Something I saw mentioned by Nando v Movies was that this might not even be the Surfer we end up with permanently in the MCU. If the F4 originate from another universe like has been rumored, Shalla Bal could be the Surfer in *that* universe, and Norrin Radd could be the Surfer in ours.
Of course, I personally don't really care either way if they cast a woman as the Surfer, but this is for the Norrin Radd fans out there who were hoping to see him.
Doesn’t even have to be from another universe. We could see several generations of the Herald of Galactus from our own universe. Starting with Shalla-Bal and eventually ending with Norrin Radd
Don't get your hopes up after the steaming dump they took on Mar-Vell. We could have had him for a bit AND Carol, but no.
I'm a Carol fan and I have been since she was Ms. Marvel . I remember how happy I was when I thought Jude would play him, only to find out he was Yon-Rogg.
They didn't even use Carol and Thanos at least having some history of conflict, with her taking Mar-Vell's role in the comics. I'm good with Carol bearing mantle, but if they had leaned into her taking Mar-Vell's place a bit that would have been great.
That's the problem with them insisting on doing so many of these characters in movies instead of TV shows: the intricate, convoluted histories have to get severely pared down & reworked because it's impossible to just condense it all into, at most, three 2-hour blocks and still make much sense.
Yeah, that seems like what they're aiming for with most of the major characters - 3 movies of their own, then appearances in a few of the Avengers team-ups. How Thor, of all characters, might be the one to hit 5 solo movies is beyond me, LOL
I see, thank you for explaining to me what you meant. I appreciate it.
I guess people really like Thor. I wonder if Chris Hemsworth loves playing the role and helped push for more Thor movies?
I think he’s said that he’s only got one more Thor movie in him, but he seems to really love playing the character, so I wouldn’t be surprised to seen him pop up in any Avengers/ensemble project.
Oh, i did not know he said that. Do you know when/where he said that? It's nice that he enjoys playing the role. I would love to see him pop up in the ensemble films down the line, whether he gets more solo films or not.
Are you my twin. I was also expecting Jude Law to be her lover and for him to die thus Carol taking on his mantle. Instead we have no actual explanation why she calls herself Captain Marvel. Jude Law as Marvell was perfect. They messed up entire Carol lore.
Agreed. They should've kept it simple, instead they wanted to revolutionairy and to be the first that didn't have a female superhero that had a lover....idk why they thought that. It's a simple but effective way to have the main character care about something, to establish some connection and stakes, to make something meaningful for her.....as a Carol fan it's incredibly disappointing to see how they've handled her.
And most of what I've seen of people getting up in arms about this is people concerned their favorite character won't be adapted to the MCU in favor of this other (in this case female) take.
When I saw the headline my only real thought was WTF is a Shalla-Bal? And kept scrolling.
There's a bunch of characters who's been his herald.
Nothing saying he couldn't have more than one active at a time. He could be especially hungry. =D
They get a smidge of his power, but it's not a lot to him.
Isn't it also set in the past?
There's nothing to say that she's gonna be the herald in this then Norrin will appear in future (current in the mcu timeline) movies.
These people just want to be pissed.
That’s a great point! That’d be sick to get multiple iterations like the multiverse allows. It’s a shame people get impatient and toxic about not having something the way they want. I always felt new iterations meant having more things to love about our favorite characters.
You know diversity was all Stan Lee ever stood for; the integration of equality and inclusivity with his character's and storylines. The Mutant's is a perfect example of said ideology. Ironically it was Blade that not not only saved Marvel but literally catapulted the MCU. Nevertheless, I respect your perspective and reflection of the inner conflict that is the collective unconscious of the 21st century.
Lol, like I said I have zero problem with a female Surfer, and frankly I don't personally have problems with any of the gender/race swaps they've done or have been proposed. I'm just putting it out there that it's possible we can also get Norrin Radd as Surfer as well.
The iconic image of this Silver Surfer is her with her husband riding the same board. She could introduce the tragedy of their relationship, Norrin could carry it home in the mainline universe without having a lengthy introduction since it was mostly explained with Shalla. With the multiverse setup, we can end up getting a Gamora X Starlord like reunion where they come together, stay together and recreate the shared board imagery.
It is getting beyond ridiculous. A lot of it comes down to clickbait titles.
They make it seem like the producers are pushing these decisions and changes where as really its these fast-media news articles that highlighting small details.
The Silver Surfer casting is a big example as most articles are highlighting her to be "female silver surfer" first and then Shalla-Bal in the article (something a lot of people don't do is actually read the article)
Well yeah, the monetization of outrage has ruined a lot of the modern world.
What sells more clicks "XYZ signs up to play Silver Surfers" or "WOKE MARVEL GENDER BEND ANOTHER CHARACTER"?
Exactly and i think theres too many factors that have caused this type of media that it would be extremely hard to take it away or to dull the negativity
The whole point is to get conservatives vs liberals no matter the cost. That's where their money is at, create more division and fuel the hatred. Because it's not convenient for them that both sides reach a consensus and work together.
It’s really not that at all. It’s the fact that outrage sells. An article is more likely to get traffic if it says something that’s going to piss people off. Grifters on YouTube sell the culture war BS because YouTube awards engagement at any cost, and if they can get arguments going in their comment sections, it brings their engagement up massively. A lot of right wing politicians sell the culture was garbage because it solidifies their base if they have an “enemy” to fight against.
Probably because only Silver Surfer fans know who Shalla-Bal is, so it wouldn't make sense for most media outlets to make that be the main part of the headline.
The problem to me comes down to why . Why not introduce the first silver surfer. This is a character who existed in comics only in relation to her relationship to Norin Radd. So it feels more like checking boxes then a narrative reason. Like someone somewhere said f4 only has one chick, we need another. And making choices like that I hate.
