Guardians is ensemble piece like Star Wars. She should be the Han Solo of the group if you wanted to rank front billing power.
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Guardians is ensemble piece like Star Wars. She should be the Han Solo of the group if you wanted to rank front billing power.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
Wolverine is the star of every Xmen film that's not First Class. Even a story that was originally written for a female protag (Days of Future Past with Kitty Pryde) was rewritten for him to star.
Storm has about 20 lines of dialogue through 4 films, and one of those is about a frog being struck by lightning.
Oh you.
That was Fox.
Probably but I doubt its much of an improvement.
I still remember on some forums there were people actually getting salty with LeGuin for daring to complain about the race lift and butchering of her work. I thought of this too when the whole "Last Airbender" casting fiasco happened. There were people defending that shit too.
dapperbandit
Banned
Putting science fiction to one side and tackling fantasy;
So much of it is inspired by the mythology and setting of Middle/Dark Ages Europe. Castles, green countryside, swords and spears, white indiginous people. To me it's not surprising that when someone creates a fictional world and transports that whole European influence into it they forget to include black/brown people. Typically if they are there they're dropped on a distant island or continent and are left to play an inconsequential role in the narrative: see the Summer Islands in ASOIaF.
Before someone takes us there, yes, I'm aware of that tumblr documenting people of colour in Medeival Europe. The key here is how people envision that time, not how it actually was. Mistakenly or not, people overwhelmingly look to Medeival times and think "99% White".
Some of these fantasy worlds are very unsubtle in their influences. It's very common for a fantasy to ease you into a setting by giving everyone English accents, and incorporating English classism by giving the bad guys (your orcs and ogres and whatnot) working class accents while your heroes speak eloquently and dip in and out of ye olde English, tis the way of it.
It get's messy when you're creating fantasy but using existing legends like Norse Mythology and try to add diversity. See the furor when they got Idris Elba to play Heimdall in Thor. "There were no black guys in Norse Mythology!" etc.
But is it *racist* to say "when I created this world I didn't include black people because that's not the story I wanted to tell." I don't know.
Science Fiction has far less in the way of excuses, especially because the nature of the genre gives you much more freedom to be imaginative, rather than being somewhat shackled to stuff like Arthurian legend and the Medeival template. Your science fiction is either entirely cut off from the real world or is set far off in the future. In either case there's not really any reason not to include black people and other less represented groups. Especially when the vision of the world/future in the science fiction is so often liberal in the modern sense. It happens, but it's quite rare when you're human future is a bloodthirsty dictatorship rather than a united democracy.
But then you get into the sticky area of what sells to an audience. Sci Fi and Fantasy literature are much less effected but your Fantasy or Sci Fi films or TV series tend to need a handsome lead and love interest and for whatever reason those people are often white.
I've kind of run out of steam and the topic tends to blen my brain a bit but there's some thoughts in there, make of them what you will.
So much of it is inspired by the mythology and setting of Middle/Dark Ages Europe. Castles, green countryside, swords and spears, white indiginous people. To me it's not surprising that when someone creates a fictional world and transports that whole European influence into it they forget to include black/brown people. Typically if they are there they're dropped on a distant island or continent and are left to play an inconsequential role in the narrative: see the Summer Islands in ASOIaF.
Before someone takes us there, yes, I'm aware of that tumblr documenting people of colour in Medeival Europe. The key here is how people envision that time, not how it actually was. Mistakenly or not, people overwhelmingly look to Medeival times and think "99% White".
Some of these fantasy worlds are very unsubtle in their influences. It's very common for a fantasy to ease you into a setting by giving everyone English accents, and incorporating English classism by giving the bad guys (your orcs and ogres and whatnot) working class accents while your heroes speak eloquently and dip in and out of ye olde English, tis the way of it.
It get's messy when you're creating fantasy but using existing legends like Norse Mythology and try to add diversity. See the furor when they got Idris Elba to play Heimdall in Thor. "There were no black guys in Norse Mythology!" etc.
But is it *racist* to say "when I created this world I didn't include black people because that's not the story I wanted to tell." I don't know.
