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Personally I think a large part of the lack of outrage over the first four is that no one who watched the movies had heard of the source material. People who watch Marvel movies don't tend to read the comics, but Ariel was a Disney movie (one of the most famous of all time) remade as another Disney movie.
Correct. Nobody was bothered by Nick Fury’s change for example, even though he went from white to black. That was a wholly unknown character for most Marvel moviegoers. And Samuel L. Jackson is awesome in that role.
Actually, Fury's always been black in the Ultimate Marvel Universe; the character and the design was actually based on Jackson so casting him for the MCU probably was an obvious direction choice.
I also had my boss, when I worked in fast food, list this as one of the issues he had with the movie, when it came out (to quote him, "he's a white character; no offense but that's what he is," which was particularly galling, given the aforementioned fact).
TIL; thank you! I was aware enough of the comics to know of white Fury, but didn’t know there is, in fact, a black Fury.
Your boss is an idiot. I’m white as printer paper and would gladly let SLJ play me in a biopic. Because he’s awesome in every role he’s played. Good actors are good actors.
Personally, I think the lack of outrage is because the people who get outraged by black people being cast for roles that were previously white characters, aren't concerned when it's white people being cast no matter the source material.
"Personally, I just want to chalk this up to racism so I can be upset about it"
Name one outrage among conservatives in the US when a white person was cast for a role that was any other ethnicity in the source material. Sure, it happens on the Left, Netflix is especially accused of white washing (recent example: Three Body Problem). But, conservatives don't give a shit when it happens the other way around.
Regardless, I truly couldn't give a shit who gets cast for what regardless of source material. If the actor/actress is able to play the part well, I come for entertainment and couldn't care less.
The best example I can think of where the race choices really got stupid to the point of offensive was the first "The Last Airbender" movie where the director race swapped the entire fire nation to Indian, made the water nation white when they probably should have been Innuit or something similar, then chose to mispronounce the main characters name to make it sound more ethnic when the source material was in English, so they knew exactly how it should be pronounced.
Then for whatever reason, people got mad that the main character was white when it was the only character animated in such a way they could be white, and the tribe was a nomadic collection of people making it somewhat possible albeit not relevant to the nation theming of the other nations.
Anyways, this triggered my annual Last Airbender rant, so sorry about that.
Eh, plenty of people voiced issues with the racial (and gender) recast of the Ancient One when Doctor Strange came out.
Tilda Swinton is great btw.
Most people realized it was done mostly to skirt the Chinese market. I think the major problem with the other groups is the lack of major starpower. I don’t think I can even name a Romani actress.
This is a good point. Casting a genuine Tibetan actor would cause the house of mouse to lose all that sweet china money.
I think that this is making fun of the people who were upset at Ariel being black in the remake. The people this is making fun of don't care about recasting race until it's done from a white character to a black one. It's pointing out hypocrisy.
"You will not replace us!" shouted the white supremacists after centuries of erasing a multitude of other cultures, histories, and societies.
It has always been about power.
In fairness to Tilda Swinton, they decided to entirely rewrite the character to be a Celtic woman instead of a Tibetan man. This was probably to avoid being censored in China, but getting away from the racist 1930s, "oriental mysticism," trope was probably a good idea. It's certainly a lot better than letting Jonny Depp pretend to be a Native American because he's one-eighth Cherokee.
Thank you for sharing this. I never know why I feel so annoyed at people who are mad about it, but this is it.
This is why "All lives matter" makes no sense
“All Lives Matter” is like a Narcissist trying to bring the spotlight back to them. They can’t stand not having the attention, and will do anything to get it.
So what is white if Romani isn't? I really do not understand the American concept of race, for me they are all humans.
I only care when it's stupid, like Medieval Poland being full of black people, not even modern day Poland has that many black people.
You can call me racist if you want but casting a black guy to play the president of the USA in like 1910 would be as stupid as casting a white guy to play Nebuchadnezzar.
The Witcher isn't in Medieval Poland though, it's in a fantasy land.
Rings of Power was far more dumb because there's black people, but only in a few extremely important roles. Almost as if there's some sort of reverse curse going on, where a baby pops out black, and they immediately make it their king/queen. Or more likely, they realised very late on that they'd made a very white cast, and made a few last minute changes.
To me, the weirdest one was Johnny Depp as a Native American. Like I couldn’t wrap my head around it in the movie. I kept thinking the plot was that he was a delusional person who believed he was Native American.
If it's bad to use white actors for black (or other colored) roles then it's bad for black actors to do white roles. If it's okay to do those switches then it's okay for all. Forget colors it shouldn't matter.
Having said that, Disney just did the Ariel thing ffor the "look at us being sooooo progressive, please give us your money for this utterly shit movie" instead of trying to just make a great movie
I think people need to figure out if the race of a character is culturally significant in any way in the context of the story and IRL. Like, part of Black Panther's whole deal is he's from Africa. Hard to budge on that character's ethnicity. Ariel from the Little Mermaid could literally be any ethnicity and the story would remain the same. Crying about white erasure is pathetic when no actual culture relevant to white western people is being lost.
But Ariel wasn't white. She was a fish person. So they were free to do whatever.
A big issue here, especially with the MCU stuff, is that it's not a skin color thing with those changes. They updated the whole character in order to make them into races that are more friendly to China. They've done this repeatedly and stripped identities and character traits from characters over and over again.