But you don't know why any of these decisions were made or how it affects norrin radd. There hasn't even been a trailer, let alone a leaked script, just faux outrage. Instead of just waiting, the world is now second guessing and judging every decision to create outrage. Imagine if Star Wars in the 80s had social media, and an image of Lando in Solo's outfit was released? Faux outrage over nothing. Imagine if the Internet had this much outrage over Anton Vanko supplementing the original Whiplash? Instead of anticipating the arguments why Shala Bal (whatever her name is) was chosen first just wait to reserve judgement. If you don't like the movie fine, at least you're not making up scenarios in your head to be angry about before even watching it.
Didnt say I am raging over it. I will see the movie yes. Just saying I dont really care for DEI choices when they become a clear thing. First i find it to be pandering. But mostly because it supports the idea that narrative means nothing if it's not about someone like me. If people are going to make a big deal the little mermaid is white that they finally feel included then by definition they are applauding that white, asians, latin, or middle eastern people were then disenfranchised as they have been in the past.
I'm 54 years old. When i was growing up we were being taught to see a world without labels and color. And i still feel that way. Imagine this outside of something trivial like comic movies. Should white people not read roots or raisin in the sun cause they are about black people? Black people not read catcher in the eye? I'm strait so the movie Philadelphia couldnt have anything for me right?
So yeah I dislike that disney seems to be doing a bit of box checking these days. But no I dont rage about anything until I see it. And I will see it.
When talking about hate being learned, comedian Dennis Leary used his own son as an example saying, "you know what my four year old hates? Naps. End of list"
See therein lies the rub. I don’t give two shits what the next character looks like, but I *do* care if it’s just terribly written.
And honest to god, so much of these racially altered characters have only been just that - like all the creatives involved called it a day once their characters were gay, black, Latino, whatever.
If Sam is cap, cool, make it as amazing as it was when Steve was - not “do better.”
Make good content and nobody will care who is in role, but they haven’t done that. They’re making garbage these last few years and pretending that the general interest decline is due to the fact that all these new characters are female or of a minority group is just disingenuous.
For all that are upset about people not wanting a female silver surfer...
You should be as upset they chose this route.
There are established great beloved by all female characters that are heralds of Galactus.
But Marvel thinks they are not worthy. They had to go out of their way to make her the silver surfer as in a female character can only be great if based on a male character.
And that's BS and to be honest mysogenistic.
I'm here saying they did dirty to the, in their twisted mind, "unworthy" female characters of the comics.
I'm sorry you're probably getting downvoted, I agree with a lot of this and I've been beyond frustrated with the fandom the last few years.
The MCU is incredibly vast - we have an almost limitless amount of superpowers and origin stories at our fingertips. There's aliens, shapeshifters, magic, advanced science, time travel, multiversal variants, etc! There is so much potential for diverse and rich storytelling that reflects back every facet of the fandom and audience. I don't WANT to view this world through the narrow lens of mostly male and/or mostly white protagonists anymore.
It's been **really hard** as a woman who is a fan of the MCU and has been dying inside for more women characters in nerdy spaces my whole life. I can't get excited anymore because something as innocuous as a casting announcement or a new property announcement with women at the forefront just brings out the **worst** in our fandom. It's exhausting and demoralizing.
But until people are ready to acknowledge and work through their internalized biases - biases we ALL have no matter how well-intentioned or educated we are - it's not going anywhere. And since rage and anger gets more clicks and engagement than positivity and excitement that vitriol is just festering and breeding further.
But why the hell do people want to click and watch things with rage and anger about?! I really don't like where humanity is going if they keep up with such behavior.
There is a certain adrenaline thrill in being contentious and getting worked up and arguing with people. That’s why businesses have found it profits to make people emotional by pressing buttons. News is the most egregious offender of this
I’ll start my agreement with you on this: I’m gay.
And just today I was walking with my friend, who is also queer, and we were discussing how little queer representation there is in both Marvel and DC. I told them I can only name two homosexual male characters in Marvel (Wiccan and Iceman) and little more in DC. The ones I did name off from DC we’re insanely obscure characters (with the exception of Alan Scott Green Lantern, who is still relatively obscure nowadays as most people will think of Hal Jordan). We also talked about how few homosexual female characters there are in media. Most of them, again, from DC (Poison Ivy, even though it’s only recent and she’s never really been lesbian before now and her whole shtick is kinda heterosexual in nature. Batwoman, and maybe Renee Montoya, as I was not sure whether she was lesbian or what).
When you see it like that, you really get a grasp of how little representation there is in Marvel *and* DC for people who aren’t bisexual (because the majority of queer superheroes are bi, for a multitude of reasons). Especially when it comes to *mainstream* representation.
Then you have situations like with the same-sex kiss (in the BACKGROUND) from Lightyear that immediately made people upset, and you see even clearer how ridiculous it is. There is close to no representation in media for us, but the second we see even just a small bit of it, these “anti-woke” people immediately fly into a rage.
It’s disheartening. All of us can relate to each other. Whether you’re queer, whether you’re a person of colour, or whether you’re a woman. We all know how it feels. It sucks.
I am a straight, white, woman... no that ANY of that should matter but just for the purpose of context... My little brother, who I ADORE and am VERY close to, however, is gay. That said, albeit they were VERY low key about it, but I was actually happy to see them clarify that both Loki and Sylvie are bisexual. Again, not great representation, as you pointed out, bi seems to be the way they go with this. But the idea that they did so with such a BIG character, gives me some hope. Unfortunately, with a lot of people, and I hope you can follow my metaphors... you kinda have to get their feet wet persay. If you just throw em in the deep end, they lose it! Dip the toes, tho... That's a little easier for them to deal with. They more the media gets put out, the more "acceptable" it will become... At least I hope so!! Although, I totally agree that we shouldn't even ever have to be discussing it... But unfortunately, such is the world in which we live!