Science Fiction has far less in the way of excuses, especially because the nature of the genre gives you much more freedom to be imaginative, rather than being somewhat shackled to stuff like Arthurian legend and the Medeival template. Your science fiction is either entirely cut off from the real world or is set far off in the future. In either case there's not really any reason not to include black people and other less represented groups. Especially when the vision of the world/future in the science fiction is so often liberal in the modern sense. It happens, but it's quite rare when you're human future is a bloodthirsty dictatorship rather than a united democracy.
But then you get into the sticky area of what sells to an audience. Sci Fi and Fantasy literature are much less effected but your Fantasy or Sci Fi films or TV series tend to need a handsome lead and love interest and for whatever reason those people are often white.
I've kind of run out of steam and the topic tends to blen my brain a bit but there's some thoughts in there, make of them what you will.
It's really awful that essentially every work of fantasy has a European-inspired setting, with almost no non-white characters. It's almost as if the only definition of fantasy is "swords and white people".
I think video games actually fare a bit better for diversity than films. Most human characters in Mass Effect aren't white, and the recent Halo games have had a lot of important people of color. The Elder Scrolls series is the most diverse fantasy franchise I know, with Black characters long-since playing important roles in the games. I like how, in direct contrast to Tolkein, the elves are not just "white people with pointy ears". Skyrim also made an effort to include a few brown Imperials.
It's outrageous when a game set in a make-believe world forces you to play as a white person.
I think video games actually fare a bit better for diversity than films. Most human characters in Mass Effect aren't white, and the recent Halo games have had a lot of important people of color. The Elder Scrolls series is the most diverse fantasy franchise I know, with Black characters long-since playing important roles in the games. I like how, in direct contrast to Tolkein, the elves are not just "white people with pointy ears". Skyrim also made an effort to include a few brown Imperials.
It's outrageous when a game set in a make-believe world forces you to play as a white person.
Really depends on what Hollywood picks up. Fantasy novels of years past get a bad rap for generally being written by old white dudes, but a lot of them have been surprisingly liberal or at least better in representing minorities and women as less a caricature and more a fleshed out person.
Hollywood just tends to cherrypick to fit their criteria.
……forgetit
Member
Really wondering if this shocked anyone, I mean just look at the avengers posters if you want to get an idea of how this is going. He'll they introduce 3 perfectly good black superheroes in the side movies and TV show just to ignore them in the main avengers movies.
I don't think so, aside from maybe just the demographic legacy of nerds? I think it's a form of escapism and appeal that's sort of self-propagating at this point. The white nerdy guys were the market originally for whatever reason you construct, and so they self-served. Even these days black geeks, girl gamers, etc. are still seen as a aberration; whatever penetration nerd culture has had on the mass culture, the "core" is still very much the same as it ever was (I'd love to have more concrete data to back up or disprove this though. Most of the numbers I've seen are primarily video games related which may not hold true for the more niche areas of nerd media.)
Until the recent two movies the Star Trek films were fairly minor successes from a BO standpoint, especially considering they didn't have much of a market outside domestic BO.
But it's conceived by an individual, so of course it's going to default to a person's tastes and worldview unless they are deliberately trying to circumvent it. You tell someone "think of a person", they're going to default to whatever's normal for them.
There's also the contextual point of the fantasy or sci-fi setting; Tolkien's Middle Earth was an analogue to Britain, so no duh everyone was white.
Games have a bit more of an issue because they straddle the line of authorial intent and the desire for ever-increasing player freedom, and especially in an RPG with faceless protagonists people will have a very strong desire to play "themselves". Which is interesting, but also sort of drifting from the topic at hand with movies.
Technically Keanu Reeves is more Asian than white. Quarter Chinese and half Hawaiian
Mrs. Manky
Banned
Drizzt Do'Urden?
We really needed that Deep Space Nine movie...
*sensiblechuckle.gif*
LONG overdue for a film adaptation, IMHO. Just need somebody who can act and is ambidextrous.
Bjomesphat
Banned
Why?
TitusGroan
Banned
Here's why this should be an issue for anyone who currently think it isn't:
When I was in school, being hardcore into fantasy and sci-fi meant you were part of the geek brigade. And as I'm sure many others here did, I hung out with fellow geeks in school, other kids interested in Halo and Star Wars and Tolkien and all that. The thing was, we didn't discriminate on gender. The geek clique I was part of was made up of both guys and girls who both enjoyed nerdy stuff. There were girls in my year who were also into Lord Of The Rings and Earthsea and stuff like that, and they felt more comfortable hanging out with us geeks than with the more preppy/sporty girls. Being in rural England, there wasn't a huge amount of racial diversity in my school, but I know that all over the world, there are kids of black, hispanic or asian heritage who also identify as geeks in school: kids who read comics, or enjoy games like Mass Effect or get excited at the thought of the upcoming Warcraft film.
