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James Howell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 23 September 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 363
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | 1
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Hollywood has trained its' audience to focus on only name recognition, and superpowers to get fans to see their "adaptations" at the theater. The fanbase response is pavlovian. As long as they can get to see their heroes onscreen, it doesn't even matter that they don't look, or act like their comic book counterparts. Fanboys have long since sold their souls to the mainstream media, so that they can sit at the pop culture cool table. BTW, hiring a black actor to play the Torch, does NOTHING to help the black community in Hollywood, or anywhere else. You would think that we would be past these "token" gestures of diversity in the 21st century. I guess not.
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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 5:34pm | IP Logged | 2
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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.
++++++++++
I like to see different actors taking a character, to see if they can capture the
role. Like James bond. I will admit that I know the character of Johnny
Storm is white but I still don't mind seeing what a talented actor of another
race can do. Sorta like I don't care if the actor playing Wolverine is
Canadian. I'm not trying to convince you not to be disappointed or upset
over this casting decision and I'm not saying I'm not as well. Just that I'm
going to reserve full judgement till I see the role performed.
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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 5:52pm | IP Logged | 3
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Race is not the same as nationality. An actor can convincingly "pass"
as Canadian or Kryptonian.
Jennifer Beals playing a white character does not require "race
swapping" because she can "pass" as, say, Italian (Flashdance).
I wouldn't have an issue with Wentworth Miller playing a white
character from the comics because he might legitimately look like the
character.
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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 5:55pm | IP Logged | 4
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I would like to take this back to the original post. We've discussed our
views on race swapping in film and TV but the larger point is can we
have this debate without one side being considered racists or petty
geeks. Keep in mind that the Oliver "joke" included race-swapping
objections as the punchline, arguably more egregious than the earlier
mentioned mockery of actresses for gaining weight. That is poor
company and I don't think it's justified.
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Doug Campbell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 March 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 367
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | 5
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Mark: 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?
Nice tone. Holinshed's Chronicles, the source of the basic material for Shakespeare's King Lear, was published about 25 years before the play first appeared. If you're keeping close track, that's half as long as the elapsed time between FF#1 and the upcoming movie, so who's kidding whom, "slickster?"
Mark: 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.
A "completely new" character with exactly the same heroic alias and super powers? If you say so. To me, this seems to be the very essence of special pleading: when modern film makers do it, it's uncreative pandering, and yet when Stan and Jack did the same thing, it's a beloved act of creativity. I see both as reimaginings of existing characters.
Mark: 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".
Again, I'm all for more original characters of all races, ethnicities, nationalities and genders on the screen and in the comics. If you want to argue that there hasn't been anywhere near enough work done in that regard, then I'll happily agree with that critique.
I find it peculiar, however, that you and others seem to go of your way to take offense on behalf of minority groups in regards to casting black actors to play characters who were originally depicted as white. Surely those actors are more than capable of voicing their dissatisfaction if they think that's a racist practice.
I would be interested to see whether Jackson would have preferred to have been given the role of Gabe Jones, essentially Nick Fury's token black subordinate rather than the iconic and powerful director of the agency himself. Sure, another option would have been to go with an entirely new character, but I can see why Marvel decided not to, and I doubt an entirely new creation would have had the same cache as the reimagined Fury, who preserves some of the history and mystique of the original.
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Doug Campbell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 March 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 367
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | 6
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JB: 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.
I rather think the analogy does work, since there hadn't been "hundreds" of different Arthurs or Lears, but only a handful.
I find it interesting how your phrasing removes the agency of Chrétien de Troyes and Shakespeare, as if stories and characters change of their own impetus if given enough time. But that's not what happened. It was no organic evolution that inevitably occurred as the years went by. Instead, we have a couple of authors who deliberately changed pre-existing stories for their own artistic purposes. Perhaps the changes may indeed have looked arbitrary to some of their audience, but they certainly would have argued they were trying to do something new, interesting, and vital with the stories.
Perhaps the new African American identity for the Human Torch will indeed prove to have been an arbitrary choice, but it cannot be automatically dismissed as such, <ahem> , arbitrarily. We must wait and see.
Edited by Doug Campbell on 14 June 2014 at 9:41pm
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Jeffrey Rice
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 September 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 1161
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | 7
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Maybe if some effort to discuss the story plot, or key themes for this remake came up before a black actor was announced, without announcing the rest of the team or protagonist, the race-swapping would not seem so jarring.
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1681
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| Posted: 14 June 2014 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | 8
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Doug Campbell wrote:
| Perhaps the new African American identity for the Human Torch will indeed prove to have been an arbitrary choice, but it cannot be automatically dismissed as such, <ahem> , arbitrarily. We must wait and see. |
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I can't imagine any possible story reason why the Human Torch needs to be black. It's quite clearly a decision made to supposedly "diversify" the casting, which by definition is an arbitrary decision - one based on the particular whims of the producers of the movie. In this case, those whims extend to trying to maximize profits by pandering to a broader fan base.
But none of this is a story reason, certainly not one that is in any way faithful to the original story of The Fantastic Four.
And that's if we take the best case scenario, which is that the story is actually being developed to take into account all of the different experiences that a black man would have had versus a white man. What is more likely is that a black man is being shoehorned into the role with minimal adjustment to the story.
It just boils down to a ham-fisted cash grab by the producers. More diversity = more dollars, pure and simple.
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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 10:35pm | IP Logged | 9
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Doug: Nice tone. Holinshed's Chronicles, the source of the basic material for Shakespeare's King Lear, was published about 25 years before the play first appeared. If you're keeping close track, that's half as long as the elapsed time between FF#1 and the upcoming movie, so who's kidding whom, "slickster?"