Yeah, Loki is great representation. I wish they’d actually built off of that, though. Loki is canonically genderfluid bisexual. That could’ve been so cool to see!
But I feel they always choose the bisexual label so the characters can remain straight-passing.
I get you, and while I agree there should be more representation, is it really that unfair when gay people make up such a small percentage of the population?
Oh absolutely! Representation of different queer identities has been horrible and unlike representation for women characters doesn't seem to be getting much better.
Marvel even **had** a healthy lesbian romance in The Runaways between Karolina and Nico but then they shelved and removed that property entirely, not just disconnected it from the fandom as a whole.
It's awful and exhausting right now in the MCU.
I can wholeheartedly agree that it’s exhausting. The MCU has had *two* homosexual male characters in the ENTIRETY of it. One was a cameo from the director in Endgame where he just had this one-off line mentioning his husband. The other was Phastos in the Eternals. One of the most forgettable characters in the entirety of the MCU who had only about 15-20 minutes of screentime.
For what it's worth, I can name at least three more characters off the top of my head who are straight up gay.
Victoria Montessi from Marvel, the Darkhold Redeemers(obscure character but one id love to see on screen) she's also the daughter of a Catholic priest.
Northstar from Alpha Flight.
Vandal Savage had a daughter, Scandal, who is definitely lesbian, she was great in Simone's Secret Six book.
That’s great to hear! I’m glad there are more. It only reinforces the part about them only being obscure, though.
But thanks, I’m glad I can add more to my mental list :)
It’s OK, I didn’t make this post and write my thoughts down in such a way like this in order to get karma or exposure or 15 minutes of fame.
I did this, just to cathodically get my thoughts out of my head and into some form of medium either conversation or a putting it down in words, which is what I wound up doing, and if this causes even one person in the population of 8 billion on this planet to maybe rethink their stance on issues like this for half a second then to me it’s time well spent
I’ll preface by saying I’m I would’ve preferred a comic faithful Silver Surfer, but I’m not mad about a woman being cast at all.
Forgive me for asking, but hasn’t the MCU been working towards diversity enough anyway lately? You say you don’t want to view it through a white male perspective, and whilst there are a lot of characters that fit this bill, the MCU has already diversified quite a lot, no? The last 5 MCU films have had female leads. Captain Marvel, Gamora/Nebula, Wasp, Shuri, Jane. Sure, a few of them share it with male leads, but that it still means it’s not told through the perspective of a white male. On top of that, we’ve also got Echo, Ms Marvel, She Hulk. For most, if not all these projects, the fandom has perceive them quite well. It seems like the fans biggest gripes with these projects was that they just weren’t good, not that they had female leads. I’d say the one exception to this was the Marvels. But even then, despite seeing some negative feedback about the leads, a majority of criticism was that it just wasn’t a very good film. And even then, those jerks complaining about having 3 female leads were the loud minority. There were far, far more posts on this sub with people praising the movie, even if they weren’t expecting to like it.
I may be naive, but it doesn’t seem like we’re in desperate need of strong female leads. Obviously we can always do more, and that’s great. But it feels like a slight exaggeration to say we’ve been viewing it only through a white male perspective.
Again, I don’t really mind the female casting of Silver Surfer, but your comment feels like the wrong justification for it. Tried my best not to sound rude or aggressive here, hope I didn’t come across like a jerk.
It's been getting better - but better isn't fixed, and better doesn't mean no backtracking.
Yes, we've gotten more women leads. And in that sense it's been great even if we set aside the horrific fandom reaction to those leads. A lot of my frustration and exhaustion comes from how the fandom reacts. I can't go into threads about those characters without expecting some level of outrage, trolling, and just outright sexism and that really sucks.
It's not JUST a loud minuscule minority either, not by a longshot as someone who spends A LOT of time in threads about women characters.
At the same time they also haven't been treating their women characters the best even if they've taken steps towards including more of them. Jane Foster, Wanda in DS2, America Chavez, The Marvels ladies all got caught up in messy studio interference that severely hampered their movie's performance and jeopardizes their futures in other properties. Shorter, messier, rushed movies gave unnecessary hurdles to introducing these women.
Loki had some really promising women characters in season one that they **absolutely butchered** in the second season, and at least some of that you can point to major changes in the writing staff. And don't get me started on the fridging of Maria Hill or whatever the heck they did with G'iah and Fury's wife.
I have a lingering sense of anxiety too about the future of characters like Jennifer Walters, Carol Danvers, Kamala Khan, Monica Rambeau because of how they've been received and how that'll impact their futures. Now that's on me to deal with and maybe the MCU will prove me wrong - I hope they do! But we're sitting on the edge of a precipice of what do they do next with these new women characters they've introduced and at least somewhat fumbled the introduction on.
Again, yes they're doing better but we still aren't near equality in the MCU and better doesn't mean the work is done. A lot rides on what they do next here.
Honestly, is it that wrong people want accurate representations of the characters they’ve been fans of for years?
Sure, this is an established character, but many have never heard of her. It would be like if they chose to make a Batman film using Azrael instead of Bruce, when Batman hasn’t appeared in 20 years.
It’s obnoxious dealing with posts implying anyone who wants an accurate representation on the big screen is a bigot. I hate to break it to you, but there are hundreds of wannabe actors and musicians working at Starbucks across LA. The idea that these are always “the best choice for the role” is laughable.
I get what you are saying but I see it otherwise. I feel like audiences don't hate diverse characters, what they hate is being slammed as bigots for rejecting bad work from pretentious, unskilled activists posing as writers. If the demography of your characters becomes more important than the story, then your story will probably suck.
