Progressive messaging in media.

You do love your smug, long-winded rationalizing, don't you? Go on, white knight for hack writers hired on demographic and agenda over talent. See where that gets you AND Disney.

My opinion is no more lazy remakes, and no more race/gay/gender swaps to shield them from criticism.

I'm sure you'll stop at just the swaps, Mr. Not-racist.

"Smug!! Smug!! Smuuuug!! ".

Yeah, there's nothing smug about white supremacy though.

That's the dragon for the lazy remake of the Hobbit!

Too bad, capitalism and the free market have decided otherwise.

Does any sane person think those swaps make projects immune to criticism? Do you have criticisms beyond the swaps themselves?

Little Mermaid got picked apart from every direction.
And not from CHUDs. Real humans.

Every Disney live action remake I've read a review of has been criticized as lazy, sloppy, too cautious, and containing elements that look creepy or bad when translated into live action. "The actors are top notch, but the rest of the film doesn't rise up to meet them" is a common refrain. And that's all of them, regardless of any racial or gay elements.

If anything, the race/gender swaps you yourself are criticizing open the movies up to criticisms from people who think such things are "woke" that wouldn't be there if they casted everything in line with the originals.

BTW, I don't think I've seen you criticize the numerous remakes where they have kept the race and gender of the characters the same. Did I just miss all the times that you've done that?

Hot take: There aren't that many fictional characters where their race is especially relevant or necessary to the character. T'Challa's Black Panther I'd say needs to be black. Clark Kents Superman and and Steve Rogers Captain America need to be white and traditionally handsome. Batman probably needs to be white just to explain his inherited wealth and why the Gotham police trust him so much. Ben Sisko needs to be black and to have 20th century American ancestors. Magneto needs to be Jewish and a Holocaust survivor. Professor X needs to be bald, but Patrick Stewart showed us he doesn't have to sound like he's from New Jersey.

But the Flash doesn't need to be white, he just needs to run fast. Cyborg doesn't need to be black, he just needs to be a cyborg. Jonathan Archer doesn't need to be white, he just need to be a racist nepo baby. Michael Burnham doesn't need to be black, she just needs to be extremely emotional. Black Manta doesn't need to be black, he just needs a cool helmet and an irrational hatred of Aquaman. Colonel Tigh doesn't need to be black or white, he just needs to be the XO. Adama doesn't need to be a space Canadian or a space Mexican, he just needs to be a quietly charismatic old man you'd follow into hell. Jazz the transformer needs to sound like a cool black guy, but Bumblebee doesn't need to sound Lebanese. Chekov probably needs to have that shitty Russian accent and to brag about his heritage all the time, but does Mr. Sulu need to be Asian? I dunno, he wasn't even played by a Japanese guy last time, so it's debatable. Does Jean Luc Picard need to be white? The first actor to play him sure as shit didn't do anything to make him French, so why can't the next actor playing him be Korean? It's the future, there was a nuclear war, just go with the absurdity.

Y'know I didn't realize that Lenny Kravitz was black until I was in my twenties? His most important trait in my eyes was "hippie," and I just assumed he was really tan because hippies spend a lot of time outside. Also he's got an elderly Jewish man's name, so there's that.

I'd argue that a modern Magneto could be a survivor of Yugoslavia's break up.

Or go all the way and have him a survivor of Rwanda or Myanmar or Apartheid era South Africa...

It's pretty hard to explain away any character with a living memory of WW2 in 2024. Nick Fury Sr would not only be over 100, but also have a few years on Capt America.

Well, Magneto's a mutant. That can possibly justify it. But yeah, "actual genocide survivor" is the most important element of his character. He doesn't even need to be Jewish. Might as well make him and the Professor black and turn that "they're Dr. King and Malcom X" subtext into text.

Amongst his powers are dramatically slowed aging, done.

gonna need some techno-babble to go with that.

Why? It works for Logan.

Well, with Logan his actual mutant power is super healing. And claws.

yeah, healing factors make sense as longevity would be inherent.

Any of these interpretations done well I can accept into generational canon (and then demand a Who-esque crossover where they meet their different versions and compare notes. You know shit's about to get chaotic, so there should also be a Klezmer band ).

All of this, but I'd also add Anne Shirley as the only fictional redhead whose red hair is actually essential to a quarter of the books she starred in, so she could stay a natural white AF redhead and no one's gonna get mad

Take it up with a white supremacist, you lying fuckstain.

