Current Events > To what extent are you fine with gender/race/identity lifting for characters?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Superman doesn't need to be a white man for example. Couldn't he be black, gay, and trans?
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One should concern themselves over the character being interesting to begin with.
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I hate to sound like a euphoric neckbeard when I say this but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing characters for superficial political purposes in general
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I have a hard time enjoying any media unless the main character is a wheelchair bound homosexual black trans woman
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Romulox28 posted...

I have a hard time enjoying any media unless the main character is a wheelchair bound homosexual black trans woman

what's the point of comments like this? and why do people make them all the time? no one i have ever heard of has said they want characters like this. or to change characters into this.

Fam_Fam posted...

Romulox28 posted...

I have a hard time enjoying any media unless the main character is a wheelchair bound homosexual black trans woman

what's the point of comments like this? and why do people make them all the time? no one i have ever heard of has said they want characters like this. or to change characters into this.

I just said I want characters like this
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Why not an Idris Elba Batman?
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pinky0926 posted...

I hate to sound like a euphoric neckbeard when I say this but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing characters for superficial political purposes in general

Creating new characters, they don't gain as much popularity and recognition as the decades-old characters so most of the populatuon won't even know about them.
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I never understood the backlash when a character's gender or race is changed. Like, people didn't seem to give a shit when the priginal actor/tress left and was portrayed by someone of the same gender (James Bond for instance), but automatically flip their shit if it's another skin color/genitals.

Who cares. As long as the story is good, why does it matter?
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YoshitoKikuchi posted...

pinky0926 posted...

I hate to sound like a euphoric neckbeard when I say this but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing characters for superficial political purposes in general

Creating new characters, they don't gain as much popularity and recognition as the decades-old characters so most of the populatuon won't even know about them.

Suddenly decreeing that Batman is a black woman after seventy years of being a white guy is just lazy publicity, and accomplishes nothing apart from alienating the existing audience while failing to gain a new one. This is also why comic books always decay back to status-quo after any "major" shakeup.

There was even a bit of stink, recently, when Batman became suddenly Jewish out of nowhere.

Unless a character's race, etc. is a key part of their identity as a character, I don't care. Is the material good? Is it a good story? Is it well-executed? Then I'm happy.
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I don't like it at all.

There are times where I don't care as much, but I still don't get why you wouldn't want that character to be accurate.

I don't like Terry Fitzgerald being white, and I don't like Ben Urich being black.

YoshitoKikuchi posted...

pinky0926 posted...

I hate to sound like a euphoric neckbeard when I say this but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing characters for superficial political purposes in general

Creating new characters, they don't gain as much popularity and recognition as the decades-old characters so most of the populatuon won't even know about them.

Just means you have to try harder, and people enjoy those characters too.

The new Ms. Marvel is actually outdoing Danvers for example.
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There are no set rules for this. Each case is character specific.

If a story lacks diversity, it stands to reason that a modern interpretation will give that story diversity. And, sometimes, the best actor is simply the best actor. The point where it bugs me is if the character's original ethnicity factors into their character or if changing their ethnicity gets in the way of a signature look.

I just personally don't see the point in changing an established character so dramatically. Personality shifts due to changes in their story/lives/whatever, sure. But I don't understand why you'd want to change a characters gender or race or whatever. Just seems shoehorned and doesn't add to anything. It's more interesting to develop an established character than to reinvent them from the ground up
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Also, this is a pretty unique case, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has more or less made every blonde into a woman with a different ethnic type or different hair color.

I have nothing against the woman who have taken on these roles, but it's a bit odd when you seemingly systematically remove a certain look from your collective works.

Skye Reynolds posted...

Also, this is a pretty unique case, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has more or less made every blonde into a woman with a different ethnic type or different hair color.

I have nothing against the woman who have taken on these roles, but it's a bit odd when you seemingly systematically remove a certain look from your collective works.

The red heads fare far worse.

Jimmy Olsen, Scott Lang, Iris West and so on
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Honestly I don't really like it. Just kinda rubs me the wrong way. It's just as bad as say, casting a bunch of white English guys as ancient Egyptians. Like in Gods of Egypt. Just seems kinda dumb.
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Oh, and am I allowed to simply say aesthetics can often matter? Or is that a bad thing to say? I mean everyone is going on about character needs and whatnot, but god damn sometimes you fall in love with a character because of their design, especially in the world of super heroes. Design is everything.

