Did you also have a problem with partly-Asian Lana Lang in Smallville? Are you mad that they made Perry White black in MOS? Perry White has clearly had his race changed. He has had nearly as many appearances in live television and film as Batman, so this is a major change to a major character. If they can do it to Perry, they can do it to Batman.
Lol, give me a break. Lana was "asian" on Smallville? I'm glad you told me that, because I didn't know that until you brought it up, surely if she were asian, it would have been obvious by looking at her. If I analyze her, I can see some "asian" in her, but that is only because I am looking for it and someone told me it was there (so I see what I want to see in part), if not then she just seems like white Lana Lang to me. Lol. This is ridiculous.
Lol, she looks as "asian" as Teri Hathcer.
That's not the goal, as you put it. An actor/actress should, in my opinion, possess sufficient characteristics -- both physical and mental -- to effectively give a convincing performance. If you're portraying the role of an Asian character, for example, you need not be wholly Asian yourself (you can be half or whatever), but you should look the part.
Thank you for summing this up.
Just checked out the latest on this casting discussion and saw that it's gotten racial.
So on that note, Anthony Ruivivar is actually the voice actor on the new show Beware the Batman.
What's my point to posting this? Just that anyone can play Batman, but it has to be done right... in this case, an animated form.
I would accept a non-white actor in a live action film if it's actually intended to be a new take on the character. I mean they changed Nick Fury already, and just went with it. With Batman though, it would be harder for general audiences to accept.
This is Kevin Michael Richardson:
He voiced The Joker on The Batman:
This is James Earl Jones:
He provides the voice of this character:
This is actor Mike Henry, who is white:
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He voices the character Cleveland Brown on The Cleveland Show and Family Guy (as well as a host of other ethnic and racial characters).
The fact of the matter is that Batman, Joker, Darth Vader, etc, are all still the races they always are and haven't changed. Bruce Wayne is still white on Beware The Batman, Joker is still white (very white
) on The Batman. What is happening in these cases is the actors are essentially putting on white flesh and blood and playing those characters, so physically they are still white. And their voices being "black" or "ethnic", they speak in clear english without any enunciation that would indicate that they are a specific race different from that of the character they are voicing, so again, you still have the white character being the white character. Even with Carl Lumbly, who is also black, who plays the Martian Manhunter on the JL/JLU animated shows (even though Martian Manhunter's main alias, Detective John Jones would actually be one of the few "BIG" characters I'd be okay if they changed races with, on the animated show he is white as he is in the comics, but here is where a race change would not only be welcome, IMO, but also make sense, as he can take on whatever form we wants, so to me it can go either way (hell, do some stories where he is white OR black, they could switch it up every week if they wanted, lol) - and I will digress a bit because Lumbly sounded a little bit jamaican at times if you listened for it but that to me worked great with driving home the "other worldly" aspect of his character, but the latent person couldn't really tell whether or not he was white or black (or whatever) for sure just based solely off his voice).
Fury is different because he is a reinvention of the "regular" Marvel U character and from a different universe, the "Ultimates" Universe, and is actually more popular than his regular Marvel Universe counterpart, who was struggling as a character for years and not nearly as popular as the other Marvel heroes to begin with, so a "re-imagining" is welcome, here is a perfect example of a character who was "broken" and is now "fixed", yet as far as comics go, fans of the "regular" Nick Fury can still be pleased because their version is still around and exists simultaneously with the more media-ized Ultimate Samuel L. Jackson-esque Nick Fury. Everybody wins.
I cannot believe that a voice actor in an animated property was just compared to an actor in a live action property where the actor must give an actual physical performance.
The only way in live action that a black actor should play a character that is always white and works well that way and does not need fixed and is not some new character is that they somehow are made to look physically like them too, and vice versa, through prosthetics and makeup, etc. That is the only way I would be okay with that. You may think that's absurd, but when it comes down to it, in order to remain that character, that is what would have to be done, unless it were a completely different character. It's just a fact and how portrayals work.