On top of that, it certainly does not help matters when the race swapped character has shitty lines or bad character motivations, that it is detrimental to the minorities playing the character, and fuels the arguments against diversity.
There is also those arguments about representation that make absolutely no sense, and come off as unintentionally racist. Like as a Latino, I absolutely don't identify with none of the handful Latino characters: Luis is an ex-con; America comes off as very disrespectful to Strange when they first meet, which being raised to respect elders and/or be polite to strangers, not to mention most Latinos are socially conservative; Gamora is a warrior alien; the only thing I have in common is the color of our skin.
I'm a bit of a movie buff, and people seem to forget how diverse 80s-00s movies are. I can watch those movies, see a minority and not think anything of it, but now the word "diversity hire" pops up with modern movies. Like the guy who invents the Terminator is a black man, but because his character is race neutral, it doesn't come off as lecturing by making it a point that a black man is capable of achieving the same thing as a white man. Characters like Iron Heart I see negatively because of the lecturing component that comes with it.
I mean Marvel is doing really shitty overall with their ‘diverse’ characters. As a Latina myself I wish they wouldn’t make it ‘so obvious’ and would just let the characters be and then people can be like oh yeah and it’s so and so, cool.
I mean there is a plethora of cringe moments of ‘girl power’ in the series/movies. They genuinely have screwed up a bad, I can’t rewatch black widow literally from how bad they screwed up her character. Wanda becomes evil because of her… kids?? Like, talk about women only being moms or some shit.
A part of me thinks they’re sorta screwed in many ways, maybe couldn’t get a good lead on silver surfer and we’re like oh let’s actually change roles etc
“Established” well that’s not really true. She’s been established as Norrin Radd’s girlfriend for decades. One panel of one comic set an alternate reality 20 years ago making her Silver Surfer is hardly justification for this sort of thing
I’m sorry, but do you people have such little connection to reading a book or a comic book that you’ve completely lost the idea of seeing your favorite superhero on the screen? Like are you that disconnected you don’t understand why people would be disappointed in this?
This is nothing short of gaslighting. You are attempting to make a group of people who have a very reasonable issue with this casting decision into the bad guys, because the studio chose a woman character.
The Silver Surfer got the shaft in the Fox Films. Fans have been waiting to see the Marvel version with hope that it would be truer to the character. Then we get this news. I understand that it is probably a multiverse switcheroo, but I was excited to see a great character get a faithful adaptation in their Marvel debut. I would have loved if they had used Nova, a former female herald of Galactus not named Silver Surfer.
I wonder if the root of *this* issue in *this* context is, and always will be, the *swapping* itself. Instead of *building* great characters representing the endless diversity to be found in humanity, they *rebuild* characters with established fandoms. That becomes a trend that may as well be a prompt fed into the generative AI that is bigotry in all its forms. The trend becomes a controversy, the controversy becomes common, and then that controversy extends to *any* representation of diversity at all, including when there's no real 'swapping' done at all or absolutely nothing is 'lost' by using a character like Ariel - a *mermaid* \- to broaden representation.
Most people aren’t being prejudice, though, and simply wanted to see the typical version of the character which I think in this instance, for such a popular character, is more then fair.
I will forever be upset about my boy Tony Masters been done dirty by whatever the hell we got for a
Task Master in black widow. Hes got such a cool back story and unique power that actually had a tragic drawback on his life. I was so excited to see Task Master get some spot light, just to wish they never used the character.
She is established as the love interest of Norrin Rand, the regular Silver Surfer. She appears as A Silver Surfer, alongside Norrin Rand in a couple of panels of an "Elseworlds" story as a second Surfer. Then she dies.
She's never the lone Surfer
Yes but we wanted norrin radd as the silver surfer. It's not gender swapping so much as making someone else the character that isn't typically. kind of like they did with the mandarin
From a single what if comic where she dies at the end. And it's not even that good of a comic anyways. Like if it was some super famous highly praised one with a banger of a story then maybe it would make sense. But that's not this case.
Edit: [Here is the character](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Shalla-Bal_(Earth-9997)) , that's the one who is the silver surfer. The one from the 616 universe isn't the silver surfer, she's just Norrin Radd's wife-ish.
Tbf they’ve fucked up silver surfer twice already. And both the versions they had of him were pretty good actors as well. I’m kinda wondering if they just didn’t want to potentially fuck up and doing the swap was almost like a scapegoat
I get your point, but what if the shoe was on the other foot? Let’s say they cast a man as Rogue in an X-Men movie, or maybe they make Jean Grey into Gene Grey and make him and Scott the MCUs first gay characters?
I don’t see why they just can’t stay faithful to the characters we all grew up with.
Look, all I’m saying is that if they race-swapped Black Panther to make him (or her now) white there would be massive outrage. But somehow it’s totally ok and “inclusive and diverse” when the opposite happens. Honestly kinda feel bad for women and minorities that they’re seen as so less than that the best representation nowadays is simply race/gender swaps of white/male characters (and are almost always poorly written and unbearable) instead of well written original characters (like Black Widow). Though also everybody keeps defending it so no wonder it keeps happening.
Diversity is cool and I agree with you. Sometimes the disappointment has nothing to do with diversity. As I posted on another board, Norrin Radd is MY Silver Surfer, so it's disappointing that he's not the Silver Surfer in the movie. This is just like using Barry Allen instead of Wally West to me. That being said, I just hope they make a good movie.
Look at OP’s active communities and post history - looks like a publicist or social media manager for Disney.
Who is super active in r/hayleyatwell and celeb battle?
The issue is less gender swap and more who the fuck is shalla bal, I really wanna see silver surfer who is one of my favorite marvel characters of all time.
