The Fantastic Four Movie Reboot Unveils Its Cast

[JimB]

I know people who have no friends.

I don't. So what? Are we going to sit here and argue about whose anecdotal evidence is more valid?

They don't really "change" the origin, they just add some more techno babble to make it more believable.

So why is that change not actually a change, but Johnny Storm being black is? If he's still a hotheaded, smug little douche, then why is the superficial change of his skin color not okay to change, though the superficial change of radiation versus genetic manipulation in a spider is?

So again, just because black people aren't as represented as white people, it makes it totally okay to make traditionally white characters black, but not vice versa?

"Just" because real black people are suffering in the real world, I am okay with turning an imaginary white person black. Yes. Until you can demonstrate that the harm being done is greater than that of actors who are out of work and viewers who don't see themselves represented among the ranks of the heroic, I am fine with the horrible, horrible crime of changing his fucking skin tone being perpetuated against imaginary people like Johnny Storm.

In this context, I don't see how the movies would need Johnny Storm to be black, when there's no differences between the mediums to require such a change.

You behave as if you have some kind of insider information into the production of this movie.

I expect an adaption to be both true and recognizable to the source material. I don't see how that's so hard to understand.

It's when you start making statements about what a good adaptation is required to be, as if your opinion is somehow objectively correct, without making any effort to own your statements as personal taste, that I get annoyed at your tone.

Like I said, the similarities are pretty much superficial and used in a completely separate context from the original.

Oh, so the similarities exist, but don't count as similarities because they aren't similar enough. Whatever.

I'm just saying that if they want to be faithful to the fans they should be faithful to the source material.

You call it faithful; I call it shortsighted and condescending. Making every single detail exactly like a movie not only limits the audience who will appreciate the movie to existing comic fans, thereby acting to exclude non-comic fans, it also assumes we're so coddled and terrified of change that we can't handle tiny alterations to stuff and just want to be told the same stories over and over again.

So what, I have to prove that Johnny Storm being white won't work in a movie?

No, you just have to prove that him being black won't work.

The only problems a director comes across when adapting something that's written are pacing and the translating the format of the scenes.

I assume this statement is based on your history of work and study in the field of filmmaking.

If the source material itself wouldn't work in movie form, then there wouldn't be fans of it in the first place.

That is completely insupportable crap. It's only possible to be a fan of something that can be translated to a movie?

The main incarnation is still white.

No one has argued that it isn't.

The vast majority of the alternate versions are still white. White is still the default for the character.

Was. It was the default. It is provably not the default any longer.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

I don't know a lot about genetics, but I suppose it is possible that if the mother is black and the father is white (or vice versa) that one child could be born black and the other could be born white. Or, is that not actually possible? I ask because I genuinely do not know.

MENDEL TO THE RESCUE!!!!!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Dihybrid_cross.svg/280px-Dihybrid_cross.svg.png
while its more likely that a black woman and a white man will produce only black/mocca children, it is still possible that they may have one black and one white child.

its also possible that they have white and black twins.
see:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/sep/24/twins-black-white
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they casted a black dude as the human torch because black people are funny. and i fear this will be the only thing in favor of his character.
a black mister fantastic, that is also older, would had been way interesting and cooler.

but you know hollywood.
black people are either funny, scary or opressed.

at least lets hope he is not the token black character i.e. the only one in this movie.

Or a simpler explanation, they aren't actually related. Maybe one of them is adopted, or one of them isn't a Storm at all. If they do go through the "unlikely gene sequences" for the same parents to get children of such different skin color, they would have to bring the entire film to a halt explaining that to audiences that thought that was impossible. Considering all the giant warning signs stating this will suck, we shouldn't expect the writers to be able to make a heredity lesson interesting.

 

[Kenbo Slice]

What puzzles me more is why Sue is still white if Johnny's black. This basically means they're rewriting them to not be siblings.

Adoption, step-siblings. Those things exist you know. And they can be as close as a biological siblings. I'm very close to my step-brother, more so than my biological sisters.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

There's that, having had a night to think about it my biggest concerns are now:
- Why are all the actors but Sue's twenty-seven? Surely you'd want someone more experienced for the likes of Reed and Ben?
and
- Are they just making Johnny black so he can be the one swaggering about with a Chris Tucker-esque attitude because he can't be the youngest in this line-up? So they come up with this to make him the rebel instead?

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

um.. what? is that photo a joke? no? i don't wanna sound racist but they do know that the human torch is white not black.. because he's the invisible women's(susan storm) brother.. so.. yeah that won't work.. was this done because they changed the race of nick fury for his appearances in the marvel films and it worked there? and now that seems to be the craze? change characters races to black for no apparent reason? isn't going to work for amazing spider-man 2 and won't work here either. it only worked for Nick Fury because Samuel L Jackson is a great actor and one bad mother F#@ker. as for the rest of rest cast. i've never heard of any of them but they don't look like they'd fit the characters.. too young.. plus what was wrong with the cast of the other fantastic 4 movies? they were good films so why reboot them with an unknown young cast?

 

[JimB]

I don't wanna sound racist, but they do know that the Human Torch is white, not black?

He used to be. Now he is not. They have chosen to change that detail. It is no longer true.

He's the Invisible Woman's(Susan Storm) brother, so, yeah, that won't work.

sigh

crazygameguy4ever, there have been at least a dozen posts on this topic explaining how it could work. If you refuse to read them for yourself, then I will explain: Johnny and Sue could be foster siblings, or step siblings, or parents of a mixed-race couple who take after one parent more than the other.

[Changing a character's race] isn't going to work for the Amazing Spider-Man 2 and it won't work here either.

