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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 1:30am | IP Logged | 1
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The hilarious part of all this is that they'll do something like cast Samuel Jackson as the previously white character Nick Fury for the "sake of diversity"--and then they'll go ahead and create a BRAND NEW WHITE MALE CHARACTER in the form of Phil Coulson!
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2364
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 1:47am | IP Logged | 2
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Likewise, did Jimmy Olsen REALLY need to be turned into "Jenny" in MAN OF STEEL? We lose the one kid in the whole cast to gain one (blah) female character? There are NO other women characters in the Superman mythos to bring in?!? (We know THAT's not true!)
(Still hoping they bring in the real Jimmy next time.)
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 8:24am | IP Logged | 3
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The hilarious part of all this is that they'll do something like cast Samuel Jackson as the previously white character Nick Fury for the "sake of diversity"--and then they'll go ahead and create a BRAND NEW WHITE MALE CHARACTER in the form of Phil Coulson!•• Well, you know, they have to maintain White dominance!!!! (I was aware of this, too. That Coulson was not only a new character, but a White one. Since he is effectively the face of SHIELD, why not make him Black?)
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 9:11am | IP Logged | 4
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SMALLVILLE cast a black actor as Pete Ross and he was so unlike the
character that he might as well have been a new character entirely. It
seemed pointless, especially when the new character Whitney was
more like Pete.
There was no version of Lana Lang in the comics who was brunette.
Why not call her Chloe and play her exactly the same. Allison Mack's
junior Lois Lane character was more Lana-like, in fact.
But like Coulson, when a new interesting character is introduced, he or
she is white and the race-swapped character just stands around
looking progressive.
Nick Fury is a strange case because the movie producers can point to
the black version in the comics themselves. Yet, he really is just
Samuel L. jackson with an eyepatch,
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | 5
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Was the Essential Fury introduced as a WW2 vet?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | 6
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Over the course of our civilization, stories have been told and retold, often changing substantially in the retelling. For example, the character of Lancelot, with the accompanying adulterous love triangle, only entered the Arthurian legends with the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century. And Shakespeare adapted King Lear from stories in Holinshed's Chronicles about a monarch named Leir who successfully regained his kingdom from his ungrateful daughters after foolishly willing it to them. If one were to insist on faithfulness at the expense of all of other virtues, these were terrible adaptations. The original Arthur was not a melancholy cuckold. The original Leir was not a pathetic madman who died in ignominy. Yet I think it would be absurd to fail to recognize how much more deeply resonant the stories became as a result. •• And, of course, your analogy works perfectly, since there have been hundreds of versions of Johnny Storm, and Nick Fury, and James West, and… Oh, wait. There haven't. Stories and characters change over long periods of time. But that's not an excuse for making arbitrary changes and then trying to pass off your version as the original.
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6414
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | 7
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Doug: In all of these hundreds of portrayals, Johnny Storm has been a young white male. That rates as having been "done" about as much as the Arthur or Lear stories.
**
Not so fast, slickster. 3 or 4 comic book series, 4 animated shows, 3 live action movies and you're counting "hundreds of portrayals" comparable to HUNDREDS OF YEARS of Lear? Who are you kidding?
+++
Doug: We also perhaps aren't paying due attention to the fact that the Johnny Storm character is himself a reimagining of an earlier Human Torch, and is perhaps more different from the Jim Hammond android police officer than a young, black Human Torch might be from the 1960s version. Why is that okay for Lee and Kirby but not for the new film?
***
One is okay and the other is not because they are not even remotely the same thing. Johnny Storm was a reinvention of a defunct character-- a completely new character, in point of fact, evidenced by his meeting Jim Hammond a few short years later.
++
But by all means, lets see lots and lots of new characters and new stories even as we reexamine old ones.
***
As people are pointing out, black Nick Fury, Johnny Storm, Deathlok, Electro, Kingpin, etc. are not leading to new black characters in this vein. Black comic characters that exist have barely made it "on screen" -- we have Storm, Falcon, and... Bishop (an Aboriginal Australian portrayed by a black Frenchman)?
So if it isn't racism to cast white characters as black instead of creating new black characters or putting existing black characters on screen, it's something so close it should be considered the most dubious kind of "progress".
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Paul Kimball
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 2198
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | 8
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I'm not against race swapping a character or gender bending, but does the
change have merit?
+++++++
I'll have to wait and see the performance.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | 9
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I'm not against race swapping a character or gender bending, but does the change have merit?+++++++ I'll have to wait and see the performance. ••• Will you? If he's played exactly like Johnny in the comics, then the race swap brings nothing to the table. If he's played differently from Johnny in the comics, then he's a different character and the race swap is pointless. Are there really so many for whom the characters begin and end with the names and the powers?
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Taavi Suhonen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 April 2004
Location: Finland
Posts: 1544
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | 10
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John Byrne wrote:
| Was the Essential Fury introduced as a WW2 vet? |
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If I recall correctly, Ultimate Nick Fury being a WWII vet wasn't established until Ultimate Origins, 6 years after the character had been introduced. I'm pretty sure the earliest conflict he had been mentioned being involved with before that was the Gulf War. It's also worth noting that Ultimate Nick Fury didn't look exactly like Samuel L. Jackson in his first appearances:
Stephen Robinson wrote:
| Pete Ross/Whitney and Lana Lang/Chloe |
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Yeah, that used to drive me crazy. I guess with Lana they were afraid of her not seeming like the real love interest without the name, leading to fans asking when Clark would get together with his real sweetheart - of course, being named Chloe didn't stop people from asking that question, since Allison Mack's character was far more interesting and had better chemistry with Clark.
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Bill Collins
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Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | 11
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Where was Ultimate Fury's first appearance? I thought it was Ultimates 1 and he looked exactly like SLJ.
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Taavi Suhonen
Byrne Robotics Member
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Location: Finland
Posts: 1544
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | 12
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The picture I posted is from Ultimate X-Men 10 which came out a few months before Ultimates 1, but I think he had also briefly appeared in an issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up before that.
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Topic Closed)