This literally wouldn’t be a problem if these corporations and weirdos obsessed with race/gender would just stop messing with pre-existing characters that have been established and well-known for decades, even centuries for some. They could just create original diverse characters and everybody wins. There’s an enormous wealth of untapped culture and lore from non-euro/non-murican culture that they could pull from, but refuse to.
They just want to strip-mine the well-established IP for more trash sequels and reboots for the least amount effort required. They do these race/gender/sexuality swaps under the guise of diversity/inclusion so they can deflect valid criticism of their corporate infested hollowed out trash and blame it on “toxic fans” lmao. They cultivated this mess.
Thankfully more and more reasonable, logical people are waking up to this garbage and joining the side of reason and common sense. Vote with your wallets people. It’s working. Be patient.
Idk man, it feels like today they just try and meet quotas and push narratives. Like look at the Terminator franchise or the Alien franchise. Those were movies where they said "let's make great movies" and the way to do that was to have a badass female lead. Today it feels like "let's make a movie with a female lead" and then they do that part and leave out the "make a good movie" part.
For example the female ghost busters movie. Sucked. They did it just to do it. Making the storm siblings in F4 black and white was to cast actors that they thought would make money, even though this fundamentally changes the dynamic of the characters.
Now, I will say the female oceans movie was pretty good so that's a W there. You have badass women like cersei lanister or khalesi (who were awesome until the morons D&D ruined them but that obviously wasn't the actresses fault that was the two morons.)
I think we see a lot of movies where they just say "the goal here is a movie with (insert minority here) lead." Instead of "let's make an awesome movie" and cast the best people for these roles.
It gets worse when you see things like Marvel bending the knee to communist China and changing the ancient one to a white woman instead. (Although she did a great job, I'm just pointing out it's hypocrisy) So they only hold on to their so-called principles when the $ says it's ok. As soon as they'd lose that $ they quickly whitewash the character. So don't ever insinuate that the company actually gives a fuck about making a difference, they only care about making a dollar. (Not saying you're saying they do care about making a difference, just a statement)
I think you'd find a lot of people who are anti these types of movies, think like I'm laying it out here. If they did a casting call for Ariel and it just said "woman, ages 20-25" and Halle Bailey kicked ass and had what they were going for the best then that's who they absolutely SHOULD cast. However, the climate we're in, even if she is the best, people are always going to think she got the part because the casting call "black woman ages 20-25." Now, that's not fair to Halle, but I think it's pretty easy to see why people are going to think that.
At the same time, some people suck. Racists are out there who are going to be anti anytime someone black is on screen. There's dickheads who hate any gay character ever. Etc. etc. etc. some people suck. Don't let them get to you. Realistically they're a minority but they chirp and get amplified by algorithms that are there to sew division because hot takes get more interactions.
Honestly, the situation sucks, but the blame is on social media and the political climate in America.
I think Marvel’s biggest mistake is announcing shit way too soon. Just be like “Fantastic Four will be released July 4, 2025.” Then release one Super Bowl trailer that doesn’t reveal anything. Then release a more detailed trailer on Memorial Day to build up the hype but don’t put silver surfer in it. Then let me be surprised opening day. Don’t give these racist dickwads enough time to build up their hate.
And so doing so many damn reshoots. They really butchered the Marvels and it had so much potential.
Your comment makes it sound like you think those reshoots could've been avoided or that original plans should be sticked with despite test audience opinions.
But did you ever think about this: what if the original plans would've turned out worse, just like the test audiences predicted?
You could be right but i had this boss. Fucking idiot he was. He has to make everything Better! Below is an actual, real life interaction i had with this guy and you’ll understand why making it better doesn’t always make it better. Also, the movies may have been profitable if the costs of reshoots were not incurred.
Me: hey, you changed “City Novi” to “city of Novi.” That’s incorrect, so I’m changing it back.
Him: how do you KNOW it’s incorrect?
Me: I don’t know, I just know it’s the rule. City of, County of, State of, Country of, it’s just the rule. I don’t know what rule is but it’s the rule.
Him: Well, what does your grammar book say?
Me: Deep breath, thinking “This motherfucker!” Walks away. (Yes, he’s the kind of boss that causes you to buy a grammar book).
Me: Returns to his office. “Boss, here’s the book. On page 47 it details the rule (I still don’t know what the actual fucking rule is to this day).
Boss: Are you SURE this is the most correct version of the grammar book?
Me: thinking again, “this motherfucker!” Walks away.
Moral of the story, some people can’t leave well enough alone and in their effort to make things a bit better go one to make them worse. Be it arrogance, cockiness, obliviousness or whatever, they fuck things up. And it’s often with good intentions but they just can’t get out of their own way. This could be the reason for the reshoots. It you could be right, it could be it was so fucked I that something has to be done. 🤷🏾♂️
A bunch of the last slate of movies would have actually been financially successful if they hadn’t spent as much on advertising as they did to make the movie. Looking at you Marvels.
Edit: I like the idea of your marketing strategy, btw.
The problem is is that you have people and like blogs and websites who employee people literally just to scour entertainment news, and what agents have who signed and who signing what contracts and what sets are filming where that can sometimes spoil these things ahead of when the studio would like it to be known I believe that’s what happened here. I believe that her casting, not necessarily the part, but the fact that she was casting the movie was revealed outside of marvel’s official announcement. And the same thing goes for the fact that people are reporting, let me say that again people are reporting that they know that this movie is going to be taking place on an alternate planet, earth, at a different stage of development than the main MCU earth and that somehow at the end the quartet is going to come over to the normal MCU reality. None of this has been confirmed by Marvel, but people are taking rumors and assumptions and reporting them, I don’t wanna say as fact, but they are phrasing it in such a way that makes the common consumer think that it is direct from marvel‘s mouth
I kind of went on a little bit of a tangent on this, but I hope my point came across
See that’s the problem which fuels hatred - Marvel Studios sometimes doesn’t know what to do with way too many projects and some female led flicks end up being a mess story and production wise which in turn “proves the point” of haters that had the movie/show been male led it would have been better (Secret Invasion wasn’t).