That movie is going to suck because it's being made by people who do not understand Spider-Man. Its sucking will have nothing to do with Jamie Foxx having bigger lips than Andrew Garfield.

What was wrong with the cast of the other Fantastic Four movies?

This is a reboot, not a sequel. You can't reboot a movie franchise with the same actors.

They were good films[snip]

I'm glad you enjoyed them, but you're in a minority.

 

[Saltyk]

Can they just let this go back to Marvel? I'd actually like to see Dr. Doom encounter the Avengers.

Yeah, nothing else is really even worth mentioning. Though I dislike several aspects of the casting here.

 

[JimB]

Are you really arguing whether that people with no friends exist or not?

No, I'm arguing about validity of competing anecdotes and whether the existence of one contrary anecdote makes a concept broadly relatable.

I can look past a few changes in background and history for pacing purposes, but appearance and personality should at the very least be somewhat similar.

So where the person comes from and how that informs his personality and actions is less important to you than his physical appearance.

Right. I think I'm probably done here. I have no way to bend my viewpoint to such a degree that I can empathize with your priorities.

Media just needs to create more black characters. It comes across as a form of affirmative action when characters are randomly race changed just to have more black, or whatever other token race in the film.

So Marvel needs to create a new, black character, and wait fifty years to make a movie of him, instead of making a completely irrelevant change that harms and damages nothing to an existing property? No. That is not good enough. Johnny Storm does not need to be white, and nothing about his history or personality is predicated on being Caucasian. Nothing at all is lost by altering his race, and nothing of value is gained by defending it.

You don't have to be a filmmaker to know everything about films and how they are made. So just saying "you're not a filmmaker so you wouldn't know" is a pretty flimsy argument.

That is not my argument. My argument is that you act as if you know exactly what the creators are trying to accomplish, how they're trying to accomplish it, and why their tactics won't work; yet you have silently but repeatedly refused to cite any sources for your implied knowledge, which leads me to believe it does not exist and you have just constructed a narrative in your head that you insist the facts support without ever explaining how or why the facts support it.

I'm talking about an accurate adaption, which I'm sure most fans of the source material wish to see.

Then we're back to coddled and condescending, if they're so enraptured with canon that they feel threatened and disappointed by a change that does not alter the substance or spirit of the material.

Why do you think there's so much criticism over stuff like the Mandarin in superhero films?

Wouldn't know. I didn't pay attention to what people think about the Mandarin.

It's akin to comparing two mammals because they both give live birth and lactate.

I actually consider your analysis an apt one, since I've been arguing this entire time that movie-Bane is not comic-Bane is not cartoon-Bane is not blah blah blah. They're related species, but they're not the same critters.

I never said it wouldn't work. I just said that the race change was pointless.

Then why the butt-fucking Christ are we arguing, if you don't think it won't work?

Usually, if something isn't able to be translated into a movie, it's either not done at all or it's done badly.

So Tetris is bad because you can't make a movie out of it? The Daily Show? Scrimshaw? Crocheting? Those are all bad forms of entertainment and self-expression because they can't be turned into feature films?

One deviation does not change the default.

Sure it does. Default is a matter of perspective, and anyone arguing from the perspective of the upcoming movie franchise now has perfectly legitimate grounds to argue that the default for Johnny Storm is black. The original version isn't, but as I said earlier, "default" and "original" are two different words whose meanings do not overlap.

 

[blackrave]

I think having a black Mr. Fantastic would have been much more interesting. Though I am still in the camp that if they make the Human Torch black then the Invisibly Woman should also be black. They are siblings after all. No sense complaining now though. Casting is done so here is to hoping this movie is fantastic.

Exactly, that or Thing
(although I suspect that in case of Thing it would be shitstorm from opposite side of pc barricades)
Or make both siblings black if they wanted to have racially diverse cast
I know in rare cases it is possible to have phenotypically different siblings, but it is extremely rare
And when you see something extremely rare there is moment of disbelief
(and since there is tons of disbelief already I don't think we need add another one)
I think they'll come up with some excuse (half-siblings?)

As for age that is fixable with make-up (I just hope acting will fit the age)

 

[tzimize]

Putting the race thing aside because it's already been discussed to death, the thing that really gets my goat about this casting is that fact that Reed Richards is WAY TOO YOUNG.

Seriously, Richards is supposed to be an experienced, middle aged scientist, not a baby-faced twenty-something. I hate Hollywood's obsession with making all their heroes young and pretty. This shouldn't bug me so much, but Mr. Fantastic is my favorite FF member and it pains me to see this.

Yeah, this pisses me off to no end too. Honestly, with age usually comes charisma, experience, maturity...arent there enough pretty members on the team? Its a bit the same to me with for example Felicity in Arrow. She is stunning. A pair of glasses does not a computer geek make. Its actually possible to be beautiful without being...standard.

Alyson Hannigan is a good example of this. She has character, and is beautiful in her own way. Why is it so hard to cast people like this?

 

[camazotz]

I am more bothered that Galactus was portrayed as a cloud of energy than as a fifty foot tall guy in purple armor...or that Dr. Doom had his metal mask "merged" with his flesh somehow, than that Johnny Storm might be adopted and black or something.

Speaking as a tall blonde white man I think we've got plenty of blonde aryan men in film already, we can live without one more.

I'll also point out that the Fantastic Four actually predate little things like racial equality, the abolishment of segregation, and even most of MLK's activity. For a comic created in the sixties, it says a lot that we can see a change like this. The comic purists need to pull their heads out of the comics themselves and look around at the real world a bit. It's not 1961 anymore.