nuckles87 said:
You call it pandering. A lot of us would call it progressive. Generally, I think casting should be race-blind unless race is intrinsic to the character identity. So, the characters from The Last Airbender, which starred characters from specific racial groups steeped, in a world steeped in Asian-inspired lore? Don't white wash those. But an upscale slave owner in the pre-Civil War south? Definitely keep him white. But Johnny Storm, a character created by a company composed almost entirely by white people, at a time when a black super hero wasn't even a THING yet? Who the heck cares what color he is. The biggest issue with him would be how you justify not also having Sue Storm be black since they are supposed to be siblings. There is nothing about the Human Torch that screams "HE'S GOTTA BE WHITE" aside from the fact that thats how he was orignally designed. You know what? Nick Fury was ALSO white. But Samuel L. Jackson still does a spectacular job playing him. There was nothing about Nick's character that screamed "I am a white man." No, he was just a grizzled, aged, one-eyed spy, and making him black didn't change any of that. That wasn't "pandering", that was just great casting in a world where having black people in places of power isn't as crazy as it was when Nick Fury was first created back in the 60s. Same goes for Heimdall, a norse god from the Thor movies, a role that was frankly a waste of Idris Elba's talents. And really, that illustrates a problem with a lot of franchises that are several decades old: the characters tend to be white people. That's the primary reason why Marvel movies have so little variety in their casting. The heroes are mostly men, mostly white, and in the case of Avengers they've got more green people than black people, let alone other races. I'm clamoring more for an IDRIS ELBA Bond than just a black Bond per-se. But unfortunately, Elba is already in his 40s, so he's probably too old at this point. An asian Bond would be neat, so long as he still has his roots in Scotland. In any case, this is way off-topic. You seem to have abandoned defending the idea that F4 somehow failed because it had a black Human Torch (just to reiterate: that wasn't the problem). I know I'll never be able to talk you into believing any of this, so I guess I'll just leave it here. |
It is pure pandering because how else do you show that you're "progressive" than by changing a character from white to black? This is why you never see racebending from one to a different one.
The movie failed more because of the marketing than the racebending but I still think fans refused to support a studio which couldn't stay true to the characters.
