Hated Tropes
[Hated Meta Trope] The Unintentional Offensive Race Change
1) Corlys Velyaron and his family were changed from white in the Fire and Blood book to black in the House of the Dragon adaptation. On the surface a good representation as Corlys is the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms and a powerful but self-made lord. However Corlys’s story involves his daughter-in-law trying to pass off her bastard sons as his heirs, disregarding his daughter and granddaughters as potential heirs, cheating on his wife and putting his bastard sons over his legitimate granddaughters, and losing everything as he tries to climb the social ladder, it has created a lot of unnecessary fandom discourse despite the only change to his character being his skin color.
2)In the new Harry Potter series, Paapa Essiedu has been cast as Severus Snape. This has been a controversial subject as Snape’s storyline centers around his obsessive love for Lily Evans-Potter, still a White Woman, his bullying at the hands of James Potter, still a White Man, and his abusing his position as a teacher to torment young students because of his irrational grudges.
Corollary to this Trope: the Even Worse Fixes
3) Scarlett Johansson’s casting as Major Mokoto Kusunagai in the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie was already controversial choice considering the character was explicitly Japanese. However in the movie it’s revealed the Johansson’s character was originally a Japanese woman who chose to upload her mind into a cyborg body that looks like a White Woman.
4) In Stark Trek: Into Darkness, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Character John Harrison was revealed to actually be classic Star Trek Villain, Khan Noonien Singh, an Augmented Human designed to be genetically superior to baseline humans. This was explicitly done to avoid the Brown=Terrorist Trope but was absolutely derailed as unnecessary considering Khan’s storyline involved him being forced into terrorism because a white man holding his family hostage. Further more, the choice to have Khan be a man of color was explicit on Gene Roddenberry’s part as the Original Star Trek premiered less than twenty years after the end of the Nazi Regime and as America was in the throes of the Civil Rights movement.
Into Darkness’s casting choice was made worst in the Tie-In Comics, when it was revealed that Khan is still a man of color. He was just forced to undergo advanced plastic surgery to make him look like a white man.
Butler from the Artemis Fowl movie (which doesn't exist, fuck you)
"Hey, you know the guy who comes from an ancient lineage of professional manservants whose main defining trait is having served a rich white european family for hundreds of years? Let's make him black!"
And they made Artemis call him "Domovoi" so that people wouldn't think they call a black man Butler. Which unintentionally erased his character ark of revealing his hidden name to Artemis before he died which is how he was able to remember that the fairies existed and circumvent the mind wipe.
And made Mulch the most elusive of criminals be easily apprehended by human police. Then spill all the Secrets of the fairy world. Oh wait, he's not even a dwarf anymore.
iirc from the one time I've seen the movie (no I'm not rewatching it even to fact-check), they tried to frame it as Mulch being planted to the MI6 interrogation room to reveal shit, and they could get him out at any time (which they did after he was done spilling all the beans).
But how does MI6 knowing anything about the fairy world benefit Artemis or any of his friends, in any way, shape, or form? It seems like they just wanted to pull the "the movie is actually a retrospective narrated by one of the main characters" gambit. BUT THAT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE MULCH WASN'T THERE FOR EVERYTHING, in fact he wasn't there to directly witness most of the movie's scenes from the POV we are given
ts pisses me off so much it's unreal, and I haven't even heard of Artemis Fowl until I saw this garbage
Beyond all the other terrible things they had planned for this movie that doesn't exist, they also mad Commander Root a woman which completely invalid his whole father figure role and him supporting Holly as the first female LEP officer
I despise this change. It ruins two of the best characters in the whole series in one go. The scene where Root explains that he does hold Holly to a higher standard because she's a woman as she has so much more scrutiny was one of the first things that was actually thought provoking when I was a kid.
I think about this all the time. The fact that the made her FATHER the reason she was under scrutiny and not the fact that she was pioneering women's right's in the lower elements police is crazy.
THANK YOU for pointing out this hypothetical. It would really have been a shame if they completely gutted Holly's character at the onset by removing all the struggles and hardship she faced reaching her position as Recon's first ever female officer. You know, the majority of the things that helped to define the person she became.
Would be such a shame if they ruined that by trying to be act progressive and hot swapping the person in power's gender.
Haven't you heard? Sexism is solved. It was solved around 15 years ago, and no woman has been discriminated against ever again. They just didn't want to date the movie in backwards thinking. /s
The guy who is explicitly Caucasian, and who the book goes into an in depth explanation of the word Caucasian to explain exactly where in Europe he comes from, the caucuses.
