There’s a lot of things that can set the hardcore fans on edge but there are also some that really does manage to crossover into the mainstream as well that’s worth looking at. When it comes to remaking movies, or adaptations of older properties, there’s always the desire by some in the production to modernize it and update it. And often that comes through casting a character differently than was originally imagined. With much of popular culture from the 80’s and earlier being very much white dominated, this is an area that can cause quite a bit of contention all around. While certainly not the most well known by any stretch of the imagination, the big one for comics fans has been seeing the changes made to the character of Nick Fury, an old school elite spy character who had a fantastic run in the 60’s and then was re-imagined in the Ultimate alternate world of comics that Marvel created in the 2000’s where they actively sought Samuel L. Jackson’s permission to use him as the basis. Smart man that he is, he said yes and it’s landed him some fun roles and the potential to headline his own movie down the road. For most movie fans, it doesn’t seem like anything because they’re not familiar with the characters origins. And if they’re very lucky, they never saw the one movie that was done with David Hasslehoff playing the character.
But times change and there are ways to update characters and situations that can and should be done. What we’ve felt over the years is that if you’re doing a film, TV show or other work in a specific time period, you have to be respectful of how the times actually work. You can’t go back to these times and rewrite history (though there are creative ways of doing it). But if you’re going to take a classic work and bring it into the present or the future, then by all means take a shot at putting a new stamp on it. It certainly doesn’t detract from what has come before as it still exists (contrary to all that Before Watchmen whining going on; these new works will not ruin the original work in the slightest unless you let it). This is especially true with comics who have to continually update and modernize things since the characters never truly age and are still dealing in the present day world while having origins decades in the past. Some are able to be reworked better than others, but that’s the stakes of the game.
In the end, outside of historical figures, there are few people that I can really think that shouldn’t be recast in different genders and ethnicities. There’s always the feeling by some that doing so betrays the character, but it shows just how strong their bond is to a particular work is than anything else. The stories themselves are timeless when you get down to the core of it and it’s just changing the trappings. Imagine fifty years from now a redone Captain America feature in which the title character fought in the Iraq war or Afghanistan and was put into hibernation during that time period. While the choices for a character was going to be simple back in the 40’s when the character was created, now there are far more options to work with. Can you do that with an Abraham Lincoln picture? No, but you can certainly monkey around with it as we’re seeing with the vampire hunter movie that’s working.
There’ve been plenty of recasts over the years, again especially in comics as characters are rebooted. Which ones do you think have worked the best, which ones have failed and what would you see? Can you envision a remade Star Wars with a more diverse cast, both in ethnicity and gender? And still being able to retain what that first movie had?