That fucking idiotic gambit again. "You haven't given equal air time to all aspects, therefore you are biased."


You want my take on something else, you ask.

What's your take on why somebody's reasons for objecting to the remixes of stories that have long been the backbone of the entertainment industry would be overrepresented in bringing up changes in skin colour?

It's not a gambit. It's a question, or really a series of ones.

Do you have as much opposition to the various remakes as lazy cash grabs when they don't involve race/gender swaps?

Have you commented accordingly?

If so, where?

If not, any particular reason why not?

I am making no assumptions about the answers to any of these questions. You may, for instance, have been pointing out all along that such remakes as The Fall Guy, Road House, etc are lazy cash grabs and I didn't see them. Or you may have not felt like pointing it out in threads for any number of reasons. Or you may not have seen those threads but if you had you would have.

I dunno... Black folks can obviously have redish hair, and she's an east coaster so writing her orphan origin as having been from Africville and descended of Black Loyalists wouldn't stretch the plausibility very far.

we don't, but here you are anyway.

My take is that your reading is selective. I have said no "more swaps AND no more remakes" IN THIS FUCKING THREAD.

"Need" is a strong word.

There is no inherent "need" IMO for T'Challa to be Black, even as retains the backstory of "super-smart African prince of a fantastically high-tech country who ate a special herb and got superpowers and made him a super-suit." It would mess with authorial intent and audience expectations a lot but there's nothing that stops T'Challa from being biologically mixed, or adopted. Indeed, in the comics for the time, he had a rival the White Wolf who was a Caucasian adopted by his dad.

There is nothing inherent about the story of an underdog whose spirit was willing but so loved his country that he volunteered for a dangerous experiment at its most dangerous hour and became the embodiment of patriotism and human potential that says it has to be a blue-eyed, blonde male. The existence of the Isaiah Bradley character shows one possibility of what a Black Cap might be like. They could do a twist on it where Steve Rogers himself were Black if they wanted, and got the acceptance of the country that would have been improbable in the actual 1940s.

There is absolutely nothing about strange visitor from Krypton who fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way that says he needs to be a white male other than tradition/audience expectations. There supposedly was a Michael B. Jordan project with him being Superman.

Part of why Cyborg was one of my favorite characters growing up was because he resonated with me as a Black nerd in a way other characters of other races didn't. The notion of a gifted African-American kid with a tense relationship with his brilliant father hit home in a way that, say, Storm or Luke Cage or other Black characters did not. Of course, the character has been changed over the years from the goofball version in Teen Titans Go! who is essentially race-less to I'm not sure what they are doing in the current incarnation with him. Anyway, while nothing stops the creation of a Victor Stone who is whatever race/gender/sexual orientation, there are people like me who would be attached to the original version who would need any change to the origin to be justified.

Batman is traditionally defined as someone scarred by the childhood murder of his parents that he dedicates all that he is to fighting crime. Nothing about that inherently says he needs to be white. There are non-white millionaires and billionaires in the real world, and of course in a fictional universe we can suspend disbelief a little. Batman's relationship with the cops has been at least somewhat mixed. In the 50s up to the 80s, he was working hand in hand with them, and basically since then he has had a good relationship with Captain/Commissioner Gordon and a nott-so-great relationship with GPD/more than a handful of other cops. I would like to see a twist on the Batman story where the protagonist was Black, had his parents were killed by rogue cops, and grew up to fight such police.

Yes. It has gotten very fucking old.

I can't swear I have done it 1:1 for full pedantic autism scrutiny, no.

Let me consult my records of every single conversation I've ever fucking had.

Maybe I didn't notice or care at the time. If you're going to insist this proves bigotry, you can fuck right off.

I absolutely will not be watching those abominations, BUT THEY ALSO AREN'T BIG HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTIONS, with advertising absolutely fucking everywhere for years in advance of release. They also aren't smugly jerking themselves off over how progressive they are for "updating" something for "modern audiences. "

That's true, my main consideration was "would the plot mostly be the same if x was changed." Black panther being a non-black adoptee actually feels like something that would have been very plausible in the 50s or 60s. I remember when the Iron Fist series came out and lots of people were saying "this guy should be Asian, he's so clearly asian-coded, I bet he's only white because they thought a non-white character wouldn't sell back then."