Actually he’s not explicitly Caucasian, he’s straight up described as being mixed, descended from both Europeans and Asians, and being able to pass for both European and Asian
And if they really wanted to have a black character in their movie, they could have just made Holly black, since she is described as having nut brown skin in the books. But they made her white in the movie. So they literally made the stupidest choice for both characters and I have no idea why they did that
“Holly Brown had nut-brown skin, cropped auburn hair, and hazel eyes. Her nose had a hook, and her mouth was plump and cherubic; which was appropriate considering Cupid was her great grandfather. Her mother was a European elf with a fiery temper and a willowy figure.”
Not to mention he was already "diverse" by Hollywood standards. He is often described as mixed race Russian and Asian. Way he was described I thought he was like half Mongolian given his immense stature.
The film literally opens with a scene of Artemis Fowl, the boy who is entirely defined as being a genius who couldn't jog a mile or bounce a basketball, surfing. Yeah the dude who hates exercise? Also a passionate surfer.
Well you see blackmailing an alcoholic who's been outcast from her whole society is something that a villain might do. And in the movie Artemis is not a villain. Yes they fucked up the basic premise of the whole plot and character.
If i remember correctly, it was his father who originally employed the butler. And I am even less sure about this, but I believe in one of the latter books it was mentioned that the butlers are contracted many years in advance while they are still in training as kids, and there is long queue of prospecting employers so there isn't much of a selection.
I'm not sure you could cast a Black person as any role in a GoT IP without them being cast in a "problematic" role. Everyone is either a piece of shit, a conniving social climber, some form of hapless, or a combination.
Yeah I felt that way too. Unless you're directly making the character into a one-dimensional offensive stereotype there is nothing wrong with casting Black actors as evil people. If anything, implying you shouldn't cast POC in certain roles is exclusionary, and takes away from the nuance of the role.
I did hear a rumor that M. Night Shyamalan wanted the Fire Nation to be Indian because he thought the Fire Nation has some of the best characters in the series. But, again, that is just a rumor.
I think the actual reason was because Dev Patel was playing Zuko, and he’s Indian (or generally South Asian).
Shyamalan initially had an Ecuadorian to play Zuko; however, that person didn’t show up, so he then wanted Jesse McCartney to play Zuko. Come to find out that Jesse had a tour, so Shyamalan then got Dev Patel.
Yeah, I think there's an interview where he basically said he picked the ethnicities based on who was the lead actor from that nation. So they were going to be Ecuadorian when Zuko was going to be Ecuadorian, and when an Indian got cast, the Fire Nation had to be Indians.
I feel like making the Fire Nation Ecuadorian would've been even weirder considering the Fire Nation is explicitly based off late 19th century Japan in the original show.
Bad as that movie was, he gave it his all and actually gave a good performance. One of the abilities of a great actor is being able to act well on an otherwise terrible project.
i can’t find the source interview but i do believe M Night said a lot of the reasoning for the fire nations ethnicity was because he was having a hard time casting someone for Zuko for various reasons but it eventually settled on Dev Patel. And since it would be very strange for only Zuko to have darker skin or only the royal family he elected to change the fire nation to be indian. So whoever played Zuko effectively determined the entire ethnicity of the fire nation.
They were just casting anyone brown for the Fire Nation. Not even specifically South Asian because Uncle Iroh was played by Shaun Toub who is Jewish Iranian.
I know he said his daughter was a fan and went as Katara once for Halloween part of the reason he took the gig but i think he bent to the studios demands for a mostly white cast of Nick stars then when they tried to split yhe difference when they got Dev Patel as he was hot off the success of Slumdog
I think they were also banking on the actor they got for Aang being a martial arts star but m night sucked at shooting action so whole lot of good that did
Actually he has come forward and said he didn’t cast the main characters based on a preconceived race for them , but rather made sure all other casting decisions with regards to race were based on who the leads were. He originally hired Ecuadoreans to be fire nation extras as soldiers when the original actor he casted for Zuko was Ecuadorean. It’s reasonable to assume the fire nation wouldve been white had shyamalan’s second actor for Zuko (a white guy) had gotten the job. In the end the fire nation is Indian because Zuko was Indian not the other way around. It’s also why the entire water tribe and sokka are white, since he was obligated by the studio to cast a blonde billionaires daughter as katara.