Like I really, really, really am in love with Domino's design. I think she's looking fucking amazing. The whole color pallet she has going on, the super white skin contrast with the stark black bob cut and the black over the eye, I think it just looks really neat. And then when you bring the character to the movie screen, she looks absolutely nothing like the character, so it's like, letting the air out of the tire there. I'm not as hyped as I would be if they got a chick that looks like her. And I think that's a totally legit reason to not like this kind of thing.
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Hypocrisy also gets on my nerve.

Scarlett Johanson. Ghost in the Shell.

I'm out.
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spanky1 posted...

Scarlett Johanson. Ghost in the Shell.

Pretty much everyone in Last Airbender, or Dragonball Evolution.

spanky1 posted...

Oh, and am I allowed to simply say aesthetics can often matter? Or is that a bad thing to say? I mean everyone is going on about character needs and whatnot, but god damn sometimes you fall in love with a character because of their design, especially in the world of super heroes. Design is everything.

Like I really, really, really am in love with Domino's design. I think she's looking fucking amazing. The whole color pallet she has going on, the super white skin contrast with the stark black bob cut and the black over the eye, I think it just looks really neat. And then when you bring the character to the movie screen, she looks absolutely nothing like the character, so it's like, letting the air out of the tire there. I'm not as hyped as I would be if they got a chick that looks like her. And I think that's a totally legit reason to not like this kind of thing.

Same here. I love the black and white look.
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I think that for many iconic characters, especially those men who are white and straight, their gender/race/sexuality is rarely a core part of their identity.
For instance, your example of Superman. He's from another planet. Nothing says Krypton has to be full of crystal spires and white people in toga, it's just what happened. The important physical aspect of him is that he can blend in on Earth. Being a man isn't that important either to his identity, but we do have plenty of female Superman equivalents, so it's a bit of a wash right now. And being straight? Obviously his relationship with Lana/Lois are important, but it's not like they require being women either, or that a relationship with Jimmy isn't out of the question.
Contrast with a character like Captain America. I think being a blonde, blue-eyed, white American is a core concept of him because he is the ideal man from a Nazi perspective, and he rejects their order.

I could go on. I think for many characters who are made originally to not be white, to not be a man, or to be gay they are central aspects of their identity. Shaft being a white guy loses much of the context and point of the character.
It's not equal because for many years the default was a straight white guy so the characters who aren't any of those, make a point of focusing on those attributes. I suppose a character like Blade could be portrayed as a white guy because his race rarely comes up.

What gets me though is that every time an adaption changes something up, such as making a character a minority or a woman, there's a ton of outcry. Lots of times though, many other adaptions change other aspects of the character to little outrage. RDJ's IM is not like the pre-2008 comic version and he's all the better for it, Nolan's Batman is a very far departure from the comics and yet it's probably the best CBM trilogy.
I guess for me I'm ok with adaptions changing things like race/gender/sexuality/etc. because there are a ton of other things they change as well, and it's ok. The originals are always there for me and I'm not gonna get that uptight over fictional media
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prince_leo posted...

What gets me though is that every time an adaption changes something up, such as making a character a minority or a woman, there's a ton of outcry. Lots of times though, many other adaptions change other aspects of the character to little outrage. RDJ's IM is not like the pre-2008 comic version and he's all the better for it, Nolan's Batman is a very far departure from the comics and yet it's probably the best CBM trilogy.

Because, iconography is more important than the details.

Overall I'm not really bothered by it. If the movie version of a comic character is a different race or hair color or whatever it doesn't bug me; it's a different continuity so I can see it as its own thing

That bein' said I wouldn't fault anybody for havin' problems with it either. Like if ya have a whole roster'a characters who're deliberately cast'n costumed'n everything ta look like their comic versions, but then there's one character who's suddenly a completely different race or whatever. It wouldn't bug me personally but I understand if stuff like that weirds people out

I think it is stupid to drastically change a well established character just to score points with the vocal minority basement dwelling unemployed SJW liberals who probably don't have the money to even see the movie. If anything doing these changes alienates the paying demographic that actually consumes the media.
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YoshitoKikuchi posted...

pinky0926 posted...