**
Sorry the tone didn't come across jovially-- it was meant to.
To the point tho, I can't see what this example has to do with your previous assertion that FF has been done faithfully "hundreds" times in a comparable sense to Lear. It certainly doesn't persuade me that a few tv shows and 3 bad movies has exhausted what FF has to offer and that now it's time to see what race-swapping can bring to the table.
++
A "completely new" character with exactly the same heroic alias and super powers? If you say so.
**
Give me a break. Are you existing in some other reality where Johnny Storm and Frankie Storm's father's creation are the same character?
++
To me, this seems to be the very essence of special pleading: when modern film makers do it, it's uncreative pandering, and yet when Stan and Jack did the same thing, it's a beloved act of creativity. I see both as reimaginings of existing characters.
**
Connect those dots. Stan and Jack jack up a defunct character and put in new guts for a new generation and a new audience. You see it as "the same" as intentionally mis-adapting a still ongoing and successful(ish) character for that character's existing audience. There is NO difference?
++
I find it peculiar, however, that you and others seem to go of your way to take offense on behalf of minority groups in regards to casting black actors to play characters who were originally depicted as white. Surely those actors are more than capable of voicing their dissatisfaction if they think that's a racist practice.
**
Perhaps this is where you're coming from -- you think I'm offended on behalf of the actors who take these race-swapped roles? No. I am not. If they are or are not offended, it's up to them. Their opinion has no bearing on the facts which I find offensive.
You seem to want to dance around the simple idea that started this thread. It's reasonable for anyone to strongly prefer faithful adaptations of fictional characters. Being unhappy about unnecessary changes should be the norm-- not the fringe position.
Edited by Mark Haslett on 14 June 2014 at 10:39pm
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Conrad Teves
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 2230
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| Posted: 15 June 2014 at 12:22am | IP Logged | 10
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I suspect this whole discussion of race-swapping is clouding the issue of what makes an adaptation "faithful."
Is a characters name and powers the only thing that defines them as that character?
Lets take the first FF movie as an example. Is it okay to portray Reed Richards as a nerd, a socially uncertain self-doubter with no leadership skills that has difficulty talking to girls? Particularly when Reed had never been portrayed from the beginning as that and in subsequent several hundred issues of FF. That's not his archetype.
Is it okay to change how they got their powers from a consequence of a conscious choice to an accident? Does that not re-frame the story entirely and subsequent motivations?
Is it okay for Johnny (by casting him too old) to eliminate the "kid brother" archetype who was "tagging along" with his Big Sister?
Is it okay to change Sue into a self-confident scientist who had a romantic attachment to Doom? If so, how did her new-found expertise drive the story?
Is it okay to change Doctor Doom, King of Latveria, into an Evil Businessman?
If you change all the character archetypes, and the context of everything around them, how are they still the Fantastic Four? Is it just the names and powers?
Frankly, I think they should have taken the "First Class" route and set it in the 60's during the height of the Cold War.
Why can't we get the story right once as a movie before we start exploring around the edges? Galactica at least had it's run (twice, actually) before they decided to retell the story and flip all the archetypes. The closest we've gotten to a faithful Fantastic Four movie is The Incredibles. Which may well be the closest we ever get.
I was talking with a friend the other day about this, and he said about all the different deviations to Batman that had been on screen that "there are many ways to be Batman," then accused me of having a nostalgic attachment to the characters. YES! I plead guilty. I re-watch old episodes of Star Trek partly out of nostalgia. I re-read old comic books partly for the same reason. Doing this momentarily frees me of the cynical trappings of a lot of modern fiction, and real-life in general. It's escapist fantasy. It's fun.
Far from agreeing with the notion of "putting away childish things," I'm going to agree with the 4th Doctor who said "What's the point of being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" It reminds you of where you came from, and how you got where you are.
Making an adaptation that isn't faithful (no matter how good it is) cannot do that. It's all new. There's no emotional attachment to to my past to be found because none of that was there.
[Edited to remove duplicate sentence!]
Edited by Conrad Teves on 15 June 2014 at 9:03am
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2364
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| Posted: 15 June 2014 at 3:28am | IP Logged | 11
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And now the news today is that Jason Momoa is being cast to play Aquaman in the Batman Vs. Superman movie.
Because I always mixed up Conan and Aquaman. They're practically twins, right?
Argh! Okay, I can picture what they're going to do with Momoa--he'll have the long wet black hair, he'll be shirtless, he'll wear all sorts of shell necklaces, etc. Fine. That sounds like a real cool character--but is it Aquaman?!?
Seriously, if you're going to change everything but the name, why not just change the name too and make a brand new character? You're not fooling anyone but yourself.
It's not just the movies and raceswapping. Recently, DC revamped the Metal Men and Chemo, making the Metal Men hi-tech and "cool" and Chemo monstrous and evil-dangerous-looking. Really? Do we really need ultra-cool Metal Men and a vicious-looking Chemo? His name is "Chemo" for goodness sake!
Does everything have to be cool and slick? Same thing with the recent Shazam (can't call him "Captain Marvel" anymore) revamp. How realistic, dark, and slick does "Shazam" need to be? I'd rather have seen Archie Comics take a shot at him.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133279
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| Posted: 15 June 2014 at 4:29am | IP Logged | 12
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I find it interesting how your phrasing removes the agency of Chrétien de Troyes and Shakespeare, as if stories and characters change of their own impetus if given enough time. But that's not what happened. •• Of course it didn't. And I didn't say that was the case. But, you know, the fastest way to be shown the exit is to twist my words to make your own argument. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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Topic Closed)