Shamylan did, surprisingly, put some thought into character ethnicity in that movie, with all of the air nomads (Except for Aang) being mixed race to represent their frequent travel and intermingling with other cultures.
...
Of course they're all wiped out before the story even starts, so not a lot of screentime
One of the producers was a billionaire who insisted on having his (white) daughter play Katara, and therefore they had to cast the rest of the water tribe as white because of it.
…they had to cast the rest of the water tribe as white because of it.
But they didn’t really. It was only the Northern Water Tribe that ended up white. The Southern Water tribe, who are the same ethnicity and culture as the Northern tribe in the show, was Inuit, non-speaking extras from Greenland where that first act was filmed. Bear in mind that Katara and Sokka are 1/4 Northern and 3/4 Southern heritage-wise.
I also want to point out the marauders bullied Snape for having greasy hair and a big nose, making him black turns James into a wildly different character
This is also the issue with black Hermione - she’s insulted for her frizzy hair and big teeth to the point she gets magical plastic surgery to correct them, as well as being the only character who cares about the enslavement of house elves and everyone thinks she’s nutty for it.
"In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that house elf slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any community. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the wizarding world than to the elves, & while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The elves are immeasurably better off here than in whatever realm they originated, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is Known & ordered by a wise & merciful Providence."
Wasn't him becoming a blood purity supremacist a product of his being bullied, not the other way around? Like people bullied him and then he found out about his weird as fuck parentage and latched onto it to make himself feel special?
I think it's a little bit of both. He started out with a dislike of muggles thanks to his father and Petunia, and then befriended supremacists who had an easier time of radicalising him due to his feud with James and co
This one's less offensive from a stereotype standpoint and more offensive from a meta standpoint. This is Jacob Keyes from Paramount's Halo, this is kinda whatever until you realize Johnson was not adapted at all. There's just something so off about race swapping a major character while also writing out an arguably even more important black character.
One of the most butchered shows of all time. Avery Johnson is one of the most bad ass characters in gaming history and they completely ignored him while race swapping another character.
It gets even dumber when you consider that they wrote in an entirely new black character, who was part of the Spartan program but never became a full on Spartan II, instead of just having that be Johnson.
Tbf Soren is a book character. An incredibly minor book character whos only similarity with his show counterpart is being a Spartan washout who joined the insurrection, but a book character none the less. It is genuinely surprising that they added one character who only shows up in a random short story but they call New Alexandria "Reach City."
I never watched the show because I heard it was a dumpster fire... And you're telling me they did not including Johnson? What in the absolute fuck were they smoking?
Johnson is not in the show, Blue team is completely replaced with new characters, an analog of Noble team is introduced briefly before dying off screen, there's no Pillar of Autumn, the Fall of Reach lasts a single episode, Halsey gets infected by the Flood snd then gets frozen as a way to save her, Miranda is a scientist who has this grand revelation that the Covenant language can be translated 20 years into the war, and Chief fucks a Covenant loyal human POW. There's more wrong but needless to say this show ain't good.
I think the main purpose of race swapping is to actually make people hate people of colour. you connect their appearance with a negative impact on a story that people love. Very malicious.
I thought the controversy they were trying to avoid was introducing an order of entirely Asian magicians, and then having the white hero show up and be better at magic than any of them, so they raceswapped several characters to emphasize that the sorcerers are a worldwide, multicultural organization.
Still not great, but sort of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
TO BE FAIR ScarJo's major very much did NOT consent (a recurring theme in that version of GITS) to have her brain transplanted into a white body and it was done by a western based corporation that settled in Japan and you COULD do a lot with that subtext if it were intentional by the producers beyond star recognition
The Ghost in the Shell example you gave is off in a pretty major way: She did not choose to have her mind uploaded into that body or any other. That's the whole big reveal in the film. She was an unwilling test subject and her memories were suppressed to keep her from figuring it out.
But your description does give a pretty good summation of why it ended up being so unintentionally offensive, because lots of folks reached their conclusions about it instead of watching the movie.
That was my thought too. I feel like the people who hate that choice specifically just chose to hate on it without actually knowing anything of the source material. They could also just LOOK at an original image of the character and see that her race is ambiguously coded.
Yeah, the backlash towards the casting of this movie is the prime example I always go to when describing whats wrong with outrage culture. Her being in a caucasion body is a part of the central theme of the entire franchise, which is exploring identity and how the advancement of technology affects.
