Would you mind black actors portraying superheroes who are normally white?
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Would you mind if batman was a woman?
Would you mind if captain america was middle eastern?
Of course you would. Comic book hero's have backstories and personæ and physical attributes that define who they are.
Unless you are doing a legitimate reboot of the series, having any of the characters be a different skin color is ridiculous, and a kick in the balls to die-hard fans. And for what?
To make the movie politically correct?
It's not like there's a shortage of good actors...
Would you mind if captain america was middle eastern?
Of course you would. Comic book hero's have backstories and personæ and physical attributes that define who they are.
Unless you are doing a legitimate reboot of the series, having any of the characters be a different skin color is ridiculous, and a kick in the balls to die-hard fans. And for what?
To make the movie politically correct?
It's not like there's a shortage of good actors...
I think race is ultimately irrelevant to the question for me - There's probably just as many white guys who would be awful at superman as black guys who would be awful as superman. I have no problem with a person of any race playing any superhero as long as they can act the part.
I wouldn't mind, as long as they kept the important aspects of the character - not that making him black would make that an issue, before anyone tries to interpret my statement into some sort of racism
Isn't the only requirement for Captain America the fact that he's American? What does it matter what they change his ethnicity to, he's still the same character. Even during World War II there were people of other races born in America, so as far as I can tell they could cast any muscular person to play the role as long as they were tall and acting extremely noble with a round shield.TomLikesGuitar said:
No. I really wouldn't. I mean, I thought it was pretty badass when The Question went from this....TomLikesGuitar said:
To this.
Actually Peter Parker is not an everyman. Like most super heroes he represents a sort of ideal. The angst driven Peter Parker of the Spider Man movies worked for that storyline, but it's far differant from the comics.dt61 said:
In the comics Peter Parker is a super-genius, he invents the web-shooters (gizmos) he employs himself, and routinely invents new kinds of webbing to deal with specific foes. It's also noteworthy that while viewed as something of a "nerd" and in conflict with jocks, he's also supposed to be quite handsome and charming. Felicia Hardy, the rich-girl school super star has a thing for him (and becomes The Black Cat, getting them together is a popular "what if" scenario) not to mention landing Gwen Stacy, and later Mary-Jane who is a super-model (and I mean this literally).
Spider-Man is one of those guys who is able to pretty much head into a high school chem lab with a couple drops of monster slime, kit-bash something effective against the creature (like a cure for the central mutation, a way of tracking it, a way of neutralizing it's power, or some special webbing that is especially effective) and similar things.
I think the tendency to humanize super heroes right now is a bad move, as it defeats the point of them being "super" to begin with.
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As far as the central question goes, I think the ethnicity of characters should be kept constant. I don't think casting a black guy as Spider Man is a good idea any more than I think casting The Black Panther (king of an African nation) as a white guy would be.
Given that there are few black comic book writers and artists (actually I can't think of any off the top of my head) blacks are pretty well represented in comics given minority status in the market nation and a general lack of involvement in the creative process. You just don't see many black guys wanting to go on to do coming books, and certainly not enough of them to produce the talent needed eventually wind up seeing something put out (like anything it's competitive, only a few people of the legions that want to do it make it, so you need to produce a vast community of people who are interested before a group is going to be represented). Asians became far more represented due to the large comic community (Manga) with time blending the two together, with a lot of people getting into western comics and/or talented people influancing the design.
That said, we've already seen attempts at ethnicity mixing with super heroes, and it generally wasn't pretty. I'm looking at the "Kingpin" in Daredevil, and at Halle Berry's take on "Catwoman" which even involved a full reboot of the character to explain it.
That said there are black comic characters that could probably hold down a movie if it was done correctly. I actually think you could make a good movie out of "Steel", especially if they did a Superman movie that ended with his apparent death as a cliffhanger, and then launched Steel before the second part picking up the plotline. "Spawn" is another character that I think more could be done with, he's already carried an okay (if not great) live action movie and a number of animated works. Then of course there are frequently mentioned characters like The Black Panther, Luke Cage, and War Machine. If someone wanted to dip into Wildstorm you've got Battalion who has been a major player for a long time, being field leader of the old Stormwatch after Bendix, leader of The Monarchy (which was cool but ultimatly failed), and of course now the leader of the new Stormwatch again. The "New Warriors" ages ago had a guy called "Night Thrasher" who was pretty cool, however he seemed to fizzle out for some reason. "Wild Cards" had a character called Black Shadow who was interesting in that he had like three or four differant identities concurrantly during the series and nobody really figured out that they were all the same guy (Black Shadow, Wall Walker, and others). He seemed to be the inspiration for the powers of DV8's "Frostbite" as he had the power to drain heat from things, including people's body heat. He also had wallcrawling, super strength (albiet at a fairly low level), and I believe darkness generation.
The point here being that while there are not as many black characters as there are white ones, there are some decent ones out there that could be used without having to try and change the traditional presentation of existing characters.
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Oh and as far as Wesley Snipes as Batman, I don't think that one would work even beyond the ethnic issues. The challenge of playing Batman isn't in the whole bit of him being Batman but carrying off the Bruce Wayne persona and convincingly making it seem like it could be the same guy. I'm not sure if Wesley Snipes could really play the naive Billionaire Playboy philanthropist. He'd want to insert too much of an attitude into it for him to really be Gotham's darling and present an imagine that would make it unthinkable that he could possibly be Batman.
On the other hand he might be able to carry off the rebooted version of Nighthawk from "Supreme Power".
