Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[Reverend]

As I said, people could probably *recognise* Cap, but he was hardly popular or well known before the Marvel movies made him that. Not unlike pre-Burton Batman, he was less a popular character and more of a cultural punchline.
Cap's had little surges in popularity over the decades but (until now) none as big as his peak in the war years. Mostly though, it's been a lot of deep lulls. Nowhere near the same league as the likes of Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Hulk and Wonder Woman.

 

[Christopher]

Getting back to marvel, the simple fact is that the majority of their super heroes are white males. There's no getting away from that.

Of course there is. We've seen abundant cases of white characters in the comics being played by nonwhite actors onscreen -- Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin, Kristin Kreuk as Lana Lang, Sam Jones III as Pete Ross, Alessandro Juliani as Emil Hamilton, Phil Morris as J'onn J'onnz (whose human disguise was traditionally white in the comics), Dania Ramirez as Callisto, Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Maximiliano Hernandez as Jasper Sitwell, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Chloe Bennet (nee Wang) as Daisy Johnson, Henry Simmons as Mack Mackenzie, Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, Candice Patton as Iris West, Keiynan Lonsdale as Wally West (yes, he became black in the New 52), Ciara Renee as Hawkgirl, Angelica Celaya as Zed (Constantine), Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy Olsen, David Harewood as Hank Henshaw (and J'onn again), B.D. Wong as Hugo Strange, etc. We've had half a century of actors "getting away from" the whiteness of their source characters, and it's an everyday thing by this point. It's just that, for the most part, it's still limited to supporting characters or members of an ensemble, rather than lead characters. That glass ceiling still exists.

But for most lead characters, there's no reason why they have to be white, any more than a live-action Jimmy Olsen has to be a redhead or Barry Allen has to be blond or Wolverine has to be 5'3". Steve Rogers would probably have to be white given the era he comes from. Black Widow, probably -- not a lot of Asians, Africans, or Latinas in Russia. I've heard it argued that Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark would have to be white because they come from super-rich forebears and there weren't any nonwhite billionaires back then -- but there's no reason a white Thomas Wayne or Howard Stark couldn't have had a mixed marriage and a biracial son. Clark Kent could presumably have looked like any human ethnicity (and indeed he has been played by the quarter-Japanese Dean Cain). Wonder Woman's an Amazon, so realistically she should be something like Turkish or Central Asian (Amazons weren't Greek, they were enemies of the Greeks). Peter Parker's a lower-middle-class teenager from Forest Hills, so he'd actually be more likely to be nonwhite, given current demographics. And so on.

And I highly disagree with your opinion about the Avengers characters not being well known because I knew who they were before the movies and rarely read comics. Those characters were chosen because they wanted to build a series of movies that culminated in the Avengers. Black Panther and Captain Marvel werent needed for that.

They weren't completely obscure, no, but they were seen as B- or C-list characters at the time. People maybe remembered the '60s cartoons and the cheesy theme songs, or maybe the embarrassingly kitschy attempts to adapt Captain America to TV in the '70s and film in 1990, but they were not seen as A-list heroes on the level of Spider-Man or the X-Men. That's why Marvel still had the rights to them -- because they were the characters that other studios hadn't cared enough about to snatch up the rights to when Marvel was broke and selling off the good china. So you're getting the cause and effect backward. What happened, according to the story I've heard, was that the folks behind Marvel Studios took a look at what they had left over and realized, "Hey, you know, these characters we still control just happen to include most of the key Avengers. Let's take advantage of that."

Why weren't they needed? They've both been Avengers in the comics for years. There's really nothing that says that the Avengers only had to be Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor and Black Widow. I know that is the classic group, but I don't really think it would have hurt anything if they had switched out one of the guys for BP or Capt. M., or even just added one of them to the team in the first movie.

Actually the founding lineup of the Avengers was Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Hulk, with Hulk leaving and Cap joining soon thereafter. That lineup then gave way to "Cap's Kooky Quartet" of Cap, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch. Black Panther and Vision joined in 1968. Black Widow didn't join until 1973, a decade into the series. Carol Danvers (then known as Ms. Marvel) and Falcon joined in 1979, War Machine in 1984.

