comes across as double-standards, saying that race means nothing to Johnny Storm and that changing it is no problem. But what if the situation were reversed. What if, for example, a new Blade film was being made and they wanted the 'actor who embodied the role best' and decided that this time it was a white actor? Would people not then say that the person who made that decision was racist? For a 'over-represented' white actor to take the part away from an 'under-represented' black actor; no matter how well they could play the role.

I expect that a lot of the people who are calling anyone against the change to a black actor for Johnny Storm racist, would brand a change to a white actor for Blade or Storm (from X-Men) as an unacceptable racist action too. So I ask why should it be okay to change a white actor to a black actor but not from a black actor to a white actor. That is not equality.