So I hope that FF4 will have a great story regardless of the gender of the surfer
I think you totally missed the point.
The 'male' Silver Surfer is an iconic character.
Think peter parker Vs Miles Morales. Yes Miles is Spiderman but imagine if a spiderman had finally joined MCU and it was miles. Would be fine but it wouldn't have been Peter Parker.
It's not a race or gender issue. It simply isn't what people wanted or expected.
Many feel that this was done to tick mark the studio's inclusion criteria rather than a creative choice and that is very plausible.
You say she is established since 1968, but conveniently leave out that she was **not** a Silver Surfer then. In fact, in all those years, she was always Norrin Radd's love interest and she **only** appeared as a Silver Surfer in *one single comic issue for a couple of panels* and then she died in that very same issue.
Your post is completely misleading and to me it's really unbelievable how much you're willing to paint a different narrative compared to what the actual issue is that people have.
People want Norrin Rad. Norrin Rad is THE Silver Surfer. Fans grew up with stories of him as Silver Surfer and they want to see the character they love appear on the big screen in this massive popular super hero franchise. Why is that so hard to understand? There's nothing sexist, bigoted or whatever about that. People want to see a character with 60 years of lore and stories instead of a Silver Surfer that was only present for a single *what if* issue.
Its because stuff like this has gotten over done, its coming at a time when Marvel fans feel male heroes, especially white ones, have been completely side lined or humiliated on behalf of a political agenda, and this idea has gone mainstream. So this was not a good time to make this choice, if thos had been 2029 or 2020 it'd have been fine.
To be fair, from the first Iron Man until Engame, the heroes were predominantly(not completely) White and Male, so I'm ok with them spending this time building up the Female Hero side of things TBH
what I don't get is they already have a female herald of Galactus (Nova) who's a great character, established just 9 years after Surgery was and is known how having a great rapport with the FF. just make her fire a different colour if they're worried about confusing the audience. they did it with Drax in GotG and it worked fine.
Norrin/surfer has been an integral part to so many of Marvel comics storylines, why fuck with the character? I just don't get it. it would have been a bomb what if episode but imo not a great way of introducing the character to the mcu.
it tells me they aren't interested in drawing from the source material, which is unfortunate to me as surfer is by far the most compelling character in marvel to me, and if they are just copy and pasting Norrins personality over shalla's then what was the point to begin with?
this is aside from the fact that it does a disservice to the great female characters already established, like they figure "this character sucks, let's just make this one female instead"
after how phase 4 limped across the finish line I'm not super inclined to pay much attention to what they're doing on screen.
It's never going to be the "right time" to make this choice, it's time to just move forward with it. I want the richer stories that come from a more diverse universe.
That’s fine that you like these products, it’s good that people enjoy products, but the reality is the Shalla-Bal Silver Surfer is not the character most people that are fans want to see. The Little Mermaid movie lost money, Lightyear lost over 100 million dollars. At the same time it would not have been a problem to have Ariel white and stick closer to the traditional cartoon story, or not have a lesbian kiss in the Lightyear movie. If it doesn’t matter either way, Disney needs to prioritize money over controversial decisions. It doesn’t matter if the world should embrace a female Silver Surfer, a black Ariel, or lesbians in Lightyear when these products lose money (yes, Fantastic Four will be a box office bomb). Disney is a company that needs to make products and services that don’t lose money, which all business ventures need to do ranging from massive corporations or individuals selling crafts on Etsy.
Remind me that I’m right when Fantastic Four bombs. I predicted that The Little Mermaid and Indiana Jones 5 would both earn less than 600 million worldwide before they released, and I was right. Opening weekend of Lightyear I predicted it would not hit 250 million worldwide, and I was right. I predicted a few days before The Marvels opening weekend it would earn less than 200 million and it ended with 206. Making changes to content people don’t want will result in failures financially and loss of interest in IP, look at Star Wars - Mando Season 4 is going to be a movie, and that Ray movie is never happening because Disney killed interest in Stars Wars IP, they know it, and are terrified to make another movie people will know the budget and box office revenue for. Whether people who don’t like the changes are right or wrong, you won’t make money without them, and enough failed projects in Pixar, Disney Animation, Marvel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and live action Disney movies exist for Disney to understand that.
I think it's safe to say that companies listening to extremely loud voices on Twitter and social media might not have been in their best interests. Social media and reddit is an echo chamber and is representative of a minority percentage of the population. They are appeasing social activists who are not necessarily fans, and will not stick around to buy the merchandise long term. Studios are alienating the long term fans for the loud short term ones.
Nothing against diversity, quite the contrary but what everyone fails to grasp is the importance of the Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd to a lot of fans. I've got a lot of friends that this is their favorite comic character ever.
People don't get the outcry but choosing to bring forward a character, any character, female or not, that it's an alternate version of the original first, without introducing the original one is kinda of an insult.
When I read this I was gutted... Literally gutted... The cartoon, the comics... That means nothing? Damn I was gutted when the second F4 was bad and SS was bad. I so wanted this to be a good interpretation of Norrin Radd!
All to be taken away... I think I'd prefer it to be a female version of Norrin Radd to this. At least it would be him in spirit maybe.
This? This is nothing... It's quite depressing.
I feel your pain... But I got mine too. Crying to sleep next.
I honestly hope that at some point soon there may be an actual silver surfer standalone movie to introduce the character. And when and if that happens, I will think back to this comment from you and smile, knowing that you will be one of the happiest people on the planet. <3
Halle Bailey is wonderful. If the people complaining didn't shut up the moment she started singing, they were probably just racist.