 

[ichab]

Of course there is. We've seen abundant cases of white characters in the comics being played by nonwhite actors onscreen -- Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin, Kristin Kreuk as Lana Lang, Sam Jones III as Pete Ross, Alessandro Juliani as Emil Hamilton, Phil Morris as J'onn J'onnz (whose human disguise was traditionally white in the comics), Dania Ramirez as Callisto, Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Maximiliano Hernandez as Jasper Sitwell, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Chloe Bennet (nee Wang) as Daisy Johnson, Henry Simmons as Mack Mackenzie, Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, Candice Patton as Iris West, Keiynan Lonsdale as Wally West (yes, he became black in the New 52), Ciara Renee as Hawkgirl, Angelica Celaya as Zed (Constantine), Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy Olsen, David Harewood as Hank Henshaw (and J'onn again), B.D. Wong as Hugo Strange, etc. We've had half a century of actors "getting away from" the whiteness of their source characters, and it's an everyday thing by this point. It's just that, for the most part, it's still limited to supporting characters or members of an ensemble, rather than lead characters. That glass ceiling still exists.

But for most lead characters, there's no reason why they have to be white, any more than a live-action Jimmy Olsen has to be a redhead or Barry Allen has to be blond or Wolverine has to be 5'3". Steve Rogers would probably have to be white given the era he comes from. Black Widow, probably -- not a lot of Asians, Africans, or Latinas in Russia. I've heard it argued that Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark would have to be white because they come from super-rich forebears and there weren't any nonwhite billionaires back then -- but there's no reason a white Thomas Wayne or Howard Stark couldn't have had a mixed marriage and a biracial son. Clark Kent could presumably have looked like any human ethnicity (and indeed he has been played by the quarter-Japanese Dean Cain). Wonder Woman's an Amazon, so realistically she should be something like Turkish or Central Asian (Amazons weren't Greek, they were enemies of the Greeks). Peter Parker's a lower-middle-class teenager from Forest Hills, so he'd actually be more likely to be nonwhite, given current demographics. And so on.

And this is where you start looking like a hypocrite as you were just complaining about the white washing of minority characters yet you don't mind it in the reverse. You're either for keeping the integrity of an established character or you're fine with changing a characters skin color around to suite an agenda. You can't be both.

Also Johnny Storm is not some "minor" character. He's a founding member of the fantastic four and part of the reason that last movie failed so miserably was because the studio alienated fans of the franchise by ignoring fifty years of established canon and changing the characters to fit a social agenda. If you want diversity in superheroes, create new ones.

 

[Christopher]

And this is where you start looking like a hypocrite as you were just complaining about the white washing of minority characters yet you don't mind it in the reverse.

Oh, good grief, why do people keep dragging out this obviously nonsensical argument? It's very simple: Society has been unfairly biased in favor of white people for centuries. Nonwhite people have been systematically excluded from representation, and that is racist and wrong. Turning nonwhite characters into white characters increases that existing imbalance and is therefore bad; turning white characters into nonwhite characters decreases that imbalance and is therefore good.

You're either for keeping the integrity of an established character or you're fine with changing a characters skin color around to suite an agenda. You can't be both.

Of course I can, because it's not about the characters, who are merely imaginary constructs. It's about the real people in the audience that are affected by those characters and are hurt by a media culture that systematically marginalizes them. And it's about the real, working actors of color who deserve a chance to compete fairly for lead roles rather than being forced into supporting roles by systemic racism.

Also Johnny Storm is not some "minor" character.

I did not say that he was. The word "minor" never appears in my post. I said "it's still limited to supporting characters or members of an ensemble." I did, in fact, consider singling out Johnny as perhaps the most central character to date to be cast diversely in a feature film, but it slipped my mind.

He's a founding member of the fantastic four and part of the reason that last movie failed so miserably was because the studio alienated fans of the franchise by ignoring fifty years of established canon and changing the characters to fit a social agenda.

Oh, good grief. Every word of your post has been completely out of touch with common sense or factual accuracy, but this is the most egregiously wrong statement yet. I just saw the film the other day, and the fact of the matter is that Michael B. Jordan and Reg Cathey were the only really good, watchable actors in the entire movie. The movie failed because it was bad. The setup was weak, the tone was all wrong, the pacing was glacial, most of the action was offscreen, the core relationships were underdeveloped or missing, it totally ruined Ben's catchphrase by attributing it to his abusive brother, etc. Casting Jordan and Cathey was the only thing it got right. That wasn't about "a social agenda" -- the social agenda is when you default to white actors rather than casting the best actors. And those two were the best actors in the film by a considerable margin.

Besides, if diverse casting were enough to cause a film to fail, how come so many films with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury have done so well? How come Smallville and Agents of SHIELD and The Flash and Supergirl haven't failed as a result of their inclusive casting?


You know, in the theater, they've never cared much about the race of their actors matching the characters. I've seen a white Hamlet with a black Uncle Claudius. There have been cases where stage actors of different races have played siblings or parent and child, or where actors of color have played historical figures who were white. Sometimes actors play characters of a different gender; there are some theater roles where it's actually traditional to do so (Peter Pan, Edna in Hairspray). It's treated as routine in the theater world. After all, everyone involved knows it's just actors playing a part. It's clearly not real, because they're standing on a raised wooden platform right in front of you. So nobody really thinks it matters whether an actor really looks like the character they're pretending to be. And these days, that theatrical practice is increasingly used in film and TV as well. And viewers who can't adjust to that are suffering from a failure of imagination at best.

 

[JD]

They also have a black actress playing Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Actually the founding lineup of the Avengers was Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Hulk, with Hulk leaving and Cap joining soon thereafter. That lineup then gave way to "Cap's Kooky Quartet" of Cap, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch. Black Panther and Vision joined in 1968. Black Widow didn't join until 1973, a decade into the series. Carol Danvers (then known as Ms. Marvel) and Falcon joined in 1979, War Machine in 1984.

I didn't realize Black Panther had been an Avenger longer than Black Widow. They obviously didn't just stick to the founding comics line up, so that means they have even less of an excuse for not giving us a more diverse line up in the first two movies. I like Hawkeye in the movies, but I really don't see any reason why he couldn't have been switched out for Black Panther.

 

[Christopher]

They also have a black actress playing Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

And according to Rowling, she never specified a race for Hermione in the books -- just curly brown hair and brown eyes. (I think there's one passage where she's described as having a white face, but it could be read as figuratively white with shock.)

Of course, there are so many people who will reflexively assume a character is white even when they're explicitly described as nonwhite, like Rue in The Hunger Games. There was so much virulent hostility toward the casting of a black actress, even though the character was overtly and repeatedly described as brown-skinned the first several times she was mentioned in the book.

I didn't realize Black Panther had been an Avenger longer than Black Widow. They obviously didn't just stick to the founding comics line up, so that means they have even less of an excuse for not giving us a more diverse line up in the first two movies. I like Hawkeye in the movies, but I really don't see any reason why he couldn't have been switched out for Black Panther.

Well, I think T'Challa deserves a more prominent role in the MCU than Hawkeye has managed to have. He's often been a successful solo character, while Hawkeye has, I think, generally been known as an Avenger (aside from the current Matt Fraction/David Aja series). But there are plenty of other Avengers they could've used. Heck, there aren't that many Marvel heroes who haven't been Avengers of one sort or another by this point.

 

[The Old Mixer]

FWIW, Widow's affiliation with the team went back to the '60s, when she featured prominently in some storylines as Hawkeye's love interest. They just didn't get around to formally making her a member until the '70s, following which she quickly disappeared from the book to make room for Mantis, IIRC.

 

[Reverend]

They also have a black actress playing Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The backlash to that was so hilariously ironic. Did these so-called fans not actually read the books? Or did they miss the whole thing where the people concerning themselves over her "blood status" were portrayed as the arseholes? How very Slytherin of them.

 

[ichab]

Turning nonwhite characters into white characters increases that existing imbalance and is therefore bad; turning white characters into nonwhite characters decreases that imbalance and is therefore good.

What a crock of garbage. Pure hypocrisy. Nothing more.

Of course I can, because it's not about the characters, who are merely imaginary constructs. It's about the real people in the audience that are affected by those characters and are hurt by a media culture that systematically marginalizes them. And it's about the real, working actors of color who deserve a chance to compete fairly for lead roles rather than being forced into supporting roles by systemic racism.

For goodness sakes we arent living in the 1950s. There are loads of movies out there with lead minorities. Have you never heard of Denzel Wahington, Samual L Jackson,Whoopi Goldberg or Morgan Freeman? There are loads of movies that come out each year featuring minorities so there is no need to take established white characters and turn them black out of white guilt.

Oh, good grief. Every word of your post has been completely out of touch with common sense or factual accuracy, but this is the most egregiously wrong statement yet. I just saw the film the other day, and the fact of the matter is that Michael B. Jordan and Reg Cathey were the only really good, watchable actors in the entire movie. The movie failed because it was bad. The setup was weak, the tone was all wrong, the pacing was glacial, most of the action was offscreen, the core relationships were underdeveloped or missing, it totally ruined Ben's catchphrase by attributing it to his abusive brother, etc. Casting Jordan and Cathey was the only thing it got right. That wasn't about "a social agenda" -- the social agenda is when you default to white actors rather than casting the best actors. And those two were the best actors in the film by a considerable margin.

Besides, if diverse casting were enough to cause a film to fail, how come so many films with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury have done so well? How come Smallville and Agents of SHIELD and The Flash and Supergirl haven't failed as a result of their inclusive casting?

Nowhere in my post did I say that diverse casting was bad. Not one time. But you're really out to lunch if you think the casting of F4 didn't hurt the movie before it started because I remember the backlash very well from fans of the franchise. Not just the changing of Johnny Storm but also changing the age of Reed Richards and making everyone young. You just destroyed the dynamics of what makes those characters interesting. Hence the incredibly weak opening weekend box office numbers. An established brand like F4 should have at least killed it at the box office for the first weekend but it only managed $25 million while placing behind Mission Impossible which was on its second week. That was a direct result of the fan base not coming out.

If background of character doesn't matter then why use the F4 name at all? Why not just create a whole new movie and create characters that arent bound by any history? Use an established brand and you have to stick with what fans of that brand know. That's why a black Superman will never work.

PS: Did you catch The Force Awakens? People like you would have been clamoring for a reboot with a black Han Solo instead of creating a sequal with a unique new lead character like Finn. Be original. It does work.

 

[Set Harth]

Besides, if diverse casting were enough to cause a film to fail, how come so many films with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury have done so well?

Technically, Nick Fury was rebooted as a black man in the comics before the movies followed suit ( and was modeled on Jackson ).

 

[YLu]

PS: Did you catch The Force Awakens? People like you would have been clamoring for a reboot with a black Han Solo instead of creating a sequal with a unique new lead character like Finn. Be original. It does work.

Dude, if originality were the end-all be-all, there would be no reason to do adaptations in the first place. You know, as in the very thing all of these comic hero movies are...

 

[Turtletrekker]

The Force Awakens was "original"?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

The Force Awakens was "original?

No kidding! It should have been titled, "A New Hope Reawakens" for all of the copy+pasting (not the Lucas "its like poetry, it rhymes!") seen in the film.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Nowhere in my post did I say that diverse casting was bad. Not one time. But you're really out to lunch if you think the casting of F4 didn't hurt the movie before it started because I remember the backlash very well from fans of the franchise. Not just the changing of Johnny Storm but also changing the age of Reed Richards and making everyone young. You just destroyed the dynamics of what makes those characters interesting.

Those two aspects are not comparable. The age thing does change dynamics, as you suggest. Johnny and Sue being adopted siblings instead of biological ones does not, or at least there's nothing that inherently requires that it does. I didn't like the movie either, and am not suggesting it did get the dynamics right, but the notion that this is simply down to them being of different skin colors is ridiculous. Yes, there was (ludicrous) backlash from fans when the casting was announced. But major motion picture adaptations of comic books are not aimed at the fans of those comic books exclusively. They are aimed at the wider general moviegoing public.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, there was (ludicrous) backlash from fans when the casting was announced.

There always is. That's what's so pathetic about it. As my examples above indicate, it's been entirely routine for nonwhite actors to be cast as white characters for the past decade or more. There are few comics adaptations in the 21st century that don't do that. And yet every time it happens, a certain segment of the audience protests as if it were completely unprecedented and shocking, and their protests are deeply unconvincing because it is so commonplace and well-established, so it's obviously not novelty that they have a problem with.

 

[Destructor]

There are loads of movies that come out each year featuring minorities so there is no need to take established white characters and turn them black out of white guilt.

There's this great show 'Star Trek' you should check out, it really delves into the idea that we're all humans and that assigning different levels of worth to each other based purely on someone's race is harmful to ourselves and others.

 

[Christopher]

There are loads of movies that come out each year featuring minorities so there is no need to take established white characters and turn them black out of white guilt.

Here's your "loads of movies":

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/30000-hollywood-film-characters-heres-many-werent-white/

Of the top 100 films of 2014, nearly three-quarters of all characters were white, the study showed. Only 17 of the top movies that year featured non-white lead or co-lead actors.
Roughly Three-Quarters of Film Actors Were White in 2014

Source: USC Annenberg’s MDSC Initiative

 

[jbny67]

There's this great show 'Star Trek' you should check out, it really delves into the idea that we're all humans and that assigning different levels of worth to each other based purely on someone's race is harmful to ourselves and others.

Obviously this show you're talking about is a totally unrealistic fantasy. It'll never last more than one season.
I guess, if enough people share the same rose colored glasses outlook, something like a strong letter writing campaign might stave off cancellation for a bit. But those things never work

 

[ichab]

There's this great show 'Star Trek' you should check out, it really delves into the idea that we're all humans and that assigning different levels of worth to each other based purely on someone's race is harmful to ourselves and others.

I'm very familiar with it. It's a very entertaining work of fiction created by a fat womanizer who told tall tales about his past and cheated the people who worked for him. A small segment of its fanbase has a tendency to take this show too literally and draws paralells where there are none.

Anyways, back to Marvel...

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I can understand why they picked the characters they did, but I really think once things were solidly established with the first Avengers they could have taken a chance on a movie with a woman in the lead or a person of color. I like Iron Man 3, but maybe instead of it they could have given us Black Panther, or even Black Widow. I absoultely love Guardians of the Galaxy, but if all they wanted was to set up the cosmic side of the MCU there's no reason it had to be GotG, and not Capt. Marvel. I understand why they picked the characters they did, but there's no reason they couldn't have taken a break from those sequels to give us something else.

Again, it's all well and good to say they could've done this instead of that, but they are the ones responsible for earning their cash, making their name and establishing their brand. Is it really that hard to understand that a sequel for a massively popular character might be a more attractive possibility than introducing a new, barely known character? Or to understand the fact that every new, unknown character getting their own movie brings a certain amount of risk, so doing too many of them at once is probably unwise?

Yeah, I would've rather watched Black Panther over Iron Man 3, as well, but to suggest that Marvel screwed up by not making them in that order is just ridiculous.

As for GotG vs Capt. Marvel - that's the case where I'm still reserving judgement, as I believe I mentioned. They have stated they have significant plans for the character and those plans apparently somehow involve infinity war. So when her movie drops and IW is behind us, then I'll decide for myself if there was actually a good reason to keep her in reserve or not. I don't see much reason to judge them for it now when I don't even have enough facts to understand their decision.

Keeping in mind that there's also something to be said for the fact that Guardians might simply have been a project they had more confidence in - and considering the smash hit status it achieved out of nowhere, it would be hard to say they were wrong about it.

I didn't realize Black Panther had been an Avenger longer than Black Widow. They obviously didn't just stick to the founding comics line up, so that means they have even less of an excuse for not giving us a more diverse line up in the first two movies. I like Hawkeye in the movies, but I really don't see any reason why he couldn't have been switched out for Black Panther.

I can think of a couple of really good reasons. First of all, treating Black Panther as a minor secondary character the way Hawkeye has been handled would have been really bad. Secondly, it wouldn't have worked anyway, because Hawkeye and Black Widow could only be shoe-horned in so easily due to the fact that they were believable as 'agents of Shield'. Calling Black Panther an agent of shield would negate half the point of the character.

If Black Panther were to have been included in phase 1, he would've had to replace one of the main Avengers and get his own solo movie. Probably Thor would've been the only option, since Iron Man was the backbone of Marvel Studios, Captain America is the traditional backbone of the Avengers and the Hulk is theoretically the most popular and well known character of the bunch (which didn't help the Hulk movie, but again, hindsight is useless when discussing whether a decision making process that's already happened). I honestly would've enjoyed that. I haven't cared too much for Thor, anyway. Would it have been a better decision for them to make at the time? I'm not sure. If nothing else, I can absolutely see concerns that a Cap, Hawkeye, BW, BP line-up leans way too heavily to the just barely superhuman side of superheroes. And, while I don't really get them, I have experienced a rather bafflingly large Thor fanbase, as well.