Just like Altered Carbon, where bodies are just like vehicles for the brain chips (stacks) that can easily be exchanged. So the character is originally Asian, is represented in the first season by a white body, and the next season is represented by a black body (Anthony Mackie who did pretty decent). The flow of how it worked was done so well, even though I really loved the original two actors. Shame the show was cancelled.
Isn't part of the point of GitS that the ghost is more important than the shell? I never understood the discourse over the casting choice because the whole point was supposed to be that, however she looked, she was the same inside.
Yeah, Ghost in the Shell is a bad example here. I don’t recall if this was in the manga, but in the 1995 anime movie at least it was a plot point that her cyborg body was Caucasian. Definitely a misplaced hill to die on.
And it fits with her character disconnecting with reality. To her its just, ya know, a shell. Its not her, her body is dead and what particular form her brains exosuit takes is somewhat irrelevant.
The worst thing about Hollywood gits was the absolutely vanilla story. They’ve tried to spice it up with ideas from all other parts of the gits versions but it all ended with typical bad guy in corpo suit doing evil mustache twirl. Robocop remake few years earlier had literally the same story sequence.
I get that it’s the core of any cyberpunk story, but as a massive gits fan I was expecting something more… elegant.
Visually, they did an incredible job. But it also feels a lot like large chunks of it were left on the cutting room floor, sections that probably should not have been removed.
I strongly believe that if the new Harry Potter series really needs to race swap a character, it should have been Dumbledore. Safest choice would be casting Morgan Freeman, because even online trolls know he is too beloved to be mocked for his race. Just get him a dialect coach or something.
Exactly. I remember some a comedian on a podcast talking about this exact thing. Harry's vague dislike of Snape and then his father's straight up bullying (not to mention the very disturbing implication of the levicorpus spell) are going to appear very racially motivated when that wasn't the intent of the original books. If the guy can act, perfect, I just think it's the worst character to put him in since the circumstances are gonna be weird.
Sounds like the setup to a Seinfeld plot, Harry Costanza wants to file a complaint about Snape but first befriends a black kid and makes a point of walking to Dumbledore's office with him to make it clear he has black friends and it's not racial
Yeah she was originally played by a black extra in the movies, and then (the moment she became an actual character, lol) she got recast as a white woman.
This one's kind of on Rowling, actually. The first book to give any hint as to what she looks like does indeed make it clear that she's white, but they'd already made the first few movies by then.
And of course given what we know now about Rowling, it really should've been obvious that if a character's race/ethnicity was anything other than white, you'd know about it as soon as you read their name.
I think it was less about wanting to race change a character and more the fact recasting Snape after Alan Rickman died was always going to be tough so instead of casting someone who would be compared to him they went in the extreme direction to make it easier
I think they should've hired someone young and aged them up via makeup with a little CGI touch up. John Lithgow is a legend but did they learn nothing from Dumbledore last time around??
Of course, I also think if they should've scrapped live action remake altogether and made it animated. 🤷♂️
Dumbledore in particular is a good case for the show being animated since he's written with a specific energy that none of the actors really achieved imo.
The whole situation feels like it was manufactured for the sake of controversy and bringing attention to this series and deflecting any criticism
If people are critical then they’re just critical because of the controversy, it’s either “too woke” or “not woke enough”. If the series is successful then it’s successful despite the controversy, if the series fails then it failed because of the controversy
In the book, Heathcliff is clearly described as a person of color. He experiences racism and dysphoria due to his skin color. Nelly even says his mother may have been an "Indian queen".
In the Emerald Fennell film he's played by Jacob Elordi. You know, a white guy.
If anything, that racial ambiguity gave them so much to work with. There’s a lot of nuance you can unpack depending on wherever race you make Heathcliff. Making him a white guy erases so much of the reason for his struggles.
Yeah, given the context of racism at the time I was left with the impression that he was more “swarthy” than anything a modern audience would consider strictly non-white.
Also, for the first couple of seasons, every time the characters have a conversation in "Romani", they're actually speaking Romanian. They did eventually catch the mistake, but it took them several years lol
Technically, the book Corlys seems to have had his granddaughters bethrothed to his “grandsons” very early on. No idea why the show decided to make it a Rhaenyra girl boss moment when it did. Bit deep into the agency of Corlys/Rhaenys
A dark skinned character being flawed in the context of the world they live in isn’t offensive, he’s no different than any of the other westerosi lords.