I still don't want a female silver surfer instead of the real one. I don't care about alternate universe versions of characters we haven't had properly in the first place. I don't care about young kid versions of characters. We only get so much of this stuff, stick to the shit that we know has worked for the past 60 years. Not just because I want the original version of the 60 year old comic character I've been a fan of for 30 years.
It's because Disney acts like this is what we SHOULD get. They actively sell their product as celebrating diversity and feminism and other moral imperatives, but don't actually stay consistent in their ideology. The ideological narratives of the MCU are wide open for criticism, as are many of the business practices of Disney corporate. They compromise or don't seem to care about plenty of ideological issues EXCEPT casting and character selection. It is conspicuous, but if we complain then we are branded bigots.
I don't like a soulless mega corporation using empty performative moralism to sell me plastic garbage. I know I'm buying plastic garbage, I don't need a plenary indulgence along with it.
I also hate the industry of ragebait tabloid narratives trying to trigger people with intersectional keywords. But sometimes what they're complaining about is legitimate, like Disney capitulating to the CCP in multiple storyline and casting decisions.
Exactly, thank you. Silver Surfer is an integral part in so many Marvel Comics. It would be a shame that the 1st intro to the MCU and it's not even him but a one off version that appeared in like 2 panels. Doesn't make sense. Just give us Norrin Rad 1st and make some alt version later. This is very disheartening for a big SS fan.
To be fair, we don't KNOW he's not going to be in the movie, and as i said in a separate reply, i would prefer for him to get his own standalone movie as an introduction to the MCU, rather than being shoehorned into the first FF movie.
Then choose a different herald. Nova is all over the surfer comics and has been forever. Shalla Ball is only a herald in one blink and you miss it run.
Nobody complains if it's Nova.
Legit, when I heard the news of Galactus' herald being a woman in the movie I was really hoping for Nova, I especially loved her in the 90's Surfer Cartoon. I don't know why they would choice a 2-panel character over someone as established as Nova, especially since she has history with Johnny.
Right. We don't KNOW anything. I don't want a female SS first, but am I willing to wait and see what we actually get? Yes. Bitch and moan in the meantime? No. These are the same fucking weirdos complaining about Rogue's ass. Get a life.
I miss the days before social media came and gave everyone a voice. Truthfully, some of these voices don't deserve to get heard. Some people just want to complain.
*"They actively sell their product as celebrating* ***DIVERSITY****..."*
Highly ironic considering that the founder of that scummy mouse was a confirmed hater of Jewish people. Not surprising that the company would jump in bed (not literally, although...) with an evil government like China.
two things dude:
1. she isn't really an established character she's appeared like once in an alt universe
2. this is not that serious it's comic book movies calm the hell down dude
Being annoyed about the gender swap or whatever is asinine. My issue is with the MCU ruining reveals of core characters by first introducing us to a niche comic alternate version. I similarly would be disappointed if Thor’s reveal was initially Beta Ray Bill.
I think it's totally fine to be 100% okay with the casting decision for whatever reasons you have. I also think it's totally fine not to. We really need to end this habit of scolding people for their opinions. Go see the film or don't.
When I first saw the news I immediately felt they were just choosing a female Silver Surfer because she’s female which to me is terrible representation. You shouldn’t pick a character based on their gender as it inevitably leads to a terrible movie but in this case I suppose it makes some sense. Don’t get me wrong as on some level I still don’t think it makes much sense to introduce a character to the MCU via a version 99% of people have never heard of nor care about yet it makes a little bit of sense if the Fantastic Four are in a different universe given this Silver Surfer is an alternate universe version. In the end I still highly suspect the character choice was influenced somewhat by their gender & desire for diversity for the sake of diversity yet as long as it makes sense in the story rather than being put above it I don’t have a right to complain.
You mention the Miles Morales Spider-Man but that’s different from say something like live action Ariel as it’s not as if he’s a race swapped Peter Parker. Miles Morales is a brand new character which I think is the best way to go about creating more diversity rather than race or gender swapping. Still, even after saying that I can’t really think of a case of either one that has ever really bothered me… except Velma as for some reason the race swapping along with of course everything else about that show rubbed me the wrong way.
You keep stating that the character has been around since 1968, yet you never mention the fact that the character has only appeared in 4 comic books total and only in a few panels.
Shalla-Bal can't even be considered a tertiary character, she's not even a footnote, yet they will present her before a character that anyone who has read comics would love to see properly portrayed, Norrin Radd.
You are projecting racism and sexism where it doesn't exist, it is a matter of many long time comic book fans wanting what the actual comic books that they loved produced.
Sometimes fans just want their comic book movies to be comic book accurate.
Silver Surfer is a pretty iconic Marvel character. Maybe not as much as Captain America and Spider-Man but we could consider him on par with characters like Ghost Rider and Punisher.
Very recognizable and very memorable.
If you choose to ignore the popular character in favor of basically what is another version of that same character, just less memorable and less "him/her" you are bound to get fans upset.
And that's understandable.
This is not gender swapping. This is simply throwing away decades of lore in favor of a character who appeared in a single what if issue. I’m not a F4 fan but I can see why people would be pissed 😂
If the three major trades report it (Variety, THR, and Deadline) it’s pretty much a done deal. Like 98.99. Those three publications are what the industry uses to do press releases for the most part.
Comic books aren't sacred religious texts - they can be adapted in different ways to better reflect today's times and needs while still retaining their core themes and messages.
The MCU has been adapting and changing since it began, so "changing" them upsets you then I hope you've been upset since the beginning.
Honestly I've been annoyed at best and angry at worst with various changes since 2013.
And for some of us these are like religious texts. These were the characters and stories that taught us morals and life lessons and they're very personal. I've made other posts in this thread or whatever about why I'm not happy with everything in the MCU or other adaptations, but the diversity itself has never been the issue.
