Earth's Whitey-est Heroes

MovieBob

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Earth's Whitey-est Heroes

A few ways to diversify The Avengers roll-call.

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Urameshi13

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I have been thinking that when DC finally gets their act together, the GL for the Justice League movie should be John Stewart. Especially if Marvel can successfully pull off a solo Black Panther movie, then I think a movie about a former US Marine gaining the power of the Green Lantern should be an easy sell.
 

Azuaron

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Yeah, I saw the title and my first thought was, "Where the Hell was Rhodes?"

Seriously, what was he doing that was more important than stopping an alien invasion kicked off by a god?

Captcha: come back

Yes, Rhodes, come back, where have you gone?
 

Lizardon

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Mar 22, 2010
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While I'm not sure if it's the reason he was left out of the Avengers, a War Machine movie was/is being considered to be made for after the Avengers. I'm not sure if that has had any development though.

Spider-Woman would be a hilarious addition, although it would really confuse the people who don't know why Spider-Man and Wolverine aren't Avenger.

Your description of Black Panther is very similar to how I've explained him to my friends. "Batman if instead of his parents being rich, they were the rulers of an advanced African civilisation". I'm fairly certain a Black Panther movie is being planned as well.

And I think a rather obvious woman Avenger you left out is the Wasp. As a founding member in the comics, it would be a shame if she didn't get to appear in the movies.
 

Scars Unseen

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I can see a few problems here:

1) The Avengers movie already has a lot of characters in it. Adding more would spread the movie too thin unless you lengthened it. You could possibly replace Hawkeye since he was the obvious "weak" character of the movie(weak in that he had the least on screen backstory of the cast), but that's about it. Okay, maybe the Black Widow as well, but that kind of defeats the purpose of your article.

2) Trying to use Spiderwoman would likely get the production mired in legal battles for so long that the movie would never see the light of day. It doesn't matter that the two Spider characters are unrelated by story. They're related by name, and you'd better believe that high paid lawyers would find a way to exploit that connection. Not worth the effort.

3) Although those characters may have been in the Avengers at some point or another, very few of them would be as(oh how I loathe this word) "iconic" as the ones presented on screen. I could see a case made for the Black Panther or Luke Cage, but the others are mostly hard sells, especially without a preceding movie to introduce them. Which is a problem, because other than Luke Cage and the Black Panther, I don't see much of a case for the listed characters getting their own movie without being introduced elsewhere first.

4) War Machine. Good idea, but due to point #1 completely unworkable. When you need to keep the cast size manageable(the current lineup size is pretty typical of Whedon's past teams), adding in a character that is pretty much a functional clone of another is a big no-no. You'd have to choose between Iron Man and War Machine, and there's no way the Studio would approve of ditching a character(or actor) that was the star of 2 very successful movies over what essentially amounted to a sidekick in the 2nd movie.
 

Pat Hulse

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It's unlikely that we'll see Angela Del Toro as White Tiger in any film ever. Tamora Pierce and Tim Liebe's mini-series that introduced the character was wrought with creative differences, resulting in a prompt cancellation of the series and turning Angela's White Tiger into a recurring villain possessed by The Hand (I personally think it was done out of spite). Additionally, Angela could be considered a Daredevil character, which would mean Fox possibly has the movie rights to her.

It's far more likely that we'd either see the original Hector White Tiger or the most recent Ava Ayala version, who first took up the mantle in Avengers Academy and has recently been appearing in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series.
 

rayen020

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i know you did a big picture on her but are we not going to mention Mrs. Marvel at all?
 

BrotherRool

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I've got to be honest, aren't some of those kinda embarrassing? Particularly Black Panther, because the whole 'African Tribal Nation but secretly Super Advanced' thing is just saying 'look Africa's a bunch of tribes, would it be cool if they had technology, Atlantis style?' Instead of recognizing Africa as a country that has consistently had cities and large influential, powerful areas for pretty much most of history (as well as some tribes).

I guess the problem is that if you set about creating a character based on demographics then you kinda have to do something interesting with that, otherwise people complain. (Like Susan Arendts grudge against Lightning, despite the fact Lightning even had a becoming-a-mother-figure character arc). You can't do outliers, when you deliberately bringing people in in the first place.

But then you already have two problems, what if the writer doesn't know much about a region? (I mean it's hard to have an accurate grasp of anything unless you've actually lived there for some time. The women one might be easier at any right it'd be nice if it's easy to find women writers who could do it) And then the audience won't know much about it either and it'll come off as weird or stupid.
 

ice1985

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The Wasp, The Falcon, Ms. Marvel, Black Panther, and She-Hulk could all make interesting additions.
 

Dastardly

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Letting casting difficulties disclude War Machine was a big mistake. Shoehorning him into the story would have been challenging, sure, but not impossible... unless, of course, they're saving him for the sequel. That, I'm all for.

