The Fantastic Four Movie Reboot Unveils Its Cast
- Thread starter Josh Engen
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Please don't project your own racial insecurity view on others.CaptainMarvelous said:
I'm not an expert on Norse mythology or the Thor comics, but yes it seems you're right, Hogun is an original comic book character and not based on a Norse god. He is supposed to be a Mongol character. So I guess that was accurate casting.
And yes Idris did a great job in Thor, but the casting was and is ridiculous. They should have replaced him with a new character if they made such a drastic change to the character.
I have zero issues with changing a character's ethnicity if it makes some sense, e.g. the Kingpin as portrayed by the late great MCD was awesome, and as the Kingpin is never specifically stated to be from a certain culture (as far as I know) it was excellent casting. But casting Heimdall as black is basically as offensive as if they'd film Anansi Boys and turn Anansi and his sons into white characters.
And back on topic, if they'd gone the whole way and cast BOTH Susan and Johnny Storm as black, sure I could live with that in a movie universe. But the cynical part of me thinks that they only opted to turn one of the four into the obligatory token black with zero regard to if this makes sense within the story, and they kept the pair Mr Fantastic/Invisible Woman white out of fear of racists if they'd show an interracial romance.
I have little hopes for this movie as it is, as it's not in the real Marvel Universe, but in Fox's. Considering how bad the recent X-men spin=offs were, I'm not expecting a movie I'll like.
Apart from why the fuck would you reboot the Fantastic Four, it hardly went anywhere the last time, obligatory comment about black actor playing a white character, who is not only white but one of two white siblings, one of whom is still white.
pretty sure its in Foxes universe. although judging by Fantastics 4's last two outings with Fox, your point is still validerbkaiser said:
Skin color is not character. It is not even a character trait. It is a biological marker. Since the character of Heimdall is imaginary, he has no biological markers, and therefore his skin color is irrelevant.erbkaiser said:
Whereas Heimdall is stated to be from a certain culture: an alien planet. He is not a Norse spirit. The movie goes out of its way to point out that the Asgardians are not Norse. He's an alien from an alien world.erbkaiser said:
i'm half with you there. i like the direction the Xmen are going in and although I like Spiderman not the recent film) I also like what Marvel have done with IP's that were relatively unknown outside the comics. I think if Spiderman came back to Disney, there would be a lot of fan pressure to squeeze him in everywhere.erbkaiser said:
Plus could do without a third Spidey origin story, lol.
I never watched either the movie or the TV show, so I can't honestly claim I cared in any but the most academic sense anyway. I would have had no problem with it if not for the specific social contexts of racial relations in America, where white actors dominate the field so much any movie with three black characters is assumed to be "a black movie" (whatever that even means), and of all the good-aligned characters being changed to be white while all the evil-aligned characters were changed to be brown.erbkaiser said:
first reaction to Heimdall being black: "FUCK YEAH STRINGER BELL IN A MARVEL MOVIE!"
first reaction to Johnny Storm being black: "FUCK YEAH WALLACE IN A MARVEL MOVIE! does this mean we can have Rosario Dawson as Sue? no? well that's shitty, but still glad to see Wire cast members getting work."
seriously, we're doing this exact same song and dance AGAIN? and i love how, just like Idris Elba, every Wire fan i know shuts right the hell up about it once they find out who it is. still feel it was chickenshit of them not to go all the way and have Sue be black too. but let's all remember, what's really important is whether or not they keep Reed enough of an emotionally distant dickweed to make Doom and Namor seem sympathetic by comparison.
first reaction to Johnny Storm being black: "FUCK YEAH WALLACE IN A MARVEL MOVIE! does this mean we can have Rosario Dawson as Sue? no? well that's shitty, but still glad to see Wire cast members getting work."
seriously, we're doing this exact same song and dance AGAIN? and i love how, just like Idris Elba, every Wire fan i know shuts right the hell up about it once they find out who it is. still feel it was chickenshit of them not to go all the way and have Sue be black too. but let's all remember, what's really important is whether or not they keep Reed enough of an emotionally distant dickweed to make Doom and Namor seem sympathetic by comparison.