Being a 'nerd', now more than ever, is a term which completely goes beyond gender or race. The nerd community shouldn't embrace new members based on their skin colour or gender, it should embrace them based on their interests in nerdy things. If you love the shit out of Warhammer, you're a nerd, and it doesn't matter what gender or race you are!
The problem is that Hollywood is not recognizing and addressing this new multi-gender, multi-racial nerd deomgraphic. It's actually a little insulting. The reason Hollywood makes so many science fiction/fantasy films revolving around white, straight males is because that's what they believe nerds still are. They think you nerds are white, awkward teenagers with braces who carry torches for preppy girls way out of your league. They think nerddom is a mono-gender, mono-racial demographic which responds best to power fantasies about white characters going and killing/blowing the shit out of stuff. The domination of white straight characters in sci-fi and fantasy is a direct result of Hollywood thinking that is primarily who nerds are. And it's not true anymore.
If we want more sci-fi and fantasy media to actually truly represent the demographic it's targeted towards, then we need more films starring women, LGBT characters, characters of other races, other sexual denominations. We need films to have more colourful casting, because the whole point of the nerd community is that it's the most colourful community out there. Nerds come from every walk of life, from every possible position in modern society, and if Hollywood cannot decently reflect that on screen, then it is a huge failing on their part.
When I was in school, being hardcore into fantasy and sci-fi meant you were part of the geek brigade. And as I'm sure many others here did, I hung out with fellow geeks in school, other kids interested in Halo and Star Wars and Tolkien and all that. The thing was, we didn't discriminate on gender. The geek clique I was part of was made up of both guys and girls who both enjoyed nerdy stuff. There were girls in my year who were also into Lord Of The Rings and Earthsea and stuff like that, and they felt more comfortable hanging out with us geeks than with the more preppy/sporty girls. Being in rural England, there wasn't a huge amount of racial diversity in my school, but I know that all over the world, there are kids of black, hispanic or asian heritage who also identify as geeks in school: kids who read comics, or enjoy games like Mass Effect or get excited at the thought of the upcoming Warcraft film.
Being a 'nerd', now more than ever, is a term which completely goes beyond gender or race. The nerd community shouldn't embrace new members based on their skin colour or gender, it should embrace them based on their interests in nerdy things. If you love the shit out of Warhammer, you're a nerd, and it doesn't matter what gender or race you are!
The problem is that Hollywood is not recognizing and addressing this new multi-gender, multi-racial nerd deomgraphic. It's actually a little insulting. The reason Hollywood makes so many science fiction/fantasy films revolving around white, straight males is because that's what they believe nerds still are. They think you nerds are white, awkward teenagers with braces who carry torches for preppy girls way out of your league. They think nerddom is a mono-gender, mono-racial demographic which responds best to power fantasies about white characters going and killing/blowing the shit out of stuff. The domination of white straight characters in sci-fi and fantasy is a direct result of Hollywood thinking that is primarily who nerds are. And it's not true anymore.
If we want more sci-fi and fantasy media to actually truly represent the demographic it's targeted towards, then we need more films starring women, LGBT characters, characters of other races, other sexual denominations. We need films to have more colourful casting, because the whole point of the nerd community is that it's the most colourful community out there. Nerds come from every walk of life, from every possible position in modern society, and if Hollywood cannot decently reflect that on screen, then it is a huge failing on their part.
LOL, Elektra is at least a Marvel character.
Wolverine is the biggest draw and a fan favorite, but that doesn't make him the protagonist necessarily.
X1 was focused more on Rogue.
X2 had Patrick Stewart getting top billing in the credits (handicapped)
X3 has Halle Berry getting second billing
I'm not saying there is a lack of diversity, just that the way the list is defined slants things a little bit IMO.
pants
Member
I concur, would be cool to see the two head to head though
Would kill for a film based on him.