(I don't blame Marvel or Whedon for the lack of diversity. The core heroes of the Avengers are from an era in which the best-known superheroes were Big White Men. I'm sure it was considered "diverse" enough to have heroes that were heroic by way of Smarts rather than Strength (though, invariably, they just used their smarts to get strength, so...))

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the go-to "minority heroes" play to far too many stereotypes. Black-guy-as-written-by-70's-white-guy, or Asian-guy-as-written-by-White-Bruce-Lee-fan.

I say this in all honesty: I would rather see them go with a minority Dr. Strange. And not a "voodoo" remake to shoehorn in "He's Black!" Dr. Strange. But a black (or Mexican, or 'Middle Eastern,' there's a lot of ground to cover) guy.

He's a character that brings a new flavor to the mix (arcane magic, as opposed to science, technology, sheer will, or godly magic). He's a character that many folks are slightly familiar with, but maybe haven't really latched onto before, which makes him a good place to make some changes. He has depth and backstory, he's intelligent, he's really a great character to include... and there's no reason he has to stay white.

What's more, this creates a character that isn't a token minority, at least in the way I view the concept. Yes, in a sense, it's changing the race of a character simply to have a change of race... but it's better than creating a character designed specifically around how "minority" they are.
 

Zerbin

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@BrotherRool
Africa's a continent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Q10g_Mov4
 

370999

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Maybe I'm a horrid racist but a lot of those characters that Bob mentioned I never really liked. They never clicked. Would like to see them done interesting.

Apart from Luke Cage, I don't really like Blaxsplotiation but the core concept of some guy who is a good guy but fights for cash does click with me. I really liked that, it felt more like the way some people would act if given that power.
 

Matt K

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I can't believe you missed Captain Marvel/Photon. I could easily see her either in Avengers 2 or one of the other buildup movies especially since it would be easy to have her get her powers from one of the Infinity Gems.

Now Shang Chi I would love to see in a Black Widow movie. Especially if the movie was some sort of espionage movie where Shang Chi is going after the same target due to his background. It would add a nice way to reflect on BW's own motivation as Shang Chi tends to have a more noble reason to fight crime.
 

MB202

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Luke Cate FTW! I'm also interested in White Tiger, Shang-Chi, and Black Panther.
 

Squidbulb

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It's completely silly to add extra characters just to add more racial diversity. I don't think you quite understand equal rights. Aside from War Machine, none of these would really work. They haven't been in any film before, for a start. I know Hawkeye hasn't either, but he was a early member of the Avengers. Besides, there wasn't enough time to introduce any more characters. So as I said, only War Machine is feasible, and Spier-Woman is probably considered part of the Spider-man franchise, so that's not possible.
 

artanis_neravar

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Scars Unseen said:
I can see a few problems here:

2) Trying to use Spiderwoman would likely get the production mired in legal battles for so long that the movie would never see the light of day. It doesn't matter that the two Spider characters are unrelated by story. They're related by name, and you'd better believe that high paid lawyers would find a way to exploit that connection. Not worth the effort.
\
Chances are the deal was somewhere along the lines of "Here is Spiderman, here is a list of his bad guys, and here are the characters that tend to be friendly with him." Spider-Woman wouldn't fit in with any of these categories so she would be free game.

So basically his list of baddies and the Black Cat
 

artanis_neravar

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MovieBob said:
Earth's Whitey-est Heroes

A few ways to diversify The Avengers roll-call.

Read Full Article
What about the Wasp? and since Thanos has been introduced Gamora and Moon Dragon would make good female characters to add, not to the avengers obviously (not Gamora at least, Moon Dragon was an avenger), but they could still introduce them.

And an interesting side note, apparently the guy who played Bucky Barnes is signed to do another 6 Marvel movies, so maybe Winter Soldier will be the next bad guy in Captain America

00m said:
Ms. Marvel?
Ms. Marvel has a fusion of Kree and human genes, so they would have to introduce the Kree first. Also she might be linked to the X-men because Rouge runs around with her powers and memories
 

cymonsgames

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Fun fact, Isiah Mustafa AKA the Old Spice guy put together a teaser of him as the Nick Cage. He's a fan, he's awesome, he wants the part, why doesn't he have it?

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2010/08/15/isaiah-mustafa-as-luke-cage/
 

Hitchmeister

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I feel that both Luke Cage and Black Panther need to be established in their own movies before being thrown into an Avengers mix. They need to be introduced to movie audiences in a format where they get extensive screen time to avoid looking like tokens. Although a Heroes for Hire movie could introduce Luke Cake, Iron-fist, and Misty Knight and for added diversity they could amalgamate Iron-Fist and Shang-Chi into an Asian Danny Rand and not get tangled up in the Fu Manchu aspects.

I think it was missed opportunity in The Avengers to not mention War Machine. They could have thrown in a line saying that Colonel Rhodes was not available for the Avengers because he's U.S. Air Force and SHIELD (like in the comics) does not answer to the U.S. military. That would have helped establish why it was just the Avengers and NYPD fighting an alien invasion and not the National Guard.