i'm probably being dense but i cant see anything female about the female nazgul. what am i missing
Critical Miss: Lord of the Wrongs
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
Actually that's not true. The "aliens" logic which was explored in the "Universe X" (Alternaverse) explained that they pretty much took on the apperance and properties that people expected of them. Certain gods who were believed to be able to shapechange could, but the other ones looked that way constantly.XShrike said:
In the general continuity the only gods who could change what they look like fundementally are Loki, Odin, and Karnilla. The Enchantress can do enough illusions to pull it off, but I don't think she can actually shapeshift.
Thor himself has a unique property in that he's the spirit of a god who uses mortal hosts. Thor is blonde because Donald Blake, who is the host (or was originally, it's changed from time to time) is blonde. This is incidently why you've seen cases in various universes where Thor has been a woman, and similar things. There was also an entire storyline with Thor battling another, properly "mythological" Thor with red hair who was the original version (it's complicated) and then the whole "Beta Ray Bill" thing. The bottom line being that duplicates of Mjolnir can, and have been made, which have given various characters the same powers as Thor. Storm even had one briefly when Loki "recruited" her as Thor's replacement during that whole "X-men in Asgard" storyline.
Basically if Thor's host died, and a worthy person found the hammer they could also become Thor and would look like an idealized version of themselves. If that person was black, then you could have a black Thor. This however does not apply to the other Norse gods however, this is one of his tricks. Loki, Sif, Odin, Volstagg, Baldur, etc... do not occupy and empower host bodies the way Thor does.
People tend to forget the whole thing with Professor Donald Blake having the hammer hidden in his cane and then tapping it three times to turn into THE MIGHTY THOR! I mean cripes. I understand the fact that this element of things rarely comes up anymore (with Thor being Thor most of the time) but I get tired of people bringing up the issue that Thor doesn't look like the mythological version, when this was covered pretty much from the get go. He had a secret identity, and the whole thing started with the hammer being found at a dig site. I believe Thor's first storyline where this was found involved him fighting the Stone Men From Saturn or something like that.
Also Thor *HAS* gotten pretty silly at times with the whole possesion bit. There was a time when Loki turned Thor into a frog, and what this ultimatly did was create "Thor: Frog Of Thunder!" which was a bullfrog with all the powers of Thor (and the costume and hammer). It was kind of amusing at the time, but I still roll my eyes today thinking about it.
Like most comics, consistincy is not it's strong suit (since there have been storylines with Thor shown as a blonde boy in Asgardian flashbacks, with various convoluted storylines explaining this and how it related to other apperances with his "original" red haired host body) but as a basic concept, especially when you look at how it launched, it's pretty straightforward and I'd expect people who know comics enough to get excited about a Thor movie to at least know about Donald Blake, and the basics of Thor's origin.
First of all you can't prove anything about Gandalf. Secondly the "Gangsta" dwarf thing has already been covered by Terry Pratchett. And Thirdly, why can't orcs celebrate their success with Bowler hats? Successful Trolls do. *ZING!*
Grey Carter said:
The differance is that those differant versions are one shots and (usually) short lived alternate continuities. There is typically one version of a character that exists in the actual, canon universe (or set of universes). Sure, someone has done stories like "what if Superman was raised in Russia" but that has no bearing on the actual main DC continuity and the character itself. What we're seeing is them doing movies based on the character, selling a movie as "Superman" or "Thor" where the idea (and what people expect) is to provide a movie rendition of the actual canon character, as opposed to something that someone threw out in a series like "What if..." at some point.
There have been stories like "What if Ironman mass produced his armor for the US goverment" which explored the concept of "The Iron Guard" pretty much smacking down all the bad guys on the planet, making super heroes irrelevent. Tony Stark is a billionaire shut in, and paranoid like nobody's business. Eventually Magneto shows up with his whole "Mutants are the Master Race" agenda, nobody has heard of him, and being the IRON guard he winds up wiping them out rather easily, and the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants makes a grab for world domination. Some of the guys with powers come out to try and stop him, where we've got Spider Man and Wolverine as fat middle aged men and stuff, they predictably get trashed. Tony being off his rocker reveals that the entire Stark Industries building is one giant suit of Iron Man armor (sort of like "Earth X") and the last scene is the building-bot firing on a about-to-be-swatted-like-an-ant magneto.