Also a film based on the Stormlight Archives, but that'll never happen since the entire cast will basically be Asian and the only white guy who constantly comes up is referred to as the weirdo due to how he looks. I'm sure Hollywood would whitewash it hard though.
FortuneFaded
Member
What I mean is that there isn't the choice to begin with not that people wouldn't make the wrong choice themselves. Under true equality the number of movies with female protagonists would be around 50% and not 14%. If you were to primarily focus on the cinema goers then that suggests that there are 36 more movies involving female protagonists that should be in the top 100 but are not because cinema goers are sexist. I doubt this would be the case if the movies were evaluated objectively. This is because most of the whitemalewashing happens before the movies reach the cinema.
While Hollywood would probably like to consider itself progressive, it is by its nature a conservative, slow-to-react medium. Why would you expect studio execs to know or care what you think a modern nerd is? If it's not reflected in sales then it's going to be invisible to them.
Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold is the first one mentioned.
The duology is Queen of Angels and Slant, by Greg Bear. I could do some more science-fiction of color over in community, if you want. Actual black science fiction writers, like Samuel Delany or Octavia Butler, but also a ton of white guys and gals who get that the future is multicultural.
dapperbandit
Banned
Maybe I'm about to get told off by a Tolkein expert but I found it amusing in Desolation of Smaug during the bit where there's a public debate in Laketown over whether or not the Dwarves should go to the mountain, they made sure to include a black woman in a head scarf in the crowd and focus on her two or three times.
I couldn't help but think the intention there was "Look! There's one! See? Middle Earth's not racist!"
I couldn't help but think the intention there was "Look! There's one! See? Middle Earth's not racist!"
JeTmAn81
Member
Yeah, c'mon. Katniss is all about the D.
DerZuhälter
Member
Really sucks. I want my 250M $ budget space opera trilogy with an african-native american, handicaped, gay, jewish guy in the lead, played by Tom Hanks.
Oldschoolgamer
The physical form of blasphemy
DerZuhälter;123467702 said:
Tom Hanks is, "The Last (and only) Jewish N**** in Space"
I'm there Day -5 @ the advanced screening.
I was joking. I agree with your first post
The exception to the rule:
And of course, they fucked up the live action version:
Ugh, everything about that film was offensive. Was Shamalyan responsible for that insane whitewashing? One would think he'd insist on an all-Asian cast, give his own ethnic background.
Bjomesphat
Banned
White people making white characters makes the most sense to me. Hollywood isn't just limited to the US, these blockbusters make the majority of their money in foreign markets. Because China and Japan love these films, should we stack them with Asians? Well what about South America, they love this stuff too, better make room for some Latinos. The problem is, it gets to the point where the characters feel so contrived because they're trying to fill some quota and check off their diversity list and will end up being as silly as Captain Planet. Look, I've never once thought this or that character would be better as a different race or gender, I never thought a Will Smith character would be better played by Tom Cruise or something, because I don't really care. But if under-represented groups want more recognition, then make the product themselves. Women have started to get the idea and they've tapped into a gold mine with powerful female characters.
Witchfinder General
punched Wheelchair Mike
Beasts of the Southern Wild has a black, female lead but it's not a top 100 movie, sadly.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
ehh no
Ethnicity: English, Native Hawaiian, Portuguese, Scottish, 1/64th Chinese, and remote Dutch, French, Italian
http://ethnicelebs.com/keanu-reeves
The Blind Swordsman/woman is a pretty common trope overall I feel, just not on the Hollywood stage. That being said, I'm not sure how much blind people will be able to appreciate increased representation in a totally visual media like a movie.
I obviously agree with you overall 100% and brail audio books do exist for a reason to be fair.
Jesus how does one even bother throwing in 1/64th of anything.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
Gentleman Jack
Member
Messofanego
Banned
super-famicom
Member
Lois McMaster Bujold is a great author. I haven't read the Vorkosigan Saga, but in her Paladin of Souls book, the protagonist is a middle-aged woman. Late 30s early 40s if I remember right?
As for a disabled character, the only one that immediately comes to mind is Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. It's an ensemble cast, with 3-4 PoVs, but one of them is essentially a disabled war vet who suffers from seizures, incontinence, and various other ailments.
Also, I'd be interested in that sci-fi of color thread if it did get made.
That James Brown scene when they cloaked him with the Chancellor's cape.
One would be wrong.
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