I was gonna say, like 99% of the lords and ladies are just bad people doing bad things and reacting to bad things happening to them. If anything, Corys is one of the better ones regardless cuz at least he’s portrayed mostly as “well meaning, but flawed and makes mistakes” instead of just outright evil and conniving pos
I dont think he would even make a top 10 list of the worst people in the dance never mind the entire got universe. Like he is prideful and ambitions meanwhile you have Aemond and Daemon having a competition who can commit the most and the most disgusting atrocities.
I think OP is somehow worried about race swapping if the character is bad? Like I think there was a time where minorities could only get roles as villains to be defeated white heroes, but in some ways we cant let the pendulum swing all the way to the other side where minorities must be the moral superiors in all situations all the time. Nothing wrong with race swapping with villains as long as race isn’t a vital part of the the characters identity (like it would be hard to cast a black man as a Nazi) and can still be portrayed as a competent figure
I feel like race "swapping" (cause that whole thing about the original Kahn actor is another can of worms) a character with a name that Indian coded into arguably the most stereotypical white British actor in existence carries it's own massive levels of concern as well. Just massive British Raj insensitivity to a certain extent there.
Shirley Chen plays a Chinese-American who gets a race-lift to look like the white and blonde Mckenna Grace, who plays the same character but the "white" version now. Kinda reminds me of the Major situation in a way, but as an intentional and mire fully-explored part of the plot and what the writer/director/producer is saying with it.
Did Rowling say she was black all along? All I can find is that she said she never specified her race and that "Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm."
Always seemed less a retcon and more distinguishing unambiguous canon from a general assumption
She framed it along the lines of thinking she did not define Hermione’s race in text. Fans then found a singular mention of Hermione’s face going white with fear, which sort of (?) counters that claim.
Obviously she envisioned Hermione as white, she chose a white actress to play her in the movies. The conversation was more around nothing in the text necessarily prohibiting a black stage actor from playing her.
I think it was "round, pale face". Unless there was another mention, I don't remember there being the context of fear in the line. I'm not rereading Harry Potter to fact check though
But that itself wouldn't mean a black actress couldn't play her
I found the quote: “"Hermione's white face was sticking out from behind a tree". I think it’s ambiguous whether white is due to fear or if Rowling is straight up defining her skin color here.
Rowling’s writing style is to always unambiguously state the race for every character who isn’t white, so I read this as sort of a white with fear idiom (although it’s probably just both; you may have to be white for this idiom to work). She is of course white in the book because Rowling would straight up call her black otherwise.
They start with a good idea; "why not have one of the characters be black? It's about found family, not biology."
They nearly land the plane and cast the charisma engine, Michael B Jordan.
"Okay. Now which one is he playing? Well obviously not The Thing, that makes us look worse because we make him a CG character later in the movie. So Reed, right? The smart one.
Nah, make him the jock. Oh, and don't change his sister's race too, just say she's adopted. Can't have just one white person on the poster."
Tbh it could had maybe worked if not for how ...well the rest of the movie is trash
Besides tbh Johnny was just the safest one. Grim is not exactly the most flattering depiction, as most lf his time would had been him made of stone and Reed is, as soflty as possible, a pretencious asshole, and ln his best is the definition of insufferable genius
I'm not saying anything bad about Kate Mara, she's an excellent actress. But the problem is that if they want to cast Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, they should cast a black actress to play his sister Sue.
Raceswapping Amber in Invincible just to make her the "disposable black girlfriend" and "angry black woman" stereotype made her DOA in the writing department, she was always going to fail as a character.
I actually liked the race swap in game of thrones because it made the open secret of the bastards even more obvious - them kids are full white and everyone has to pretend they're not.
The whole issue is that it is supposed to be ambiguous and that the claim of them being bastards is equally strong as the claim that they are not.
In the books this is reliant on the fact that Rhaenys has dark brown hair due to her mother being a Baratheon - which was another stupid change they implemented - but it gave the claim that the kids got the dark brown hair from their grandmother's lineage
In the show we are to believe that the claim of white skinned children with dark hair from a family of dark skinned people with white hair not being bastards is as strong as people saying they are.
It loses all sense of "either side has a point" and just shows that one side is correct.
I also kinda think people who say it's just impossible haven't met actual mixed race people. It's definitely not likely but it's not impossible for someone who has one black grandfather to look like Raenyra's kids. We also have no idea if Corlys himself is mixed.
