Don’t confuse art with commerce. Hollywood can no longer afford to make a picture unless it makes money. As other posters have said, comic book fans, the target group don’t like things that mess with the storyline reality.
So in order to make a black or Asian or even wheelchair Peter Parker, you would have to surrender that target group and be certain to that another target group would make up the audience.
Look at Halle Berry in Catwoman. Whether she was black or white or green the story was a total mess and the film irritated succeded in one thing. Making EVERYONE who saw it mad.
Gone are the days when people would pay to see a movie with Halle Berry in a tight costume. Sure she’s great to look at, but I can look at her for free on the Internet.
I’ve always been a HUGE Spider-Fan, and described my super-heroic alter ego as “Spider-Man with a tail”. They have very similar powers: The ability to cling to most surfaces; Super-strength; and heightened speed and agility. Originally MM even had Spidey’s snarky humor, but that was dropped in the late-80’s for a darker, more brooding personality.
In regards to the OP: The fanboys would be livid, and simply refuse to accept the change in Spidey’s race. No real biggie, since those fans are generally a small portion of the movie-going public. However, I feel that same public would be unwilling to accept the change of such an established, iconic hero as Spider-Man.
(Note the hyphen, and capitalized “Man”. It’s Spider HYPHEN Man, NOT Spiderman. That one always gets me going. )
The fanbase doesn’t see it that way. Spider-Man’s basic characteristics have been established, (as much as a real person), and any deviation from that would require justification, rightly or wrongly.
If the producer of the next Spider-Man film chooses a black lead they’re going to be spending as much time justifying that decision as they are actually promoting the movie. That is the sole reason it won’t happen in a multi-million dollar project.
It’s feasible but it would require some ground work to be laid first. Such as the Sam Jackson version of Nick Fury in an actual comic. If someone questions the portrayal they can whip out the comic for justification. Nothing like that exists for Spider-Man on a commercially successful level.
But Peter Parker is a well known established character whom people have visually based preconceived notions of. You could make a black Spider Man (although I suspect Stan Lee needs to approve casting and I’m guessing he wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t meet the preconceived notions of Spiderman, and therefore it would have to be a kick ass movie to overcome the discontinuity for the audience.
Generally when people have an ideal in mind about a character, and you manage to cast someone different (Timothy Dalton as James Bond), it isn’t terribly successful.
I think your wife has managed to somehow remain unaware of the great majority of the world’s rich literary history. Just because she only reads books about white people doesn’t mean that the majority of fictional heroes are white.
Race is a part of a character’s identity, and depending on the story, it might even be an essential plot element, or an unavoidable consequence of the character’s regional and cultural background.
Anyway, believe me, there’s a nearly limitless well of global fiction throughout history with little or no white people making an appearance. Trying to ‘colorize’ some popular stories starring white people does the world a great disservice by continuing to ignore the wonderful bounty of fantastic stories that already exist by and/or about people of color.
I agree, if nothing changes, what’s the point? It runs the risk of simply being a gimmick. I’m not fundamentally against that sort of thing - “What If” stories can be really great, but then the story should really try to make the most of the alternate premise. And even then, I don’t think a black Peter Parker has enough story potential in it to carry a movie. At best, it would make a clever issue of a comic book, or at best, a graphic novel. You might get some more mileage out of a black Spiderman, but there’s already a Hispanic and an Indian and a Woman Spidey - why not use them?
I don’t think Peter Parker has been mythologized long enough ago to start messing with fundamental aspects of his identity, and I think he’s too well known for it not to distract people from being absorbed into the movie.
Lest one think this is limited to ‘important’ issue like race or gender, I similarly found the Constantine adaptation to be severely lacking because the blonde hair and British accent and cleverness were so fundamental to that character that rebranding him as an American with dark hair played by anti-intellectual Keanu Reeves just didn’t work.
There was a great debate over on io9 about whether they should cast Don Glover (he’s a black comedy actor) in the new Spidey movie.
Psst. Eartha Kitt. Rrrrowl! And in that case, all that was essential in Catwoman was preserved. The sensualness, the felinicity.
For Kingpin, all that matters is the brains, the brawn, and the position. Michael Clark Duncan was perfectly fine there. Great casting.
For Two-Face… well, the studio bought Billy Dee Williams out of the part, which he took because he really wanted to play Two-Face. I think he could have done it, but it might have appeared racist: instead of a green half-face, the most distinctive makeup would have been lightening his skin.
For Spider-Man, if you’re keeping Peter Parker, making him black changes his family dynamic and personal character, because he is who he is: the New Yorker. Changing his race makes him a different sort of New Yorker. Which is fine. But it’s not Peter Parker, and it’d be simpler to create a new secret identity for the character.
At which point, why are you dealing with Spidey anyhow? Make something entirely new. Static was explicitly a black Spider-Man, and he supported a TV series, a couple comic series, and even wound up making cameos in the JLA cartoon years later. (Note: Static did not have powers anything like Spidey. That didn’t stop him from being a black Spider-Man, which is the point here: it’s about character and situation, not the costume. That’s the Mighty Marvel Manner.)
Multiple woman Spideys, even. But of those, the closest I can think of to being movie material is Spider-Girl, Peter Parker’s daughter, and even she’s not really an option until they stop dismantling the Peter/MJ relationship every movie.
For me, they wouldn’t be distracting at all. This is exactly the thought process I would have:
Them: Superman has blonde hair/Batman has a mustache
Me: 'Kay.
I still think if you’re hung up on this Peter Parker has to be white thing, you’re being needlessly picayune.
Would the experiences of a poor black teen in New York be identical to the experiences of a poor white teen in New York? Would they have the same outlook on life? The same friends? The same challenges? In other words, would they be the same person?
Probably not. And for flatter, stock characters (Kingpin, for example), that’s not an issue, but Peter Parker has a bit more psychology behind him. Change his race, and you change who he is.
Not to mention, in comics, the look of a character tends to be doubly important compared with non-illustrated literature, because the same character can be very different from continuity to continuity. Ultimate universe Spider man does not act just like Marvel Adventures Spiderman, who doesn’t act just like movie Spiderman, but we always know that the young, thin, wiry white guy hanging upsidedown and punning is Peter Parker. Those character markers are important.
The other day, I read some grumbles from some fans about how the new Avenger book was all well and good, but why was the artist drawing Tony Stark a few inches too tall - and with brown eyes, when everyone knows Tony Stark’s eyes are blue OMGWTF!?
Slight hijack, but Kurt Busiek’s approach in ASTRO CITY was to give the (black) Spider-Man analogue no superpowers: he’s just a quick-thinking acrobat who serves as the delivery system for all the nonlethal weapons that got developed out-of-pocket, sure as his gear also helps that achingly responsible quipster pull off his otherwise impossible leaps. Anyhow, he first took up superheroing when he realized his employer was crooked in general and putting his projects to nefarious use in particular…
I think it would be perfectly feasible. Just cast a black actor and don’t mention it. Not even an in-joke. It would just be a black guy playing the character.
Hell, Denzel Washington pulled off playing the Duke in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and he was brilliant at it.
As an aside, Lady Chance has long been an advocate of this for James Bond. Just cast regardless of race and see what happened. If they’re going to swap out actors every few movies anyway they might as well get playful with it.
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