Is changing an iconic character's race or gender a good or bad thing?

I forgot about Cleopatra. Than again, I never bothered to watch it before. The king in The King and I was based on a real historically based figure?

Whoops, sorry about that, I guess the King and I is fiction.

Then again, so is Jesus.

The King and I is based on a biography - real people. Not sure which casting is weirder, Rex Harrison or Yul Brynner. or maybe Rita Moreno as Tuptim. Weirdness all round.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_and_the_King_of_Siam_(novel)

pretty much all of the casting in that film was off. they should have been African, Greek, Arab and Macedonian. Elizabeth Taylor? Richard Burton? Roddy McDowell?

hahaha too funny Rex Harrison is in there as Julius Caesar. yeah right

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056937/fullcredits/

Here are a few I'm aware of - I'm sure there are others. But, you're not protesting the thesis that Hollyweird has been whitewashed, are you?


Alicia Nash (wife of John Nash in A Beautiful mind) is Honduran. She's played by Jennifer Connolly
Massai, an Apache warrior at the time of Geronimo - played by Burt Lancaster in the movie
Tony Mendez (Argo main character) - Ben Affleck
Jeffrey Ma - Asian (real life blackjack cheater in movie 21) played by Jim Sturgess
We've mentioned Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. Angelina Jolie was in talks to play her in another remake.
Jolie plays late journalist Daniel Pearl's mixed-race wife Marrianne in A Mighty Heart

Good ones. So much ridiculous (er, to me, a child of Hollywood) casting over many decades, including now.

I often have felt, at a2k and other places, like I'm the only one ever interested in "foreign" films. That's not true of course, but it seems a lot of americans aren't interested in "the other" unless he or she is a cartoon character. I was introduced to foreign films on a blind date (my mother didn't like him, he smelled of smoke), a fellow who took me out to see a Jules Dassin's He Who Must Die, and then for coffee. I was probably twenty. Let's say it wasn't love at first sight (he was somebody at work's brother, not that long before from Hungary. He was probably bemused by me.)
Topping it off, Jules Dassin was, according to wiki, born in Connecticut, but it was a French production and set in Greece.

I've spent a lot of time and almost-love for foreign films, while liking some american ones of course. The thing is, I tend to like personal stories well told, and I got more of those at the Fox Venice Theater (art film/whatever is available in film files) than I did in theaters on LA's main boulevards. Doing all that, I was introduced to other folks in the world, of whatever shade or nationality or circumstance.

Beginning film makers sometimes start small with low money and equipment and involve friends at hand. But Hollywood (and similar) don't usually reach for actors who fit the roles that are at hand, they reach for names who will pull in crowds early who might work out in the role with some tweaking.

It always has revolved around money, me thinks.

Yeah, it's about money, but it's a bit more complicated. The reason hollyweird bigwigs give for not financing movies about (and by) minorities is always that they wouldn't be financially viable. The problem with that reasoning is that it isn't an idea that's been really tested. They ASSUME no one wants to see movies by, about, and /or acted in by minorities. I don't know that's true, and I certainly don't think it has to stay that way.

I agree it's an assumption, will say it is a long long time one, still is, and say it's ridiculous. Certainly at least re what I'll call small/real type story movies. But blockbuster wannabees will often need name appeal. Changing who gets name appeal is the trick. Some of this comes down to the buyers, the subscribers to netflix, and yadda yadda. Hard to support people who aren't there, though.

I think blockbuster type movie production has already passed into it's own zone with grown ups having less and less interest. Other forms will develop, are developing, I hope.

One more thing -
the Los Angeles metropolitan area is one of, if not the most, diverse places on the globe re ethnicities/race. In the seventies and some eighties, because of my husband's interest in theater, mfa in playwriting, we went to a million small plays, or it seemed so, kidding. Anyway, asian theater, black theater, latino theater among them.
No shortage of people in LA of varied backgrounds who know how to act, how to engage an audience.
The studios just need to look.

Irking at the least. If you're gonna revive an old series, or do a comicbook movie, and you change gender or ethnicty of famous characters, make something new. Be like taking "Superman" and making him Latino. No problem with Latino superheros, but make a new one. Don't take other people's creations and characters and switch things around to be all PC and crap. For one thing, it's so obviously that, for another it's altering a character. How would people feel if they made a new Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Hamlet was a lesbian? Or more to the point, a Bible movie where Jesus was a woman? People'd burn down the theatres.

Depends on how good a production it is. Maxine Peake seemed to pull it off quite well.



http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/sep/21/hamlet-maxine-peake-royal-exchange-review-delicate-ferocity

This is a really stupid analogy, people reinterpret Shakespeare all the time. Helen Mirren played Prospero to great acclaim. I recently saw the RSC's Merchant of Venice where Antonio and Bassanio were having a gay relationship, (which actually made a lot more sense,) and the RSC's next production of Othello stars a black Othello and a black Iago.

Thanks Izzy. Excellent post.

Thanks, although I must admit being a bit cheesed off about the Fantastic Four. Johnny Storm is now black, but his sister is still white. They should have changed both or neither.

The number of people who are completely bent by that is astounding. I was talking summer reviews with a number of people at different times and each time the topic of F4 poor reviews came up the first thing out of their mouths was the race of the characters. I never really even saw any brother/sister interactions in the other F4 movies so I don't know why it is a big deal. I doubt any of the people I talked to were F4 fan boys upset that the movies weren't true to the comics.

I read the FF when I was a kid, from what I remember the brother/sister relationship was quite a big deal.

I would have made Reed Richards black, he's the leader and an intellectual. Johnny is the most immature member of the quartet, making him black means blacks are still subservient to and less mature than whites.

Ben Kingsley as Ghandi

And I would add,

Dwayne Johnson as Hercules.

Portraying Hercules as exclusively heterosexual. In actual Greek lore Hercules was profoundly bisexual. Using modern terms anyway. Same with the Spartans though not mentioned in "300." And Achilles' "cousin" in "Troy" was not historically his cousin so much as his gay lover.

Making "The Equalizer" black was ok but I grew up with the tv series, and really loved the movie but for the racist subtext. Because the character kills lots of people, all of whom are white, and he's black, I owrried it was sending a stereotypical 'fear the violent black man' message however inadvertantly. And the scene where he goes to his old CIA friends "seeking their permission" only fed into the whole thing. The black man has to go to his rich white friends to get their permisison.

These problems aside, awesome movie. Awesome score too. That emo-gothy sorta "you're gonna die alone" piece was great.

In actual Greek lore he was called Heracles.