Poll of the Day > Should Tom Holland replace Antonio Banderas as Zorro?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/antonio-bandeas-zorro-reboot-tom-holland-1235442571/

We have seen enough whitewashing over the decades.

Besides, we already have a white Zorro; he's called Batman.

Entity13 posted...

We have seen enough whitewashing over the decades.

Besides, we already have a white Zorro; he's called Batman.

My favorite was when the Last Samurai was Tom Cruise.

BigOlePappy posted...

My favorite was when the Last Samurai was Tom Cruise.

The title role is played by Watanabe.

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

The title role is played by Watanabe.

The movie was marketed as Tom Cruise.

BigOlePappy posted...

The movie was marketed as Tom Cruise.

Katsumoto and his men are "the last Samurai" actually. Samurai is both singular and plural, so I can kinda see the cause of the confusion.

Yea, the case of The Last Samurai is marketing in the US, not with the movie itself.

Id like to see it if for no other reason than the melties

I'd be happy if I never saw him in a movie again

AltOmega2 posted...

I'd be happy if I never saw him in a movie again

What about a Triple A video game?

BigOlePappy posted...

What about a Triple A video game?

I couldn't even tell you the last "Triple A" video game I played

I'd be happy if he took a 10-year break from any screen, worked on his acting in the theatre to be more than a perpetual teen with the same personality all the time, and came back as more than a typecast babyface.

AltOmega2 posted...

I couldn't even tell you the last "Triple A" video game I played

I don't know that I've ever played one, but I know that celebrities are in them.

BigOlePappy posted...

Should Tom Holland replace Antonio Banderas as Zorro?

No. Because, while I like Tom Holland, he doesn't really do cool suave action guy all that well. Part of why he was so horribly miscast for Uncharted.



Entity13 posted...

We have seen enough whitewashing over the decades.

Is it whitewashing when the character is supposed to be Spanish? I mean, I know racist Europeans occasionally make comments about how Spaniards and Italians aren't really white, but that doesn't really change the fact that they're still Caucasian.

The Zorro stories are set in pre-Mexican California, but he's not really Hispanic - he's from a colonial Spanish noble family that retains strong ties to Spain (and he himself spent much of his youth there). They're not locals, they're not interbreeding with locals. They're colonial landowners.

And yes, that means Guy Williams was more accurately ethnically cast as Zorro in the 1950s TV series than Antonio Banderas was in The Mark of Zorro. Hell, George Hamilton was more accurately cast in Zorro the Gay Blade than Antonio Banderas was. For that matter, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones were more accurately cast in The Mark of Zorro than Antonio Banderas was. The Mark of Zorro really only gets away with it on a technicality because Banderas' Zorro technically isn't Zorro. Anthony Hopkins is the real Zorro in that movie. Banderas is just his replacement.

Of course, various stories have retconned Zorro's backstory over the years for ethnic diversity reasons or just to justify why he's so pro-populi rather than pro-establishment (though I'd argue that actually weakens him as a character), but that has nothing to do with the actual character as much as how individual people choose to interpret him.

Or to put it another way, just because M. Night Shyamalan decided to cast Indian actors to play the Fire Nation characters in The Last Airbender movie doesn't mean any and all future adaptations should somehow feel morally obligated to do the same.

Whether or not Zorro should be white or Hispanic (or even black, Arabic, or Asian) would depend entirely on what sort of story the filmmakers are attempting to tell. And while I almost always tend to side with the argument that original creative intent (and some degree of historical accuracy) should always trump modern concerns when you're adapting an older story, at the end of the day people are always retconning all sorts of shit anyway.

Remake The Gay Blade

Cast Oscar Isaac

ParanoidObsessive posted...

but that doesn't really change the fact that they're still Caucasian.

Caucasian is also a terrible term, I am not from the Caucasus.

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

Caucasian is also a terrible term, I am not from the Caucasus.

Caucasian is a dead term.