Every single Romani character that's appeared in an MCU movie has had their heritage removed and replaced with generic white. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are good examples (since they're the ones in the meme) but I don't see any way that Robert Downey Jr is going to be able to do the complicated Romani backstory of Dr Doom very well.
I agree that Ariel was swapped for marketing reasons (and arguably specifically to cause outrage and get people talking) Ariel doesn't have a racial heritage that plays into her life and identity... She's a mermaid from the sea... Not a member of a group with a large history of being discriminated against.
Can I be upset at all of them? The little mermaid should probably be ~~Dutch~~ Danish, and all the rest should be their canon ethnicities. White Disney princesses don't bother me because most of those stories are European folktales, but that cuts both ways.
Isn't she a fucking mermaid who comes from the ocean? Why should she be any real nationality/ethnicity?
I absolutely remember people being mad about the first one.
The others not so much. The fantasy movies don't really matter the same way as a historical movie about slavery does. The fantasy characters are even gender swapped without a problem at conventions.
And yes that means the racists who got mad about Ariel are dumb.
Yup. Characters should remain consistent if it’s important.
Tonto should not have been played by Johnny Depp. Gross.
The original Ancient One was a poor stereotype of a Tibetan person and Tilda Swinton is cool so I’m ok with this one.
Liam Neeson is a great actor with a ton of gravitas and he pulled off the role well, but yeah shoulda found a middle eastern dude. Maybe that hot Djin dude from American Gods can be the next Ras Al Ghul.
Anything to do with Scarlet Witch’s background is a retcon, she was originally introduced as Magneto’s moustache twirling daughter. Despite her tan in the referenced photo she’s more often depicted as white, but I could see her being middle eastern, but it would make sense that she’s half Jewish at least, given her father’s background.
Lastly, she’s a fucking mermaid. Who gives a shit? How many of the dude bros bitching even watched it?
I think in case of Ra's Al Ghul in Nolan movies, the title is passed from one leader to another. He's not a 1000 year old warrior.
The only one of these that is remotely acceptable, to me, is Tilda Swindon, because they explicitly detached themselves from the character to avoid getting shat on by the CCP for casting a Tibetan and from Americans for casting a Chinese person.
The others are all crap, IMO.
Every time a character is washed we lose the chance to be exposed to global actors that would fit their profile.
Wait until you tell extremist, right-wing Christians that Jesus wasn't a white guy! Oooohhh boyyy!
Also, I think it's important to not forget that in the internet age, a very small minority of hateful asshats can appear to have a very large voice. They are still a very small, minority group of asshats.
TBH I think the bird and in general the music score ruined TLM more than anything
But I'm against the very concept of using Live Action films to perpetuate Intellectual Property rights while skirting any requirement to pay royalties to the original teams who made the animated films from which the remake was adapted 1:1 script and scene composition.
A lot of the other examples here did give really weak or bland performances, I even think the Lone Ranger would have been better without Depp in it.
People would have been pissed if some of those were racially accurate
My issue is that we are pairing nationality with skin color or ethnicity here. Those are not mutually exclusive. There are 2nd or 3rd generation Asians immigrants in Mexico, just as there are Mexicans living in Ireland, and Irish people in India, etc.. Somebody could be a fully integrated national but not part if the nations major ethnicity. Even saying AFRICAN-American is kind of pointless, like it matters where your grand-grand-grand-grand-parents came from. They're as much American as anybody else. We don't call everybody else European-American for comparison.
Scarlet Witch wasn't originally Romani.... she was originally still Jewish. You know, since she was Magneto's daughter. The Romani thing came later. So that's kind of a mischaracterization. The Johnny Depp as native american was super wierd, like the black face RDJ in Tropic Thunder. It was cringe @.@.
I don't know how people got that take from Tropic Thunder when they explicitly make reference inside the movie to how messed up and wrong it was. Like, that was the joke. RDJ was playing a character so full of himself that took method acting to it's extreme. Am I missing something? Id love to be educated
No, you're right. RDJ's role on that movie was a joke/commentary about both method acting and black face.
like the black face RDJ in Tropic Thunder. It was cringe @.@.
Did you actually see Tropic Thunder? It's pretty good. His character is meant to be looked down on and the movie makes that clear. It's more of a criticism of actors doing things like black face and playing disabled characters to chase awards.
Believe me, white folk do get offended about non-white characters being changed to white, in fact they the most likely ones to be offended, especially when it comes to historic figures. All this meme is doing is framing an inaccurate depiction of white folk to suit a biased narrative. Keep in mind also, a minority few cannot represent an entirety. Just as all black or asian folk are not alike, same holds true for white folk. This an era where a difference in race is not the concern, but rather the upper class rich people that use ethnic label stereotyping to have us fight among each other as distraction. Don't fall for their trickery of dividing us.
Fun fact about the Lone Ranger, the most likely real world basis for the protagonist is a man named Bass Reeves. He was black, and an escaped slave. The misrepresentation has been present since the beginning, if I'm not mistaken.
I feel like there's a lot of cherry picking here too, because if we take the MCU, it also does some race swapping that nobody has a problem with.
Nick Fury is one, but Samuel L Jackson is so cool in that role, it doesn't matter.
Heimdal is another one. Norse mythology, probably not a lot of black there, but Idris Elba is also so damn cool in the role that it does not really matter, and I've never heard anyone complain about these people.
I think in general it's more about if the people in the roles do a good job or not. Tilda Swinton did a great job. Johnny Depp... Maybe not so much, but I also do remember people were mad about that one.