I hate to sound like a euphoric neckbeard when I say this but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing characters for superficial political purposes in general

Creating new characters, they don't gain as much popularity and recognition as the decades-old characters so most of the populatuon won't even know about them.

Race or gender bending the characters doesn't seem to do anything but cause resentment in the already established fanbase who are resistant to change. The only exception I can think of is Nick Fury and that was because they did it with alternate universe shenanigans with Ultimate Marvel universe years ago.

Even Marvel's attempts to make their line up more diverse by sidelining or retiring their white male heros and replacing them with women or minorities doesn't seem to have done them any favors or brought in much of a new audience, because we keep hearing about declining sales. Even though it isn't the same as just making a movie or book with a black Steve Rogers.

In the case of Superman, I do suspect him being a white man is a deliberate part of his character, since his small town, middle-America, Christian upbringing is central to his character and I think that is mostly a white experience. I mean, I don't know if he'd be so much the Truth, Justice, and the American Way boyscout if he had been systematically discriminated against growing up.
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Using the OP's black Superman example, I could see if a black actor really wanted to play Superman and had a killer audition but I can't imagine why anybody would demand a black Superman.

Also on the topic of Black Superman, it's a shame Steel isn't more popular. Great character.
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prince_leo posted...

I think that for many iconic characters, especially those men who are white and straight, their gender/race/sexuality is rarely a core part of their identity.
For instance, your example of Superman. He's from another planet. Nothing says Krypton has to be full of crystal spires and white people in toga, it's just what happened. The important physical aspect of him is that he can blend in on Earth. Being a man isn't that important either to his identity, but we do have plenty of female Superman equivalents, so it's a bit of a wash right now. And being straight? Obviously his relationship with Lana/Lois are important, but it's not like they require being women either, or that a relationship with Jimmy isn't out of the question.
Contrast with a character like Captain America. I think being a blonde, blue-eyed, white American is a core concept of him because he is the ideal man from a Nazi perspective, and he rejects their order.

I could go on. I think for many characters who are made originally to not be white, to not be a man, or to be gay they are central aspects of their identity. Shaft being a white guy loses much of the context and point of the character.
It's not equal because for many years the default was a straight white guy so the characters who aren't any of those, make a point of focusing on those attributes. I suppose a character like Blade could be portrayed as a white guy because his race rarely comes up.

What gets me though is that every time an adaption changes something up, such as making a character a minority or a woman, there's a ton of outcry. Lots of times though, many other adaptions change other aspects of the character to little outrage. RDJ's IM is not like the pre-2008 comic version and he's all the better for it, Nolan's Batman is a very far departure from the comics and yet it's probably the best CBM trilogy.
I guess for me I'm ok with adaptions changing things like race/gender/sexuality/etc. because there are a ton of other things they change as well, and it's ok. The originals are always there for me and I'm not gonna get that uptight over fictional media

I just think comic characters should look like themselves on the big screen, because that's part of the whole draw of a comic character, they're so visual. Dr. Strange really fucking looks like Dr. Strange, great casting there. Blade was on fucking point, great casting there. Domino looks nothing like Domino.

Even aliens that have no race. Like, you got Gamora and Starfire, two aliens that are niether white or black. They're both played by black women. Gamora looks like the comic book character, however, while Starfire looks absolutely nothing like the comic book character. So Gamora was great casting, Starfire was awful casting.

I dunno, to me, that is important. Character needs to look like the character. Like, I hear your argument all the time, that if the race isn't integral to the character it's okay to change it. But that's just silly to me. Superman is a white dude. Got black hair, blue eyes. Big muscles. Has a red cape. The further away from that look you get, the less entertained I'll be by that representation.

*shrugs* I'm a simple guy I guess.
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I am greatly offended by the lack of yarmulkes, and long noses on most video game characters.
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bump
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Hollywood will not rest until every Redhead character is dead
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Very rarely do I see it as a good idea

12 Monkeys is the only thing I can think of that did it and made things better
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I'm fine with gender/race/identity being different from source material except when the character is changed to be white (Ancient one in Dr. Strange), straight (Mystique in all the X-films and Constantine in Keanu Reeve's movie), or when they change a disability to be nonexistant (ie: Cloak's stutter in the comics but not in the Cloak & Dagger tv show). We already have so many straight white people in films and TV, that we shouldn't have to sacrifice the small amounts of representation for other types of people to have more straight white representation.
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spanky1 posted...

