I suspect most non-Ultimates reading comics fans ( me, for instance 
) have in mind the iconic Nick Fury, a very white dude.
But I agree he is the spitting image of the re-imagined Fury.
A minor one - I believe the bouncer in the book Striptease was a white trashy sort. He was transmogrified into Marcellus Wallace for the movie. A pretty neutral change if you ask me, that only sticks in my head because it inexplicably bugged a friend of mine.
In the novel Last of the Mohicans, Cora Munro is part black, and is described as having dark hair and dark skin. In the 1992 film, she was played by the lily-white Madeline Stowe. I have not seen any of the numerous other film/TV adaptations.
I know exactly what Atomicflea was referring to. My point is that the Marvel movie adaptations are never a straight adaptation of any one universe or storyline. The mishmash of Marvel history is translated into a movie version. If they take a heavy helping of 616 and a dash of Ultimate Marvel, that doesn’t make the Ultimate Marvel pieces “wrong” in any way.
The most blatant case should be Kevin Spacey playing the role of the scarred teacher on “Pay it forward”, a character originally black in the book.
That created a bit of a hoopla back then.
Captain Nemo is of Indian descent, as evidenced in the novel The Mysterious Island, the sequel to Verne’s more famous work. In the movies, however, he is almost invariably depicted as having classic European features.
I don’t think it was ever stated, but I always pictured Ford Prefect as white.
In the movie “Rising Sun,” the lead character was black.
IIRC there was no physical description of him in the book, but I distinctly remember his (white) mentor saying that the reason he had left Japan was that he was “tired of being the n****r,” with no subsequent reaction.
I mentioned this in another thread but, Memoirs of a Geisha. Just about all the characters went from being Japanese to Chinese.
Does The Wiz count?
Anansi was a character in American Gods, but **Anansi Boys **isn’t a sequel. It stands alone. (It took me a couple of minutes to catch the pun in the title, too.)
It’s probably being sought after for a movie first because it’s got an easier plotline to convert to movie format. There’s only one truncated pantheon, rather than the huge number of mythologies used in American Gods. There’s a lot less that’s happening in dreams or dreamtime or “behind the scenes”. There are fewer subplots and no mezzanine chapters to cut. And it has a happy ending.
American Gods is dense and epic. Anansi Boys is essentially a book about a family . . . with magic thrown in to complicate things.
He’s described in the books as ginger-haired and freckled, so probably a safe assumption.
I understand that race is a social construct but I don’t think most of us here in the United States consider Chinese and Japanese persons to be of separate races. It’d be like an Englishman playing a Frenchman or an American.
Yes but there are obvious physical characteristics that differ between Chinese and Japanese people. You can’t look at a Caucasian person and say “Oh they’re Irish/Russian/German/etc” But you can look at an Asian person and say “Oh they’re Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc”. Granted many Americans can’t tell unless they see the person’s name but that doesn’t mean physical differences don’t exist.
In the book Flight of the Intruder, Commander “Dookie” Camparelli is never described in any way that would make you think he’s anything but a white guy of southern European descent. In the movie, he’s played by Danny Glover (but still maintaining that he is Italian, third generation Mafia :D). This wouldn’t be noteworthy except that the book seemed to make a point of pointing out when someone stuck out in some way (Little Augie was black, the Air Force Skyraider pilot and the Navy Intruder squadron XO were both from Texas, etc.)
Well, the characters were still Japanese. The actors portraying them were Chinese, but the characters didn’t change.
Yes, but it still fits in with the context of the thread.
IIRC, when the film was still in early, early discussions, Douglass Adams said that Arthur absolutely must be English, but all of the other characters had no ethnic constraints whatsoever, and whoever was best for the part should get it. So there’s no problem there.
Speaking of comic book characters, by the way, how about Catwoman? No, not that Catwoman; I think it’s best if we all just ignore that. I’m referring to Eartha Kitt.
And for a case where it does matter, but where they nonetheless managed to pull it off, Patrick Stewart starred in a version of Othello with the race of all the characters reversed: Stewart was the only white.
So how do we know he was white? Just an assumption? I can’t remember him being physically described. But then, it’s been a while since I’ve read the book.
To push the probe in deeper (but possibly going OT), I’ve always wondered if the race change in Grantham is the reason why the romance between him and Darby Shaw was pulled for the movie. Or if that’s seeing blatant racism where there is none…?
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I doubt Gaiman would have a problem with Charlie being American. I heard him speak a couple of years ago as the guest of honor of Israel’s sole annual SF convention (which is held 50 yards from my house) and he told the audience that he had, in fact, originally envisioned him as an American, but realized then that he had no idea how black Americans talk; he did, however, know how black *Englishmen *talked. So for the sake of believable dialog, he decided to make the character English.
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As for the paucity of black characters in fantasies - didn’t *Hancock *do pretty well? Or this that covered by the Will Smith Exemption?
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Okay, I feel like a fool: what pun?