Captain America: The Winter Soldier thread

General Discussion
621

(Lol at saying Cannonball “has” to be white when the Guthries are a big hippie-esque multiracial southern family. Characters from the American south could be any race, really, even Asian, unless they’re like a KIansman.)

I don’t really care what “race” a character is for the most part, partly because I don’t think race exists and partly because for most characters it isn’t really that important. What you guys seem to be talking about has more to do with culture or nationality than “race”. It’s why T’Challa can’t really be anything other than black except for maybe Arabic since he’s from an isolationist African nation. Amusingly, I don’t ever see anyone arguing for more heroic Arabic characters even though there’s so many of them. After all, there’s Dust/Sooraya, who some writer wanted to make evil in a bad future, and, uh…that guy from the Batman Corps or whatever?

Unless a character’s backstory is defined by the racism towards them or (immediate) family members, then I don’t think their race matters more than what culture they come from. So Banshee and Siryn could be black so long as they were still Irish. It’s just that there aren’t really any black people from/in Ireland, so people would doubtless raise their eyebrows at it, even if some idiots think that’s what “Black Irish” means; thanks for helping with that, Charlie’s Angels 2.

Even still, Black Banshee and Siryn would still be far less weird than the majority of ways that America [mis]represents Oireland though. looks at Leap Year

But, yeah, if you race lifted like a quarter of the prominent white characters into different minorities, white characters would still way outnumber every other race when it comes to representation, even from non-American countries. I mean, really, pretty much every non-American superhero that shows up in Marvel or DC is from Canada or Europe or, to lend some cool “exoticism”, Japan with a character or two from Africa.

I’ve found the opposite. I can’t readily think of a really (constantly) dark-skinned superhero of any ethnicity except for maybe Luke Cage. The most prominent “black”/African superhero character, Storm, is extremely light, has blue eyes and white hair. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that, especially since she is part white and she has an extremely likable personality most of the time, but…yeah.

Who is “crispy” that we’re talking about here?

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After Eddie Murphy flopped, I think Will Smith was the darkest Hollywood was willing to go for a long time :lol:

623

If any member of the Fantastic Four had to be black it should have been Ben Grimm. Grow up in a terrible neighborhood, brother died to gang violence, lead the Yancy street gang, brawny best friend of a super genius, plays football. This dude black already. Give the guy some pigment.

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From the way she looked in comics/cartoon i always got a mullato vibe from her

Fuck anna paquin’s shitty non-sexy rogue

Paula Patton would be way better in that role

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For some reason this is the only ethnic change I don’t mind.

Not sure why but I’m not bothered by this at all.

626

But with pigment he would’ve knocked Johnny out on day one.

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Funny thing is, nobody would give a shit if Patton got casted just cause of how forgettable Paquin is in the role.

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Paula Patton as a sexy rouge…plz I wanna watch the movie not pass out 5 mins from blood loss due to excessive erection.

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(Haha. Yeah. Before I saw that post, I was thinking “could you make anyone on the Fantastic Four black?” and Ben was the first one to come to mind.)

Although this is all massively off-topic anyway since apparently so very many of you fail at getting baited by Sennin, talking about “race lifts” is interesting since it’s generally only comic books and comic book movies that have done it. I mean, I’m sure some book-based movies have done it, but they do it a lot less frequently.

In thinking about it, I just realized that if they ever did an Alpha Flight movie, as extremely unlikely as that is, then they could pretty easily get away with making Northstar and Aurora Asian or even Native American. The same thing maybe even applies to Snowbird. Everyone else save for maybe Sasquatch would probably still be white though.

Well, Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson are darker than Will Smith, but yeah, I suppose I agree. Will Smith definitely had more mainstream appeal for a while than either of those guys unsurprisingly.

I meant more in every form of media, though. You pretty much never see a dark-skinned character unless they’re either stereotypical or villainous or both.

looks at Balrog (Boxer)/Mike Bison

…Yeah. Luke Cage is honestly the only prominent heroic minority character I can think of who is maybe constantly portrayed as being having darker skin, though I suppose DC has been trying to push Cyborg to the forefront lately (as token as it is). Given all the work DCAU did, I think DC has more dark-skinned heroes than Marvel does between Jon Stewart, Static and Cyborg despite the Marvel generally being more concerned with minority characters in general.

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Lets not forget vixen and batwing.

Wonder Woman is Amazonian so technically she is a minority.

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Johnny would troll him less that’s for damn sure!

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What about Liam Neeson or wildcard Noah Wyle?

