I think I am Legend is a particularly good example as the book had been made into a movie twice previously with the leads being played by white actors (Vincent Price and Charlton Heston)
I Think I Love My Wife is a remake of a French film.
The various movies where Eddie Murphy is fat all come from Jerry Lewis antecedents. Coming to America is of course memorably set in a black community, but it’s arguably foremost a modern immigrant story, more Brooklyn than Crooklyn. (I’d contend that Crooklyn isn’t a “race” movie either – it’s a period family drama – but then I’d lose my pun).
Motherf—ing snakes on a motherf—ing plane. And of course Nick Fury was a white character in the source material.
The Shawshank Redemption: In the novella, “Red” is a generic Irish guy. In the movie, he’s played by Morgan Freeman. No changes to the story were made to accommodate his new race, and there’s even an inside joke when Andy Dufresne asks why they call him “Red”, he says, “Maybe it’s because I’m Irish.”
Right- but there’s a quick shot later of his file, during the parole hearing, where it’s shown his real name is Ellis Boyd Redding. Presumably, in the movie version, Red was short for Redding.
This past summer, FANTASTIC FOUR had a black actor as Johnny Storm – which admittedly drew some protests from fans, until they saw the movie, sparking the realization that he was probably the least-problematic part of that film.
Was it problematic because he was black, or problematic because they still cast a white girl as his sister? I’m thinking there would’ve been less complaints if Sue was black too.
I think he means it’s the least problematic because the movie, as a whole, was by all accounts awful.
I haven’t seen the film (I probably will eventually. I love the FF, despite what abuses the movies might heap on them), so I don’t know how they rationalized the brother-sister thing (which was apparently kept). I can imagine a number of ways to do so.
I haven’t seen it either, but I believe they said Sue was adopted.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever get around to watching it. Nothing I’ve read about the plotline sounds interesting, but I am intrigued by Rolling Stone’s description of the film as “the cinematic equivalent of malware.” On some level you want to see something that can inspire that description!
At that, Jamie Foxx (who was the previously-white Electro in the latest Spider-Man movie) has done projects where as far as I can tell the role could’ve been played by a white actor, like LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN and WHITE HOUSE DOWN.
(I mean, yeah, he won the Oscar for [del]becoming[/del] portraying Ray Charles --but that was the same year he got nominated for an Oscar in COLLATERAL, and I figure that he and Tom Cruise could’ve swapped roles in that one if they’d felt like it.)
This was a remake of a Cary Grant movie called The Bishops’ Wife. So, it is technically “the black version” of something. Kinda like The Wiz.
This is about race, but it’s not about typical issues that one thinks will pop up in a movie about race. The Indian woman has grown up in Uganda, part of a community of ethnically Indian (the Asian sub-continent) people who lived for several generations in Uganda, and considered themselves Ugandan, but under a new regime are displaced. The young woman finds herself in the US, where she meets Denzel Washington. Essentially, she is an Indian who has never been to India, and he is an African who has never been to Africa, and they have this in common. Actually, the plot is quite nuanced, and it is one of those films that stands up to multiple viewings, as you discover new things each time. It’s a great movie.
That’s one of the things I really liked about the Harold and Kumar films. (Well, okay - film - I only saw the first one.) While there was some mild racial stuff (Kumar’s lined up to be a doctor, Harold… does something with numbers), it’s just about two dudes.
We had a thread a while back where the consensus seemed to be that one line in CRIMSON TIDE was maybe meant to reference Denzel Washington’s character being black, but then again maybe it wasn’t.
I came in here to say this. Consider if he had been cast and the rest of the cast had remained the same, it already has a diverse cast as it is, and if Neo was played by Will Smith, then it might have even made that all the agents are played by generic white men in suits even more poignant. Morpheus, the Oracle, Commander Lock are all black, the rest of the crew has two women (apparently Switch was even supposed to be transgender, male in one reality, female in the other too), two more black characters, and two more white men, one of which is also a villain, and in the sequels Link is also black. Hell, even Keanu Reeves is significantly non-white; as I understand his dad is primarily Hawaiian and Chinese. Honestly, it’s kind of remarkable about how many non-white characters there are and how little I’ve heard race discussed in reaction to it.
As others said, Denzel has been the lead in a number of films that have nothing to do with race, for instance Crimson Tide, Book of Eli, and arguably Training Day (been a while since I’ve seen that, so not sure if his race is relevant or not). Ditto for Will Smith, Independence Day, I am Legend, Hancock, Men in Black, I, Robot, Wild Wild West, etc. But also hitting on Laurence Fishburne again, though generally not a leading man, a lot of his roles have nothing to do with race: Morpheus, Perry White (who is even canonically a white character), Event Horizon, voice of Silver Surfer, etc.
Not seen a lot of South African movies?
Coming to America
My initial thought was The Blade series
Spawn. The character is black and his family is black and the Violator is played by a Hispanic, but race has no bearing on the character or the story. Spawn is a super who is black and not a “Black Superhero”
Touche. South Africa is a bit of an exception to the general pattern, I believe. Israel might be another exception, given its history. And no, I’ve not seen a lot of South African movies, but I get your point.
It has been many years since I’ve watched Black Orpheus, so I’m not 100% sure that race wasn’t a part of it. But I’m pretty sure it was just about the love of a trolley car conductor for a girl during the time of carnival in Brazil. I love that movie and ought to try to find it and watch it again.
There was the 2014 remake of “About Last Night” that featured a mostly black cast. I never saw it, but it seemed like a simple remake of the earlier movie. Based off of a David Mamet play.