Skin color is relevant when you're transferring a visually realized character (ie. a comic book character) into another visual medium (ie. film). Most people want their characters to, as closely as possible, look like the character they've been seeing in their comics for the last however many years. That's not necessarily racist, most people just want the characters to closely resemble what they've seen for so long.JimB said:
As for the "Norse spirit vs. Alien" thing, I'm not an expert on Thor comics, but wasn't the whole point supposed to be that the Asgardians visited the Vikings on Earth in ancient times, and the Vikings perceived them as Gods due to their powers, and that's where real-life Norse Mythology came from (ie. Thor, Odin, Loki, the Frost Giants, etc.)? In that case, you'd generally want the characters to visually look like how the Norse Gods were described and drawn in those days, which Elba doesn't.
In the end, it's all a comic book movie, so none of it really matters, but just because someone wants them to cast actors who look visually similar to their comic-book counterparts doesn't make someone a racist.
yeah no. firstly, the whitewashing in Last Airbender was really just the cherry on that particular shit sunday. second, the Avatar universe pretty clearly establishes the various tribes as distinct stand ins for various asian cultures and it's a pretty big part of the show's aesthetic. Johnny being a different race has no real bearing on his character, the only thing that makes this awkward is the production team being too scared to go all the way with it and have Sue be black as well, though establishing their parents as a mixed race couple would be a decent way to remedy that.erbkaiser said:
See I'd understand the whole Heimdall is black thing if the Thor movie was based on the actual Mythology of the ancient Norse, like the Prose Edda or something. But t wasn't, it was based on Marvel Comics science fantasy re-imagining of Norse Mythology. The source material had been thrice bastardised before it even hit the writer's desk, so Heimdall ending up black is the least of the films mythology accuracy.erbkaiser said:
If the movies were the comics, or were trying to be the comics, then I might have some sympathy for this position. Since they are clearly not trying to be the comics, I can't say this argument means anything to me. The movies are not a thing they're not trying to be.Ihateregistering1 said:
Sort of. In the very beginning, there was a Cosmic Cube (there's more than one of these things; they can be described as unhatched universe eggs) that passed near Earth and was somehow exposed to the faith of the Norse people. In response to this exposure, the Cube shaped itself into Odin and retroactively created Asgard in a fashion that was somewhat molded by those beliefs, though obviously not exclusively by those beliefs, given the levels of science in Asgard ever since the beginning back in Journey into Mystery.Ihateregistering1 said:
Not that any of that is terribly relevant to the movie universe, of course, since, as I said before, the movies are not trying to be the comics. I have no proof at all that the Odin-as-universe-egg origin applies to the movie continuity, and even if the Asgardians inspired the Norse people to mistakenly worship them as gods, nothing says Heimdall can't be black. It's not like people in our world don't appropriate religious figures from other cultures and attribute our own racial traits to them; see also a Middle Eastern man named Yeshua bin Joseph being depicted exclusively as a white dude named Jesus H. Christ in American art.
Okay, but I didn't accuse anyone in this thread of racism.Ihateregistering1 said:
Way to perpetuate the stereotype by having the brashest, smart mouthed, jock of a character (Johnny Storm) played by a black guy. Why couldn't they have a black guy as super genius Reed Richards? What's that saying Hollywood? Johnny Storm will probably be bouncing a basketball in one hand and cutting a rap track with the other.
Is there something wrong with not having such a cast?Programmed_For_Damage said:
Since the movie has already demonstrated that it's changing the character's history, I don't think it's fair to assume it won't also change his personality.Programmed_For_Damage said:
There's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with it but it can come across as tokenism and pandering to the politically correct.JimB said:
That would be nice, but I wouldn't be getting my hopes up. How about this, would you accept a white Luke Cage if they changed his character's history? Me, i'd be pissed.JimB said: