^ Really (re Zorro)? It did well enough to get a sequel and it's one of the few movies for which Martin Campbell returned for the sequel - because, as he frankly admitted, they paid him too much money to refuse!
The Lone Ranger remake shut down by Disney
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And you think that would be less upsetting? Cutting out an American Indian actor from the part not because they cast a white guy in the role, but because they changed the character into a white guy?
It's kind of difficult for actors of American Indian descent to establish box office appeal when the studios aren't making movies that have roles for them.
The Mask of Zorro -- which I assume is being discussed -- was really disappointing? Looking at the grosses, it was rather soft domestically, but it did well overseas. Huh.
I saw it once in the theaters and I really enjoyed it. I also remember my jaw dropping at Catherine Zeta-Jones.
It was an initial disappointment (domestically, especially); that's the main reason the sequel took so long. Eventually, since it was acknowledged as having been a strong film, and Banderas and Zeta-Jones went on to bigger success, it was greenlit.
It was definitely one of my all-time favourite action movies, though.
Yes. Because white people have plenty of action heroes and other roles of our own. We can afford to give up a few.
I've no idea how old Tonto should be, needs to be or whatever. But seems to me there should be actors out there who could play the role in some form, actors who have some Native American ancestory.
With a heavy sigh, I can't help but to think of the actors who play the Native Americans/"Werewolves" in the Twilight Movies, specifically Taylor Lautner who plays Jacob Black (the actor has some, distant, NA ancestory). He may be too young to play Tonto without "retooling" some of the series' concept a bit; but he would certainly be something of a box-office draw for younger audience members. For older people, the actors who play Jacob's various family members are NA actors, though maybe not well-known enough to bring people in.
Now, sure, it seems this movie isn't going to get made now but it's still something of a topic apparently to expound upon in the hypothetical. But, sheesh, why is Johnny Depp the go-to guy?
The movie "Tropic Thunder" did a good job of touching on the subject of actors stepping outside their own type to go to great lengths to play a character. Much is made in the movie about RDJ's character being a white "method" actor who has his skin dyed to play a black character in a big movie. A genuinely black actor in the movie takes RDJ's character to task on this criticizing him for taking the one good black part in the production from the grasp of a black actor.
This is mostly the same thing, it's a part where it's one chance for an actor with Native American heritage to have a prominent roll in a big-time movie and the movie creators, apparently, wanted to go with a white man in Indian-Face make up or something. That's offensive on numerous levels.
The "black-face" worked in Tropic Thunder, for example, because that was pretty much the "joke" of the character and the point the movie was trying to make on actors going to great lengths to get key roles in movies.
Perry White, as said above, is a character in a comic book series whose race has nothing to do with his character. Perry White can be any race and, hell, you could argue any gender (depending on how "gender-neutral" you think the name "Perry" is). Tonto, on the other hand, is a character that is supposed to be Native American by the very nature of the entire concept of the series. So getting a white man to play him is offensive on many levels.
To put it another way, it's very much like the situation in the fiction of Tropic Thunder. It's a white actor taking on a role meant for someone of an entirely different race by the very nature of the character.
What would the reaction be if, say, a biopic of Martin Luther King, Jr. was to be made and the actor they picked was Phillip Seymour Hoffman simply because he's the only one they think will have the acting chops and BO draw to pull it off?
With a heavy sigh, I can't help but to think of the actors who play the Native Americans/"Werewolves" in the Twilight Movies, specifically Taylor Lautner who plays Jacob Black (the actor has some, distant, NA ancestory). He may be too young to play Tonto without "retooling" some of the series' concept a bit; but he would certainly be something of a box-office draw for younger audience members. For older people, the actors who play Jacob's various family members are NA actors, though maybe not well-known enough to bring people in.
Now, sure, it seems this movie isn't going to get made now but it's still something of a topic apparently to expound upon in the hypothetical. But, sheesh, why is Johnny Depp the go-to guy?
The movie "Tropic Thunder" did a good job of touching on the subject of actors stepping outside their own type to go to great lengths to play a character. Much is made in the movie about RDJ's character being a white "method" actor who has his skin dyed to play a black character in a big movie. A genuinely black actor in the movie takes RDJ's character to task on this criticizing him for taking the one good black part in the production from the grasp of a black actor.
This is mostly the same thing, it's a part where it's one chance for an actor with Native American heritage to have a prominent roll in a big-time movie and the movie creators, apparently, wanted to go with a white man in Indian-Face make up or something. That's offensive on numerous levels.
The "black-face" worked in Tropic Thunder, for example, because that was pretty much the "joke" of the character and the point the movie was trying to make on actors going to great lengths to get key roles in movies.
Perry White, as said above, is a character in a comic book series whose race has nothing to do with his character. Perry White can be any race and, hell, you could argue any gender (depending on how "gender-neutral" you think the name "Perry" is). Tonto, on the other hand, is a character that is supposed to be Native American by the very nature of the entire concept of the series. So getting a white man to play him is offensive on many levels.
To put it another way, it's very much like the situation in the fiction of Tropic Thunder. It's a white actor taking on a role meant for someone of an entirely different race by the very nature of the character.
What would the reaction be if, say, a biopic of Martin Luther King, Jr. was to be made and the actor they picked was Phillip Seymour Hoffman simply because he's the only one they think will have the acting chops and BO draw to pull it off?
Well, one of the unique and fascinating things about The Mask of Zorro is how royally it messes up Zorro's life. Can you imagine a Batman movie in which Bruce Wayne's wife is murdered before his eyes, and he then spends twenty years just wallowing in prison? The public would revolt. It was only because of Diego's relative obscurity, surely, that the writers had the cojones to pull off such a move.
Also, Zorro has an important advantage in that he's a sword-fighter, not a gun-fighter - and, apart from maybe pockets of Japan, he's one of the last "real-world" swordfighters in all of fiction that I can think of. It's a lot more charming, I think, to have an adventure-movie protagonist swing a sword than shoot people, with or without the pricey silver bullets.
And race is intrinsic to Tonto's character. The only thing that's intrinsically White about Perry is his name!
Zorro, obscure?! Don't know if I'd agree with that!
It was a ballsy, quite poignant storyline, but then again, we never really got to see the end of Zorro's life in any other version that I can think of. I kind of think of the sad ending to Robin Hood or the various downbeat 'elseworlds' story that have depicted the end of Batman's career.
But yea, I t take your point that Alejandro, the hero of TMOZ, is not really the Don Diego De La Vega, the traditional depiction of Zorro. My original point was more about the tone, pace and sensibility of the characters than plot points, though.
Good point. I guess they could get Tonto to do all the swordplay and stuff. Have you ever seen the French movie Brotherhood of the Wolf, in which Marc Dacascos plays the Native American sidekick to the hero, but steals the show with all his fancy martial arts expertise?
Using that logic a vast majority of established characters could be flipped just because, lead role or supporting. But I'd see it as lazy or a PR move.
Blade, Indiana Jones, Bond, Superman, Batman, Han Solo, Harry Potter I mean take your pick. Race isn't intrinsic to those roles but people do have an expectation of what those roles are.
The 'M' character in Bond was deftly handled by her making reference to her predecessor in the role. 'M' being a call sign as oppossed to a person. The same couldn't be said for Perry or most roles. There is an expectation, sometimes it works, nuBSG, sometimes it doesn't.
^ Perry White is merely a supporting character. Few people have any real conception of how he's meant to look. I can't even picture how he's drawn in the comics. As I said in the Superman thread, he's not like J. Jonah Jameson, of whom we have a prescribed view (flattop, Hitler moustache, cigar chomped in his mouth). Frank Langella, Jackie Cooper, Lane Smith and Michael McKean are all very different looking actors who played him in a different way. I didn't hear anyone jumping up and down about that.
As regards M, a better comparison might be Felix Leiter, who has been white in most of the 007 movies but was black in Never Say Never Again and then in the current movies. Did this hurt the movies or the character in any way? I would say not.
As regards M, a better comparison might be Felix Leiter, who has been white in most of the 007 movies but was black in Never Say Never Again and then in the current movies. Did this hurt the movies or the character in any way? I would say not.
Double post, but it's now being suggested that The Lone Ranger isn't dead - it may be retooled to remove the werewolves (yaaaaay!). One of the other reasons for the huge budget was one of the biggest train sequences in history. Now that's more like it!
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=81153
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=81153
It was pretty ridiculous when Leiter changed between Living Daylights and Licence to Kill from a young agent to an old, gray haired guy, though.
Well, no, I think that Blade's identity as a black man and Batman's identity as a white man are both fairly intrinsic. Especially with Bruce Wayne, who is clearly a child of Anglo-Saxon privilege. And it's implausible to have Indiana Jones being a successful professor if he's not white given his historical era.
But for Bond, Superman, Han Solo, and Harry Potter? Sure, why not? I've got no problem with a black Superman or a black James Bond. Harry Potter could be an African Briton without it significantly affecting his character arc -- he's a Wizard long before he's white, after all. Superman is supposed to be the Archetypical American, and that character arc, while traditionally white, could be retooled slightly for a African-American heritage without real problems.
'The Lone Ranger' Passes On Werewolves… Battles Trains Instead
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/the-lone-ranger-defeats-werewolves-battles-trains
They could only bring the budget down 8 million?!
This movie has flop written all over it. No way in hell should this movie cost that much. If Disney was smart they'll put their foot down and refuse to do this.
Prince of Persia also got a ridicious budget at 200 million, when it should have been made for half of that, and ending up failing pretty badly. Has Disney completely forgotten the existence of that movie?
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/the-lone-ranger-defeats-werewolves-battles-trains
They could only bring the budget down 8 million?!
This movie has flop written all over it. No way in hell should this movie cost that much. If Disney was smart they'll put their foot down and refuse to do this.
Prince of Persia also got a ridicious budget at 200 million, when it should have been made for half of that, and ending up failing pretty badly. Has Disney completely forgotten the existence of that movie?
I think more than some slight retooling would need to be done, tbh, if you were going to look at his upbringing. Not that there's anything wrong with Supes as a black man (and presumably raised by black parents - though a black Supes raised by a white farm family in rural/suburban Kansas would also change some things), but even today, it's inevitable he'd face some different challenges.
You talk about Bats as a man of privilege, but Supes typically carries around some privilege of his own, if of a different type.
He does, but I don't think Clark's status as a white male is actually intrinsic to his identity. After all, he's defined more by his principles than by his socioeconomic status; his status as a Kryptonian means in a real sense, he doesn't even need to live as part of the Human class system, after all. He's beyond it because he doesn't rely on it to sustain himself biologically. He lives as a Human and as an American in particular because of his moral principles, his identification with the idea of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." That's something that doesn't require a white background for him to believe in it.
So while a black Clark Kent would certainly be a departure, I don't think it would change the fundamental ethos of the character. A black Bruce Wayne, though, I think would. Part of Bruce's arc is that the loss of his parents was a fundamental trauma to him in a life that had never had any real traumas -- as the child of wealth and Anglo-Saxon privilege, this was the first time anything really awful had ever happened to him, and something in him snapped. In him, it triggered a desire to see to it that no one else ever suffered the way he did. But his status as a member of the wealthy elite is also the only thing that allows him to finance that particular choice, since he's not a Kryptonian and can't sustain himself outside of a class system -- nor sustain his campaign as Batman without his wealth.
Maybe I'm being unfair, but I just don't think a child of the working or middle classes would have been so untouched by trauma before his parents' deaths, nor would have felt so compelled to try to stop anyone else from suffering. When you're in the less powerful socioeconomic classes, especially the working class, trauma surrounds you all the time from a young age. And even if they did, it's just implausible that he would have been able to finance his Batman campaign without being rich -- and it is, frankly, unrealistic to depict Bruce Wayne as coming from Old Money unless he's white.
So, yeah, I do think that Bruce's status as a rich WASP is far too tied up in who he is and how he lives to change it, whereas Clark's status as a cultural WASP (not a biological WASP, of course, as he's Kryptonian) is, I think, far less vital to his character.
Perhaps not. But his family - the ones that instilled in him his love for "Truth, Justice, and the American way" do rely biologically on their social class. And with a different formative background, you get a very different Superman - see Superman: Red Son for a great look at this.
You keep throwing around this term, but in the modern day mileu I'd say it's outdated.
The bolded part I think is unfair - Bruce is clearly a (fairly) unique individual, and there's no reason a lowerclass person couldn't be equally compelled by witnessing his parents' murder. Minus the lack of preceding trauma I suppose, but that's not universal - Nolan's films don't make him a child completely free of trauma before his parents were gunned down. Indeed, in that case his fear from a childhood trauma inadvertently led to his parents' death.
And I think it's not necessary for Bruce to come from Old Money. It's traditional and ties into his relationship with Gotham, but not needed. A Batman whose father was the Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of his world could grow up in much the same way, for example.
It was pretty ridiculous when Leiter changed between Living Daylights and Licence to Kill from a young agent to an old, gray haired guy, though.
Yeah, the complete lack of consistency or continuity between Leiters in the pre-Craig era (the actor in LTK had previously played the role in LALD) used to annoy the hell out of me!
