First off, i never claimed to speak for every minority. I just stated my race because of its relevance to this potential casting. Also, people often assume i'm white when i say this. Second, the box office doesn't prove diveristy matters it just proves all kinds of people like Marvel movies. The motivation for watching MCU movies differs from person to person (hence why i don't claim to speak for every minority). To say it's because of diversity is shortsighted to me. I mean the most popular MCU characters are still white heterosexual males (Iron Man, Cap and Thor). If diversity was that important then why are Spider-Man, Batman and Superman the most popular superheroes on the planet? All kinds of people love them, not just white christian hetero sexual males.
Theater analysts are able to compile data that show the racial/gender demographics of every film. And it is statistically proven that minorities show up 5x more in attendance when they are represented in the film. Why do you think all of these Studios are falling over themselves to have diversity in their films? Because diversity is big business. That doesn't mean minorities won't show up for non-minority led films, all it means is that they will be overrepresented in the stats of films where they have major roles.
These films have cultural significance for the communities & groups they represent. Black Panther is easily the best example because the impact that movie had on the black community is even readily visible to people, who
aren't paying attention.
i do agree that it's a good thing to see characters of different races, genders etc. I just want original poc characters to be introduced instead of them race swapping characters and pretending like they didn't have diverse characters to work with already.
Everytime somebody uses this argument, I wonder if they are arguing in goodfaith. Because for many of these franchises, the minority characters are far and few in between and have zero marketability or marquee value. And as a result, severely lack substantial material to mine from for an adaptation. And this is why filmmakers are ALWAYS going to race swap the meaningful characters (Who are almost always white) vs using a bit minority from the comics who lack substance and depth.
Now the X-Men is a bit more of an outlier, because it's one the more diverse properties in the MU & that's obviously because of the subject matter. But that's the entire mythos as a whole, not the main classic X-Men. There are 5 main poc X-Men introduced from 1975 and 2000 -- Storm, Bishop, Forge, Psylocke & Jubilee. Now some may try to add characters like Thunderbird, Cecilia Reyes and Sunfire to beef up that number. But all 3 of them; all 3 of their tentures are either not relevant or very short-lived. Thunderbird is a token minority who died at the beginning of Claremont's run, his main purpose is to die. And Sunfire left the team after his very first adventure and has remained separate 90% of the time since 1975 bar a few team ups. Cecilia's X-Men membership was also short-lived. Nobody remembers her for being an X-Man.
You can't just randomly compile a bunch of minorities from the comics. Especially characters like Bishop and Psylocke. Creative discretion is going to be advised and the filmmakers are going to use whoever fits the story they are telling, those minority characters always listed have specific stories that may not fit the story they are telling. It's not as simple as "Ummm just use Bishop instead of Rogue". Because of the fact that this is a reintroduction to this franchise starting from scratch, some of the "Starter pack" characters are going to to be used. And all/most of them are white.
I also agree that X-Men has served as an allegory for discrmination against different kinds of social groups. But i still don't see why that would mean it's a good idea to actually make them black. I like characters to be as authentic as possible. Others might not, i understand.
I explained why the dozen or so word mini essay I wrote above your posts. This franchise is built on the backs of marginalized minority groups. So a contemporary adaptation should have marginalized minorities in the lead roles and not have their stories filtered through straight, white characters.
Believe me, 2 years ago, I was in the same mindset. I didn't want any race swaps but I realize now that Marvel really has a chance to tell the X-Men story no holds barred and make the X-Men culturally relevant (again) in a way we've ever seen before.
Look at it this way, Claremont's X-Men was a natural evolution of Stan Lee/Jack Kirby's X-Men. He took the seeds of the discrimination and persecution angle Introduced in the original run and made mutants an anagram for oppressed minorities -- this revolutionized the franchise and made it culturally relevant. But he was still limited by his time.
Feige can take what Claremont did to the next level. And reimagine the X-Men to be culturally and socially relevant to modern times. Claremont leaped so Marvel Studios could fly
But if Marvel said we're gonna make Storm Romani instead of African (which is possible by your argument as romas have a history of persecution as well) people would lose their s***.
Of course there would be outrage. Storm's race and origin story defines her character unlike say Hank McCoy, Rogue or even Jean who are only white because that's the default protagonist & character model. Nothing about them is defined by their having white skin. Storm is defined by her African heritage.
Why is context always ignored in this specific debate? You would have had a stronger argument if you used a character like Sean Cassidy aka Banshee as an example -- whose Irish culture defines his identity as a character.