It's been a while, but the exact details are unimportant, the point is that the above is one of those "alternaverses" someone did for fun. I can justify there being a fat, middle aged Spider-Man who can't keep out of his own way for example, I mean it's been in the comics! So basically if I decided to launch a movie based on THAT version of Spider Man, played by James Gandolfini... and do it seriously, not as a comedy (with the watchword being "pathetic" more than anything), your basically saying that fans should just embrace that because, hey, it's been in the comics.... No, people who go to these movies want to see the actual characters fro the mainstream continuities as they know them. They want the young, wise-cracking, agile, effective, crime fighting Spider-Man, who looks like Peter Parker in the comics, and wears the costumes from the comics... (in comparison to say the terrible Doctor Strange movie from the 1970s where at the end he gets a typical "generic superhero" suit).
People are defending the race change because of politics, but in the end it's the same thing as doing a movie about "fat spider man" even if you were to play it deadpan seriously as opposed to what I described from that comic. People defend this because it's a "racial issue" and has to do with skin color which is a deadpan issue. I doubt anyone would be defending an obsese actor playing Spider Man, even if someone was to bring up issues of "dicrimination against heavy people" and ask "well why can't Spidey be fat?" with the same enthusiasm that people seem to throw down in saying that characters can be re-interpeted as other ethnicities.
The issue becomes hard to argue, like any issue that involves race does, which is at the root of a lot of society's problems (above and beyond this), it prevents needed dialogue on a lot of subjects. Nobody wants to risk being stigmitized as a racist, for wanting to defend the proper portrayal of an established character.
... and for the record, I very much doubt many people would flock to theaters to see a movie about Russian Superman either. There are very few "alternaverse" concepts that would even have the geek following to carry even a second rate movie. Perhaps something like say "Kingdom Come" could be turned into a movie, although that left most of the major characters more or less unchanged (other than setting the clock ahead, and showing how things might turn out), or maybe Marvel and DC joining forces briefly to combine their movie making successes into something based on the "Amalgam Universe", or the "DC Vs. Marvel, Marvel Vs. DC" storyline which ended it.
What works for a short print run aimed at hardcore nerds looking for something a little differant isn't exactly going to wallow in mainstream appeal. Especially when you consider that ideas like "Communist Superman" are meant to be disturbing, or darkly amusing as much as anything.
As usual, the only people bringing up the R-word are the white guys whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiining about this horrific raping of the character by changing the skin color, which we all know is important for historical accuracy in portraying our fictional characters in settings where skin color is not an issue in the slightest or even mentioned.Gingerman said:
And of course, when discussing the topic, the apparent-non-racists can only come up with extreme examples like turning Abraham Lincoln into a blonde Filipino elf, because otherwise, they just look like racists complaining that someone whose skin color makes no difference is a color they disapprove of in the role for no explainable reason. Using actual parallel examples and explaining the issue would just complicate matters and make for a "discussion".
I get to the end of an amazingly humorous comic and get mindslapped by a Lilly Allen lyric? Consider me laughing out loud enough to have the girl at the next desk look at me like I'm crazy.
And again, this.matrix3509 said:
@Soylent Dave
The idea repulses me because any attempt on mangling the internal logic of any author's setting is an idea which I find abhorrent. I reacted much the same way when I saw Glorfindel was completely omitted from the first film, for no apparent reason, when his scene would've still made all bloody sense.
You are, of course, correct in your quotations, but as matrix points out, you completely removed said quotes from context. And from de-contextualized quotations, anyone can draw erroneous interpretation. As he points out, in context, they really should not be considered to be of the same profile as people we know for certain are ethnically similar to real-world counterparts of southerners such as the Haradrim. Hobbits may be ethnically diverse, but that does not mean they are as diverse as humans', especially when we consider the time during which the work was written (it was not the most ethnically-minded of times) and the author's concerns, which clearly did not aim toward a multicultural agenda but rather to materialize a mythology.
Data Snake; I seriously do not remember where I read it. I am not sure if it was in the History of Middle Earth series or somewhere else, so you might be perfectly right.
Very clever n' witty. Though why is all medievil stuff based on LOTR? Why do dwarfs have scottish accents? When Scotts are typically tall. Why do they always have long hair? And Beards, its either a light one or one that could sink a destroyer.
I am very glad to see someone else spotted this. Took 3 pages though. My first thought on reading that panel was pretty much LOLWUT?!? The orcs in Peter Jacksons adaptation couldn't sound more (pretend) English if they started doing a rendition of the entire score of Mary Poppins in 'Dick Van Dyke cockney'.Chazfreakish said:
Said the same thing in Thor: If its a minor character, no damage done. Main characters, however, characters who have backgrounds already created for them and are supposed to look/act a certain way, those should be left alone. I don't think I'd be as satisfied with this movie if a hobbit were black, though unless they stereotype him I don't think it'd lose any entertainment value. I would be just as displeased if Rand Al'Thor were played by a short, Asian women with black hair (Unless they somehow CGI'd her into full Rand splendor), when he is clearly a huge, white male with abnormally red hair. 's how it works.