Hypocrisy also gets on my nerve.

Scarlett Johanson. Ghost in the Shell.

I'm out.

Original Director has gone on to say he never thought of her as Japanese in her cybernetic form.

So I don't think that's really a bad one.
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The_Ivory_Man posted...

Skye Reynolds posted...

Also, this is a pretty unique case, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has more or less made every blonde into a woman with a different ethnic type or different hair color.

I have nothing against the woman who have taken on these roles, but it's a bit odd when you seemingly systematically remove a certain look from your collective works.

The red heads fare far worse.

Jimmy Olsen, Scott Lang, Iris West and so on

Mary Jane Watson

-_-

The real crime is that, with dyed hair and her natural look, Zendaya would've killed it as MJ.

If DC wanted to do something like that, go right ahead. Make major decisions about the primary part of your business for purely political reasons.

Tell me how that worked out for Mass Effect: Andromeda, though.
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darkjedilink posted...

If DC wanted to do something like that, go right ahead. Make major decisions about the primary part of your business for purely political reasons.

Tell me how that worked out for Mass Effect: Andromeda, though.

How did it?
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YoshitoKikuchi posted...

darkjedilink posted...

If DC wanted to do something like that, go right ahead. Make major decisions about the primary part of your business for purely political reasons.

Tell me how that worked out for Mass Effect: Andromeda, though.

How did it?

It really didn't. After launch, EA was pretty much forced to patch out almost all of the SJW stuff in the game.
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I didn't notice the title also mentions gender changes. I'm a lot less forgiving of that. The same rules apply in that, if you have an all male cast, one or more characters will need to be changed.

But it's just weird to me when there's a character I know and recognize who is suddenly a member of the opposite sex. And the longer I've known that character, the stranger it is to reconcile.

YoshitoKikuchi posted...

Superman doesn't need to be a white man for example. Couldn't he be black, gay, and trans?

Superheroes depend, you really can't have a black Thor but you can have a black Green Lantern since they can literally come from almost anywhere. The problem is getting a good writer who isn't a far left mushbrain to give a black Superman a top notch story.
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i want to not care because the actual answer is a bit complicated and depends on context of who the character is, who is making it, why it is being made that way.

So if Bollywood made a Superman movie and made Superman Indian, I wouldn't care the slightest bit.

If Hollywood made a Superman movie and made Superman Indian, I would complain.

A character like Thor should always and forever be a white man in main-universe canon. Having an alternate universe where Thor has always been a Gypsy woman and will always be so is fine though, that just doesn't become our canon.
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Hop103 posted...

YoshitoKikuchi posted...

Superman doesn't need to be a white man for example. Couldn't he be black, gay, and trans?

Superheroes depend, you really can't have a black Thor but you can have a black Green Lantern since they can literally come from almost anywhere. The problem is getting a good writer who isn't a far left mushbrain to give a black Superman a top notch story.

How about a black Iron Man?
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YoshitoKikuchi posted...

Hop103 posted...

YoshitoKikuchi posted...

Superman doesn't need to be a white man for example. Couldn't he be black, gay, and trans?

Superheroes depend, you really can't have a black Thor but you can have a black Green Lantern since they can literally come from almost anywhere. The problem is getting a good writer who isn't a far left mushbrain to give a black Superman a top notch story.

How about a black Iron Man?

James Rhodes did act as Iron Man, nobody has problems with that.

But making Tony black? I would have problems.
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I don't really mind it about 50% of the time all of the time.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

YoshitoKikuchi posted...

pinky0926 posted...

I hate to sound like a euphoric neckbeard when I say this but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing characters for superficial political purposes in general

Creating new characters, they don't gain as much popularity and recognition as the decades-old characters so most of the populatuon won't even know about them.

Suddenly decreeing that Batman is a black woman after seventy years of being a white guy is just lazy publicity, and accomplishes nothing apart from alienating the existing audience while failing to gain a new one. This is also why comic books always decay back to status-quo after any "major" shakeup.

There was even a bit of stink, recently, when Batman became suddenly Jewish out of nowhere.

Agree completely. Lazy pandering sucks.

Superman doesn't have to be white, but Clark Kent does
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