Clark Kent could work, with a time change. Send him back to the Civil War, raised from childhood by a family of slaves. I think it'd be an interesting change, anyways.Mattox33 said:
Anyways, I think it depends on what the movie is supposed to be. If it's a reboot of the franchise, then I think they could do whatever they please with it. If they are trying to recreate a particular segment of the series, however, like maybe a movie form of the first Captain America comics, then stick with the character's original ethnicity.
The interesting thing though is there's actually a black version you could use instead of changing Steve Rogers, Isaih Bradley better known as the "Black Captain America" who was a black soldier wo had the super serum tested on him against his will in an attempt to recreate Steve Rogers. His is would be a better tale than just changing skinny Steve Rogers to being black.blue_guy said:
There's a marvel story called "Adam - Legend of the Blue Marvel" about a superhero in the sixties who loses his mask and is revealed to the public as being black, it deals with the racism that leads to his retirement. Its pretty good, even just if for the fact they finally made a black superhero who was a heavy hitter superman level, most seem to get low to middle of the range powersets.toriver said:
Wasn't that John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan? There's actually like four (five if you count Alan Scott) human green lanterns and one of thems black.hyzaku said:
But the Green Lantern is white...elricik said:
Or at least the originals Alan Scott and Hal Jordan are. John Stewart who is black became a green lantern much later.
But then that really isn't Superman then it's a completely different character. It's a good idea but it's better off marketing as a completely Superhero. Call him Freedom or something.theSovietConnection said:
Yes Captain America can be anyone, but the original Captain America is forever Steve Rogers, a skinny Irish-American youth who tried to enlist 17times in WW2 and was considered 4F (or unusuable). He was then picked up by a super soldier project using stolen Nazi formulas that turned him into a "Superman". As well as fighting Nazis he was a significant propaganda tool.Treeinthewoods said:
This character wouldn't work as any other ethnicity, theres the irony of blonde blue eyed superman fighting nazis, there's the fact a black man wouldn't have been used for propaganda during that time. There's the fact that immigration of multiple ethnicities was significantly lower back in the 20's and 30's.
I'm not saying that Farouk Hussein couldn't take up the mantle in a future comic, but for a film adaption it's too inaccurate.
For those saying that will smith would work as Captain America
No he fucking wouldn't Cap is supposed to be Good ol' American as apple pie types, made in the 1040s back when blacks wenen't allowed in certain restaraunts and were in segregated platoons in the military a black man simply would not have been considered for the role in universe.
Having said that,
Will smith could play the Cap in that he has the talent and I can sorta see it working but you'd have to change everything about the Cap's backstory to make it work otherwise it would just be an obvious case of politicaly correct history.
Most heroes just wouln't work if they were a different race unless you made huge changes to their backstory, some would, most wouldn't.
Black Nick Fury worked, but he already existed in the ultimate comics
Black Kingpin worked cause he was perfect for the role save for skin colour
The same applies to nationality too many changes would have to be made and comic geeks HATE unneccesary change,
Imagine an Autraillian Captain America or an Irish Doctor Doom, just doesn't work does it?
No he fucking wouldn't Cap is supposed to be Good ol' American as apple pie types, made in the 1040s back when blacks wenen't allowed in certain restaraunts and were in segregated platoons in the military a black man simply would not have been considered for the role in universe.
Having said that,
Will smith could play the Cap in that he has the talent and I can sorta see it working but you'd have to change everything about the Cap's backstory to make it work otherwise it would just be an obvious case of politicaly correct history.
Most heroes just wouln't work if they were a different race unless you made huge changes to their backstory, some would, most wouldn't.
Black Nick Fury worked, but he already existed in the ultimate comics
Black Kingpin worked cause he was perfect for the role save for skin colour
The same applies to nationality too many changes would have to be made and comic geeks HATE unneccesary change,
Imagine an Autraillian Captain America or an Irish Doctor Doom, just doesn't work does it?
I get how the Ultimates universe is an alt world, but this always bothered me. Granted it was a good portrayal, but an established character is an established character. Samus Aran is not male. Garrus Vakarian is not a Krogan. James Bond is a white brit. NON-established characters or characters like the Green Lantern who are defined by role not individuality can be absolutely anything you want. I have to say John Stewart was my favorite, and also that Kyle Rayner irritates me.dt61 said:
moretimethansense said:
But the point is that there is already a black Captain America from WW2, Isaiah Bradley. There's no point butchering Steve Rogers character when they could make an adaption of that character instead.4173 said:
And yeah they gave him and his fellow soldiers the flawed super soldier serum without consent and he was the only one who survived.
Ultimates gets too many peoples knickers in a twist. It's meant to be a completely fresh and different look at the ideas behind the character. If people don't like it they can avoid it, it bugs me when someone complains about how a character is portrayed differently that was the point.Nieroshai said:
But as for Fury, it makes sense for the film producer chose Samuel L. Jackson, when you consider he's a good actor and he identically match an interpretation of the character. But especially when you consider how bad the Nick Fury movie with David Hasselhoff was (yes it exists).
The funny thing is when he turned up in Iron Man it was a joke, Disney hadn't bought Marvel and making the avengers was still only a pipe dream. Samuel L. Jackson came for one uncredited day of filming simply because he thought it would be cool to wear an eyepatch. A couple of years later and bam, Avengers baby.
Funnily enough he was originally going to be black, but they thought it would be a racial stereotype.moretimethansense said:
