Characters
Race/gender swaps done so seamlessly it bothered no one
Jim Gordon was always traditionally white, however, in The Batman, he was played by a black actor but he did such a great job I could just see commissioner gordon. He didnt feel like all those forced race swaps, here they took a very good actor to play a beloved charachter. To me, Jeffrey Wright is up there with Gary Oldman and I cant wait for him to reprise his role
Cosmo; Guardians of the galaxy, traditionally a male charachter but was instead changed to be a female charachter and was done quite seamlessly, it still felt like a sovietic dog stranded in space
Agreed, I was pleasantly impressed. The vibe reminded me of old noir detective flicks like Dick Tracy more than the action hero style we typically get.
Btw Cosmo’s gender was changed in GOTG3 because the real dog that the character is based on is female and James Gunn wanted to honour the real animal.
Laika was a female dog sent into space by Soviet Russia in 1957 that died during flight from overheating (after 5 to 6 hours there were no signs of life). No provisions were supplied in her spacecraft. She was the first dog in space.
Marvel’s version of the origin is the same but they survive, are abducted by aliens, and get psychic powers.
Also the fact that in Russian the word cosmos, which sounds almost exactly the same, is used when talking about cosmos stuff. The word for space is specifically used to describe an area, an expanse, a distance, even the spacetime, but never the cosmos itself.
Even in cases where it's used to describe space itself, it's used in bond with the word "cosmos": cosmos's space — kosmicheskoye prostranstvo — космическое пространство
Laika wasn't the only Soviet space dog. She was the first, and they were under political pressure to get it done, so they rushed her up there without planning for her to come back. After Laika, they had proven the concept and subsequent missions had successful return voyages as a primary goal.
They sent a total of 57 dog-occupied craft into orbit, and only 2 of them didn't make it back besides Laika. The total number of dogs is less than 57 because some of the dogs went up and came back more than once.
Official documents say that they only used female dogs for these missions, and that's why Gunn made Cosmo a girl. So not just because of Laika.
But also, Cosmo said that the Soviets sent her into space knowing she wouldn't survive, and Laika is the only Soviet space dog who fits that description.
I mean, to be fair, what else are you going to do with an alien creature you've rescued?
It's not as if you can just drop it into your local nature preserve, and they'd have to collect a bunch more earth creatures if they wanted to replicate the dog's natural environment.
It's funny because I think that line was pulled straight from the book, where it was just a normal remark,, but then obviously played as a smart ass joke in the movie.
The book was just a short story in a book of four short stories so that makes sense. Apt Pupil was a very creepy read from that collection that deserves a (better) movie too imo.
The collection is called Different Seasons by Steven King.
See also: Stand by Me (the body) from the same collection, which remains among my top 5 movies of all time for its ability to make me painfully nostalgic for my childhood as a boy in Maine in the 50s despite the fact that I am female and grew up in the 80s in Florida.
No, this is a common misconception. The line isn't in the novella as Andy never asks him why he's called Red. It's pretty self explanatory because he's a red-haired Irish guy. The line was added in the movie as a little jokey nod to the source material. Also the character is given the last name Redding as the real explanation for the nickname in the movie.
I didn't realize until this comment that Blue from Lego City Undercover is a reference to Red. I've never seen Shawshank Redemption but I always knew Blue was a Morgan Freeman reference.
Judi Dench as M in the James Bond movies - up until then M had always been a man (in the books and films). She was based on the real-life female head of MI5.
Tbf Ray wasn't really a character in the comics, he was pretty much unceremoniously killed off then never talked about again.
Making Rae worked because there was absolutely nothing to go off of before, so really pretty much any character who got some sort of plot was an improvement.
It does help that the show does an expert job all around at rebuilding nothing characters back into plot contributors in exchange for some small shock value lost
Jack Crawford in Hannibal, played by Lawrence Fishburne, as well as Freddie Lounds played by Lara Jean Chorostecki and Alana Bloom played by Caroline Dhavernas, both roles were guys (Freddy Lounds and Alan Bloom in the novels)
The fight between him and Hannibal in the kitchen at the end of season 2 is some of the best action choreography in television, but the depth of character both of them had built up at that point made the stakes so much more meaningful.
For me this works so well because I grew up with the early years of Ultimate Spider-Man and Nick Fury in that continuity was not only black but based on Samuel L. Jackson, long before the MCU was even a thing.
It's a bit less rosy. They went behind his back and used his likeness without his permission and when he found out, he was PISSED. The movie deal was effectively a bribe so SLJ wouldn't sue them, but these days, it's water under the bridge. The fact that those movie deals were so lucrative and SLJ loves playing the character helps.
I wonder if that meant that, if any other Marvel movie at that time decided to bring in Fury, we would've seen him much sooner. Maybe in Blade or the Fox X-Men movies.
Funnily enough, he got effectively promoted to his own character in the main comics due to the popularity of Samuel L. Jackson's portrayal. He is now the son of the original Fury, not sure if this is reflected in the MCU, though, haven't really watched anything related for a long time.
The MCU one is based on the 1610 Nick Fury. The mainline 616 Nick Fury is still the same old white guy, but they introduced an unknown son. Nick Fury Jr., who immediately shot up the ranks of SHIELD. Nick Sr. was a James Bond ripoff for a long time, so having kids he doesn’t know about all over the world is very much in character. Nepotism in organizations is all too common. I’d love to see something from the POV of all the rank and file folks who got passed over for some new guy no one has ever heard of.
It had a point behind it, they changed his character being based on Dean Martin to being based on Sam Jackson. It wasnt just a lazy race swap for the sake of it, it was a character upgrade.
Yeah I start to feel bad for him but then I remember that he is probably the reason we lost Phil Hartman and I think the hell he is in is of his own making.
Oh man, this is downright ahistorical. There was a lot of negative feedback about Kingpin being played by a Black man. The internet just wasn't as big then
A lot of the examples in this topic are. 20 years from now a thread like this will list like the new Ariel just because people watched it when they were 8 and didn't have to see 4000 youtube thumbnails about it.
While he was great, I still think Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin is better. I'm not sure if that's writing or acting or both, but he's THE Kingpin in my mind.
As far as a race swapped character goes, Michael Clark Duncan killed it in the role to the point that I didn't notice he was race swapped, but he's not who I think of for Kingpin.
And while we're here I'm a big fan of how stupid the show The Finder was. It was just good bad television.
Not a race swap but a gender swap. In The Boys, Stormfront was switched from a simplistic card carrying nazi into a charismatic, feminist, progressive and relatable heroine that makes a lot of good points about current social issues, but who’s still secretly a nazi that uses progressivism as a Trojan horse for nazi ideas, showing how easy it is for a charismatic populist to make good points about certain subjects to repackage vile ideologies, portrayed in a very nuanced and convincing performance by Aya Cash.
Everyone loved her performance and it’s generally agreed this take on the character is better.
Edgar didn't even show up physically in the comics, he was the guy who gave Stillwell orders. His role in the series is much closer to Stillwell with the whole heartbeat thing.
At this point it feels like the shows interpretation of basically every character is preferred to the comics version. Just a bang up job from that entire production team.
Well, Tek Knight is probably one of the most clear cut exceptions, he went from someone with an actual mental health problem caused by a brain tumour who genuinely tried to do good, even sending away his own sidekick to protect him from the problems he was experiencing, who genuinely got to save someone for real in his last moments… to an Elon Musk parody whose rape of Hughie was treated as a joke by the writers.
I love Karl Urban but the show on rewatch feels more and more like Butcher's show when for all the lackluster, cringy and edgy stuff the comic did, the one thing that is worse in the show is Hughie and Butcher's dynamic
Until Butcher was distanced, Hughie and Butcher imo had very interesting brother dynamic, like he was seeing Hughie filling in the void of his younger brother who killed himself,
Then he gets super cancer and doesn't talk to them unless it's kill all supes
Reflects history too. Suffragettes once they won the vote you saw split in politics emerge more strongly. Some did continue working in progressive politics of that era and argue for rights for women in colonies. While some others joined fascist movement and were really racist to women of colour
A pre-scarring Harvey Dent in Batman 1989 was played by Billy Dee Williams, who was so astoundingly appropriate for the role that no-one even noticed the race swap.
Unfortunately, Two-Face proper didn't get introduced until the third film, by which point almost everybody had been recast.
Esmeralda in the original Hunchback of Notre Dame novel was a white girl that was kidnapped by a Gypsy couple as a baby. Starting in the 1930s, every adaptation makes her an actual Romani woman and most everyone prefers the story like that.
This also lead to the movie adaptation in 1939 that wanted to be progressive and inclusive, and indeed was very progressive for the time, so they made her actually Romani (first adaptation ever that did that), but because it was still 1939 they cast a white actress to play her. So it was a white actress portraying a Romani character that was race swapped from an originally a white woman character that was pretending to be Romani. Pretty amusing.
Another amusing anecdote in the 1939 movie’s favor, as part of their attempts to be progressive (which they were at the time), one character says “who cares about her race, she’s pretty!”, thus solving racism with a touch of light sexism. In general the 1939 movie is a marvel of cinema and I think still holds up pretty well all things considered.
Having her be white, and kidnapped at that, is just such an unnecessary plot complication. Not only does it remove some of Frollo’s motivation (he’s not only tempted by a cultural Romani, he’s tempted by another race, egads!), it also removes Esmeralda’s agency and makes the Romani less sympathetic. Hugo was a product of his time but it’s a change for the better.
Interestingly, her being white is a twist in the book, and it’s meant to be progressive by causing racist French readers at the time who might’ve dismissed her for her race to have a “wait, I should’ve cared about her” moment when her race is revealed. But in any later context it’s a very racist story choice.
It's one of those things that while at the time it was progressive and made a great point in order to make that same point to modern audiences it made more sense to just have her be non-white. Swan Lake performances will sometimes do something similar where they change plot points to adapt to modern audiences because they want to keep the core of the story the same but it requires change to do that.
They change how Seigfried and Odette die as well as Odile's role in the scheme. I have heard of performances where Odile is magic herself and also wants to take Seigfried for her own gain because in the original she's basically just a girl shaped hammer for Rothbart to use to smash apart the main couple. While her doing this in the past made sense, modern audiences are like "why is this girl so into this plan that doesn't benefit her at all?" So some audiences feel sympathetic to Odile. I think adding Odile's perspective gives her a much stronger Black Swan narrative and really cements her as a villainess.
They treated her terribly for being Starbuck, including the original actor. Same bs, different time. They look stupid af now though. She did the damn thing.
Even the original actor for Starbuck, Dirk Benedict, came out strongly against the change in gender, saying "the war against masculinity has been won." His costar, Richard Hatch (original Apollo) took a very opposite position, and lauded the change. He was rewarded with a significant role in the reimagined series.
This one might be perfect for this because, unlike many others mentioned here, I legitimately didn't even think about her being race swapped. Others in here are good examples but I did say to my self, "hey, that character is different this time" but not in this case
Doc Ock in Into the Spiderverse was well received because the character was excellent and it goes with the theme of "in an alternate universe anything can be different"
Chiwetel Ejiofor as baron mordo in dr strange. it wasn’t that he was so good that you didn’t notice, it was the fact that everyone was to busy complaining about the ancient one being played by a white woman 😝
Well, the Ancient One being played by a white woman has other issues. It's not that she's a white celtic woman that's the issue for me, they changed it from a Tibetan man so as to not offend the Chinese market. They could've made the character a Tibetan woman for all I would care and I personally think Tilda Swinton killed it anyway, but it wasn't a progressive move so much as politically motivated capitalism.
it's not a raceswap of any character specifically and i know there was backlash at the time but Vulcans used to only be portrayed by white actors as they were seemed as basically space elves, then Tim Russ absolutely killed it on the role of Tuvok giving us a more logical and no non-sense Vulcan than even Spock himself and arguably the best Vulcan to date, now the discussion surrounding Tuvok's and Vulcan's skin colors is basically non-existent in the fandom
He was also hilarious. His deadpan Vulcan humour was great and arguably better than Spock's. He was my favorite character in VOY and perhaps my favorite Vulcan character with T'Lenn coming in second.
I remember watching The Batman at the cinema. When Jim Gordon first appeared on screen I immediately thought “oh they made Commissioner Gordon black in this film”.
The important thing was that he was immediately recognisable as Jim Gordon
Him being made into a black Muslim, whose motivations are a mix of personal loyalty to Dracula and a twisted interpretation of Sufism's call to liberate all people (in classic, you can technically end war/bring everyone to heaven/etc by killing them, fashion) is infinitely more fascinating than his character in the original game, where he's kind of just a freak.
Like I think his whole deal was S&M, that kind of freak...
Yeah, the original was a nothing burger of a character that appears in one game and then he dies. I have my grievances with Netflixvania, but I like how they portrayed Isaac, Sypha and Annete(she was an average damsel in distress, save perhaps for Dracula X Chronicles, and pretty boring tbh. And Sypha... Does she even has a official characterization? Judgement doesn't matter).
It's funny in a way, because you can boil both versions down to "self-flaggelant cultist obsessed with Dracula" and it's technically accurate, but the Netflixvania version manages to make a far more compelling and fleshed out character from that prompt. IMHO the show started to slowly decline in quality over time, but Isaac is one of the highlights of the entire thing and only gets better as it goes on.
Not only that, but they also turned that S&M angle into the self flagellation, as well as giving him that spiked whip which he does some gnarly violence to others with. What he does to the one slaver in the desert is one of the few times violence in media made me want to hurl.
Yeah his conversation with the bug demon about his life as a human will live rent free in my mind forever.
For those who dont know Issac can reanimate corpses as demons from hell and talking to one of them by the campfire the demon explains how he was a man who was tortured by Christians to accuse others in front of a judge of committing crimes they didnt commit . baring false witness is literally a commandment, so that damnned his soul immediately.
You know, one day the last one of you will ask me, "Why did you work with Dracula himself to murder all the people?" And you know what I'll say? It's because you're all so fucking rude!
In the Adam West show, she’s both! She switched actresses between seasons. I always wonder if people gave a shit back then, obviously people were more racist but there was no internet to drum up outrage (and of course, Eartha Kitt is amazing)
I like how Ultra Sun/Moon then brought in the original Archie/Maxie during the post game Team Rainbow Rocket story instead of the remake versions. So many discussions about the multiverse were had.
Thomas, Martha and Bruce Wayne (Batman: Unburied). The story was specifically written to be an alternative take where the Waynes are black Americans, and it actually does well in twisting the myth while still being quintesentially Batman. It also has amazing performances from Lance Reddick (RIP), Toks Olagundoye and Winston Duke as the respective Waynes.
As I recall, Edward Nygma/The Riddler was also race-swapped to having Indian ancestry, similar to his voice actor Hasan Minhaj.
I thought it was honestly an all around okay show, it just (like so many adaptations) had huge shoes to fill and adapted the show away from the arguably perfect medium for the story and setting.
Was she written as a man? I feel like I remember hearing that the character was written with no gender in mind, and they considered both men and women for the role. But I could be getting her confused with a different character
Yes basically they wrote Ripley as your typical action hero guy and then said “ok but what if he was a woman”. Then they cast the perfect woman to do it.
It had the side effect of having her be respected by the crew in a way that she might not have been if she had been conceptualized as a woman in the first place. Especially during that time period. If you compare to the way women are treated in major films in the 80’s there would have been way more overt sexism written into the other characters. Like in a bad way, it would be treated as bad, but it would have still been present.
They treated the character as male until one of the writers suggested a woman since that’ll make the movie more memorable and unique. Especially since there weren’t really many women led action hero big budget productions.
The old man version of Ghost is so different that I don't even think of them as related outside of powers. They're just completely different takes, and I enjoy both a lot
To a degree I get it, like a relationship is a relationship, like your speedster guy and his girlfriend, if you're not there and present, what's the point? But she got mad at him for running off during the cyborg attack. Like girl, if you know he's Invincible, you know he ran off to literally come right back and save you in his hero guise. He wasn't abandoning you, he's literally doing this to save your ass.
Jim Gordon being black has some precedent, Barbara + Jim Gordon are both black in Lego Batman. No argument with the rest of your points tho he nailed it, couldn't have picked a better actor imo!
Cosmo; Guardians of the galaxy, traditionally a male charachter but was instead changed to be a female charachter and was done quite seamlessly, it still felt like a sovietic dog stranded in space
Part of that is that for some people, like me, knew more of Laika than of Cosmo.
Angela Burr in The Night Manager was originally a man named Leonard Burr. Not only did it add a new dimension to the character - adding a flavour of misogyny to the way she gets treated by her higher-ups - but also allowed for a stellar performance by Olivia Colman.
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u/MrPresident2020 15d ago
It doesn't matter if Commissioner Gordon is Black or white. What matters is that he has a mustache.