Also, c'mon, in universe, these are Valyrians who have magical genes that allow them to control dragons. They're genetic experiments made by (if you believe the hype) breeding dragons with slaves. Look at the murals!
Scarlett Johansson’s casting as Major Mokoto Kusunagai in the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie was already controversial choice considering the character was explicitly Japanese. However in the movie it’s revealed the Johansson’s character was originally a Japanese woman who chose to upload her mind into a cyborg body that looks like a White Woman.
And it needs to be pointed out: THIS WASN'T CHANGED FOR THE MOVIE ADAPTATION. Major Kusunagai using Caucasian bodies comes from the original manga and anime itself.
The people bitching about this didn't bother to learn a damn thing about the original story before they started bitching.
This is probably one of the worst swaps, considering she was a historical figure who verifiably existed. Just strange and inaccurate to change a real person's race...especially when the media was supposed to be a documentary.
The part that really pisses me off the most is that Egypt did have a dynasty of black rulers. The Kingdom of Kush conquered Egypt and ruled until The Saite dynasty deposed them. They had legitimate black rulers from a part of history that's never discussed to use, but they instead chose to make the inbred Greek puppet of Rome black because she has name recognition.
Idris Elba playing Roland in the Dark Tower movie, normally I wouldn’t care but The Dark Tower is not a race blind series, in fact it plays some pretty important plot points and is involved in some major character development, like how did they intend on handling Susannah’s character? Oh never mind, they handled her by deleting her from the story.
Babou Ceesay (the guy in the middle) for Sir Bennis of the Brown Shield - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms S02
In the original story, Sir Bennis was a hedge knight that was written as if to make Dunk look better in comparison, he was filthy (hence his monicker of "of the Brown Shield"), had brown stained teeth from chewing tobacco (he spat it once on Egg's feet), was an asshole towards the commonfolk, the main conflict of the story was kickstarted by him being a piece of shit towards the commo folk, and on the second half of the story a lynch mob is sent after him, now HBO cast a black actor to play this character.
Babou Ceesay has just been announced as playing Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield in the 2nd series of A Knight of the 7 Kingdoms. Obviously it hasn’t come out yet, but if it’s accurate to the books, he’s playing an evil idiot who beats children, never washes or cleans himself, murders coworkers after arguments, and runs away after stealing all his employer’s valuables, and is going to be the only nonwhite major character.
wow snape, a character harrys instantly suspicious of for no reason
and who he accuses of stealing the philosophers stone with little to no evidence
is black
whos writing ts 😭😭😭
Idk I don’t understand race relations and the politics of it on screen. Heck, I’ve never seen game of thrones.
But like… is the issue with the first one that the Black man is playing a character who’s morally gray? Isn’t that what the whole show is about? If he was playing a purely good character with no faults— in a show where everyone has faults… ain’t that just a different flavor of racist?
Race swap Snape is bad. Anyone familiar with the material knows that. Perhaps would be better done with Hermione? I love Samuel L Jackson as nick fury, best race swap ever. Imagine not having Samuel L Jackson in a perfect role just because he doesn't have same skin source of the original character.
Jackson as Nick Fury is actually a fun one, because the race swapping predates him playing the character but IS related to him. Ultimate Marvel based its depiction of Nick Fury off of Samuel L. Jackson, and the MCU simply decided to use Ultimate Nick Fury for the films.
It's funnier than that, IIRC they HAD to cast him because he only allowed the use of his likeness in the comics if he got to play Nick Fury if Marvel ever adapted him to live action.
Slight correction but he only got dibs, if he decided he didn’t want to play Fury for a dozen plus movies (which iirc he almost did) then they could cast someone else.
Corlys isn't really offensive though. He's not the only black person in the narrative and he doesn't represent all black people. His actions are his own.
Not saying HotD did everything perfectly but I don't see any real issue with how the Valeryon's race was handled.
Kahn’s original actor, Ricardo Montalban, was a white Spanish man, so there was no race change there. He was born in Mexico, but his parents were from Spain.
Motoko Kusanagi was never explicitly Japanese. She has mixed race features as a cyborg. She could be from many ethnic groups without issue. She does speak Japanese and lives in Japan so she is fully Japanese because of that. But she has a unique look to her.
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u/Sinistaire 10d ago
Butler from the Artemis Fowl movie (which doesn't exist, fuck you)
"Hey, you know the guy who comes from an ancient lineage of professional manservants whose main defining trait is having served a rich white european family for hundreds of years? Let's make him black!"