this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Source: Alzwards Corner

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[–] Surp@lemmy.world 43 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (25 children)

I always thought race swap gender swapping roles was a cash grab and a way to just make people fight. And it seems to work every time. I personally think it's a slap in the face to the genders and races that were swapped in. If new movies can't make new characters and stories with different races and sexes without seemingly purposefully causing controversy by replacing one race or sex with the other I'd take that as a low blow.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (12 children)

It’s hard to do well, but I disagree that it’s a slap in the face or a low blow. The gender swap of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactic was seen as sacrilege by fans, but she became one of the highlights of the show. Miles Morales was a creative way to do a race swap for Spider Man, and the narrative is richer for it. Jason Mamoa turned Aquaman from white to Polynesian, and the depiction was better than ever. Would Nick Fury be better as a white guy, as he was originally for decades, instead of Samuel L Jackson?

And then there are all the “swaps” that happen before the first day of filming, like Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien, who was originally (edit) going to be cast as a man. This was “controversial” at the time, with people decrying “political correctness”. I would not take “causing controversy” as a reliable indicator for whether something sucks.

Edit: point taken about gender neutral script. See discussion below.

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Alien didn't swap anyone. The characters were initially written as gender neutral without first names.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 8 points 9 months ago

Kind of. Excerpt from this article by Ridley Scott:

“I think the idea actually came from Alan Ladd, Jr. I think it was Alan Ladd who said, ‘Why can’t Ripley be a woman?’ And there was a long pause that, at that moment, I never thought about it. I thought, why not? It’s a fresh direction, the ways I thought about that. And away we went.”

This was the late 70s. “Man” was still so powerfully default that Ridley Scott had not even thought of the possibility of casting a leading woman action hero before a meeting with an exec. That, to me, is clearly a gender swap moment, because until that moment, it was a given that Ripley would be a man. The gender-neutral script just allowed for the possibility.

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