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@Rocky Fair enough there. Just naming characters that have a particular life background that results in them being rendered a little more in depth vs the typical comic sketch. Insert Gambit and Claremont Colossus there, I guess. Or not. Most of the G2 X-Men (post-Krakatoa) had Nationality / Background matter, vs the G1 X-Men and even the G-3 X-Men (post-Claremont era?). Alpha Flight, Gamma Flight, the horrible foreign heroes from Contest of Champions… shrug

I suspect that generally most of the characters are white because the writers and artists were generally white and it’s usually just easier to draw. Look up all the old ink/bleed problems - AFAIK they were extremely influential in comics coloring decisions until at least the very recent era. And since continuity generally matters within the same universe… people stay white. Other races get underrepresented and you have the shitty women in comics problem and while it’s awesome for us my friend’s young daughter gets to be puzzled about which hero she gets to be. shrug

You could certainly have made a Captain America with The Truth version of the Cap… but you lose a chunk of the invested audience. Nick Fury / SLJ works especially well because they made that the Ultimate reality. I think if you want to change the skin colorization of anybody, introduce it in the comics and roll from there. Have that mental/emotional resonance to pull from and generally you have a better movie. Black Kingpin worked because that WAS the Kingpin up there. Own the role, don’t Nick Cage it.

Rewatching The Winter Soldier the second time, I did notice much more vividly how fucked up Crossbones was after that final fight. He’s a stretcher at the end all burned. And the first post-credit scene… I don’t know where that’s going, but that seems possibly excellent.

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I really hate nicholas cage as ghost rider

Rick from walking dead would be better

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And snatched Sue Storm…

But as mentioned a little bit after this post, it’s not “we are choosing to make him black”, its “we are choosing the actor that can command the role perfectly”. MCD as Kingpin is a PRIME example. MKJ as Human Torch just reeks of good casting choice to me. I myself am against changing ethnicity ‘just to do it’, but hell if Laurence Fishburne makes a good Fury, then he should be Fury.

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the problem is, Hollywood isn’t doing it for these reasons.

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I don’t see that. Who on Xmen did they make a black guy? Who’s ethnicity did they change for Avengers? The only switches I can even think of are Kingpin and Human Torch - and I still can’t think of any white actor who could have nailed Kingpin, and with Human Torch, from what “I’ve read” (which means it can honestly be erroneous I admit), they didn’t throw out a casting call for black guy in his 20s, MKJ just killed it. Is there someone I’m missing? I mean for Storm they went from African to a mixed chick with Halle Berry if that counts for anything. The guy playing Warpath I guess isn’t native american if memory serves me correctly, but that is more tied to whom showed up more so than trying to go in a different direction. Black Widow isn’t russian…and her original casting (Emily blunt) isn’t either, but ya know…Scarlett Johanson can play whomever she wants so long as the outfit is tight enough.

Ah! Electro! He’s another racial switch, but I think that had more to do with getting someone like Jamie Foxx for the roll than making him a black guy.
shrug

  • :bluu:
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they were actively pursuing a black Human Torch from day one. The fanbase was unhappy enough about it that after he got officially announced, the entire project was scrapped and they’re starting over again (although they also had a female Doctor Doom, so whatever). Avengers, they made Nick Fury black. Who could have played Kingpin? I dunno, how about any big fat white guy? Butterbean could have pulled it off. Does this mean Kingpin should never be black? Fuck no.

My issue is that Hollywood is often doing this only to create discussion about the movie, good or bad, rather than because an actor nailed it. When they were doing casting calls for Fantastic Four, they had already made up their mind to go black. It created hype and discussion about the movie before it even got passed the drawing board. No black actor had come in and wow’d them yet. They just wanted to create hype because the last two FF movies sucked enormous amounts of dick. And then it blew up in their face, and now they’re recasting the entire movie again.

And at what point do we say enough is enough. I’m sorry but if I see an all ethnic X-Men, with Japanese Wolverine, Black Cyclops, Asian Storm, Latina Jean Grey, and Native American Beast, I ain’t watching it. It has nothing to do with racism, it’s just the fact you’ve given me characters I no longer know. If I go to see a Robin Hood movie, I expect certain things (Sherriff of Nottingham, lots of british people, bows and arrows, medieval timeframe). You suddenly make him Korean, and give him a whip, and set it in 2009, and it’s not Robin Hood anymore no matter what you wanna call it.

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Some of these movies take there cues from the Ultimate universe comics. Electro if I remember correctly wasn’t a white guy in Ultimate Spiderman. Ditto with Nick Fury. Thats something to take into account.

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That’s exactly my thinking.

It’s not a issue to include diversity but to change existing characters all to fulfil some quota or create buzz or just diversify for the sake of diversity is all very stupid IMO. It isn’t creative or breaking new ground…it’s simply creating buzz for what would otherwise be a bad movie.