Yeah with you on this one. It is a shame the comic artists have gone trendy and sided with the, let's have multi-cultural hobbits, you're racist if you don't! We have a small isolated people in the shire, they've been shown to look one way in the films thus far, now with the possibility they will be pc-ed, it is going to look ridiculous, damage verisimilutude and continuity if implemented. The comic artists sure made a mistake on the gay wizard comment. Characters and actors people, characters and actors.Gingerman said:
You've clearly got some knowledge on the subject here. Yes the isolationism and northern western climate. Why can't people understand what tanning involves?j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:Right. Considering that I've re-read LOTR and the Hobbit once a year for the past decade, got umpteen Tolkien reference books in my collection, and made it through the entirety of the Silmarillion three times (no mean feat, I can tell you), I'd like to think I'm as much of an authority on Middle Earth as anyone you're likely to find here. So please let me argue, in as much detail as I can, the reaons why I think you, and everyone calling the racism card, are wrong:Grey Carter said:
Firstly, the whole Fallohide/Harfoot issue. While Harfoots are described as being darker of skin, this is explained as being a result of their constant outdoorsyness. Now, as luck would have it, my dad is pretty much an ideal model to compare to. He's short (just over 5 foot), got sticky out ears and curly hair, and has done nothing but outdoor labour jobs for pretty much his entire life. As a result, his skin has toughened up and darkened in pigment. However, and this is important, no-one in their right mind would mistake him for a black or asian person. His skin is darker, but he's still an obvious pale pasty Englishman compared to anyone of Asian or African descendance. All those suggesting that Harfoots, by virtue of working outside, are capable of just as much racial insensitivity. Working outside in the sun does not turn you into a black man, and to suggest so is just as offensive as the 'racism' you're decrying.
The second argument people use: that Middle Earth is a large place, so hobbits would be very ethnically diverse. That would be true were it not for a few key facts. Firstly, the Shire is about as far West as you can go in Middle Earth, and the deserts of Harad (the nearest desert, where you would expect people to naturally develop darker skin) is way out to the east and south of Mordor. Y'know, that place they spend three fucking novels walking to! It's not a hop, skip and a fuckety jump across the street, it's a distance of thousands of miles! Now, if Hobbits were well travelled, there would still be an argument, but they're not. Tolkien specifically and intentionally wrote them as a race who have kept to themselves. Within the Shire, anyone who ventures more than twenty miles over the border is actually regarded as a bit of a loony. This is not a well travelled race, this is a race who are so insular and out-of-the-way, the all seeing flaming eyeball of a Dark Lord didn't even realise they fucking existed! Multi-culturalism really is not something hobbits do. In fact, they're pretty damn against it. They treat anyone from over the border as someone to keep an eye on. This isn't something Tolkien condoned, in fact he uses his position as author to call them out on it as the story progresses, but it's there nonetheless.
Now to your point Mr Carter: if this was any other author, your point would stand. Tolkien, however, was legendarily particular about every aspect of fantasy. He fucking well called out C.S. Lewis for having fauns, minotaurs, dwarves and nymphs altogether in the Narnia mythos. For Tolkien, the devil wasn't just in the details, it was in the details of the details. When people say that Tolkien was the best world-builder in literature, it's not simply due to the size of the world he created. It's because, no matter how closely you look, everything within the world makes sense and fits in the context. Rivers flow the way they're supposed to, mountain ranges are arranged in suitably realistic formations, and being a world where long distance travel amounts to hoping you can scab a lift off the occasional eagle, the various peoples of Middle Earth are described as much by their physical appearances as their cultures. The Rohirrim are typically well built, with pale skin and blone hair, much like the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen who inspired their creation. The Haradrim, living out in the desert regions, naturally have darker skin pigmentation. And Hobbits, living in a pastiche of Middle-Age/17th century England, are for the most part white, with the outdoorsier types sporting a tan. That's not a result of Tolkien being racist, it's a result of him thinking long and hard about the effects of the various environments of Middle Earth on the peoples who live there.
It is not racist to demand the same attention to detail in the films as Tolkien showed in the books. Did anyone call out the Fellowship movie for not depicting black hobbits? No. People accepted that it made sense in context. If this lady had never gone for the audition, no-one would be talking about it. Would people still accuse the makers of the films of being racist? Or are we only talking about it because someone has caused a fuss where there wasn't one before.
Oh, and in response to your picture of Morgan Freeman:
And if you didn't find a black man walking around Sherwood Forest under highly contrived circumstances distracting, maybe I could point you to Kevin Costner's accent in the same film? If you're going to argue that skin colour is irrelevant in film roles, then surely accent is too. And after all, Americans and English folk are both white, so it's practically the same thing.