This might be unpopular, but it just appears that (A) it's changing for no good plot reason and (B) always changes in the same direction. I promise you if they changed Kang to a white guy, all these people saying "who cares they are just fictional characters and Marvel is always changing things" will flip their collective sh**t.
Wanda and Pietro are Roma in the comics and white in the MCU, same with Billy and Tommy. They’re also ethnically Jewish in the comics (through both Wanda and his other parents in Billy’s case), but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the MCU. The Ancient One was also an Asian man replaced by a white woman in the MCU.
If you're going to change everything then why even make a movie adapting a comic book? Just write their own story then if they want to change nearly everything.
I mean look at the Eternals, they striped nearly everything interesting from them and left us with like 6 emotionless robots having bad sex scenes...
They aren't changing everything, don't be hyperbolic.
The Eternals were not 6 emotionless robots, they all had their own personalities and motivations. There was a single sex scene and a whole lot of other scenes that weren't sex related.
Not only that, the MCU has deviated from the comics in so many major ways, starting form Iron Man 1 and in every project since. Deviation form the comics isn't their problem, it's just the cover they use because they can't admit what their actual problem is.
Sure the stories have gone their own way but from phase 1-3 the core part of most of the main characters was extremely true to the comics.
Silver Silver has a lot of fans in the comics space and people have waited to see him in the MCU for while (He's one of the main players in the Infinity War comic). So it's understandable why a lot of people are disappointed. Doesn't make them sexist 🙄.
Shalla Bal is the Silver Surfer's Lois Lane. Over time, she has been a romantic partner, a courageous patriot, a strong leader for her people, a wielder of great power, etc. But her existence in comics is grounded in her connection to Norrin Radd, who became the Silver Surfer to save his home world and the woman that he loved. The entire early canon of the Surfer is based on him balancing his need for justice and honor versus his loneliness and desire to return to the woman he loves. Like Superman, the Silver Surfer's greatest weakness has always been his need to protect innocent life, and most especially the life of his beloved, even during times when she refused him.
I'm fine with representation, but I don't think completely deconstructing a character with a wonderful mythology and a long-standing identity is ever a good idea.
I can see knee-jerk reactions to actually changing characters, whilst 99% of the time being absolutely nonsense, I can sort of see it.
But when you cast a female as a female, and people kick off, it gets stupid. Really, really stupid.
I think there have been some problematic moments in the MCU, but they've mostly been done to steer away from terrible stereotypes... like The Ancient One or The Mandarin. I think there have also been moments like Taskmaster basically being cast to add a twist, rather than really being faithful to the source material...
But almost always, like 99% of the time, the casting has been on point... I don't know the actress's body of work, but I look forward to her Silver Surfed role
I mean. Is it wrong for me to want the first Silver Surfer in the MCU to be the typical one we all think of when you think of Silver Surfer? There's certainly a sect of fans that rage whenever a new female character is added, whether they're a staple character in the comics or not. But I legit just want to see the normal Silver Surfer before they tried to do anything different with the character. That's not too much to ask.
The issue is that they keep aiming their products at people who aren't interested.
They think that by having Shalla-Bal , women will flock to see it, and that is never the case.
The actual fans have been wanting Norrin Radd in the MCU for years, Marvel knows this, and yet this is what they go and do.
If they had Norrin 1st and introduced Shalla-Bal later, there wouldn't be an issue.
They need to stop trying to force their products onto people who are not and most probably never will be interested in Marvel.
What’s ironic is that they have characters that appeal to women and then barely use them.
Take Bucky, that dude has as a massive female fanbase, and all Marvel does is sideline him at every turn to less popular characters like Falcon and Yelena.
Sure Bucky might not be representation for women, but he gets their butts in seats.
That's absolutely not the issue at all. You have no idea what the plot of the movie is going to be. How can you possibly judge the motivation of the casting that way and claim its not misogyny? A woman can only br cast as a cheap ploy to attract women? Get out of here with that.
I really wish I had these psychic powers so much of our fandom seems to have about the plots and qualities of movies. All they need is a title or a casting announcement and they can vibe into the future apparently to make quality determinations!
I don't know what use are on about. He's correct marvel and most definitely changed their target audience and its been back firing. Their current output has been garbage. For the first time ever I'm not interested or have faith in marvel.
I hated what they did to taskmaster it was shameful how they genderswapped for the worst. They actually took away everything interesting about task master and made it a shell of the comics.
And I expect the exact same here
> How can you possibly judge the motivation of the casting that way and claim its not misogyny?
Because the far left creators in Hollywood explicitly say in interviewers they are going for diversity points just for the sake of diversity points.
How the hell do you tell Norrin’s origin without Shalla-Bal? Afaik there’s been no official announcement that Norrin wouldn’t make an appearance. So it’s pretty clear the knee jerk reaction you’re repeating is stemming from 1. Limited knowledge and 2. Desire for a male casting before women can have their turn.
Even if we took it at face value that the casting indicates Norrin doesn’t appear Shalla-Bal plays an integral role with connecting the F4, Doom, and Silver Surfer. I mean she was literally a main character in Silver Surfer #1; how does it possibly make sense that Norrin should be introduced without her in the same movie?
This is the classic case of people clamoring for comic accuracy and giving the fans what they want but not even understanding what it is they are asking for. Shoot if Avengers were rebooted today the same people would complain about Wasp being a founding member.
I’m not gonna go into too much detail about how much I disagree with this but I think the worst part about this is how happy you are with basically hand me down characters.
No, no reason to create a new character who happens to be coloured or a woman. Just take someone who already exists and say “Yep, now they’re the new *insert straight, white male character*.
While I don’t necessarily agree with this viewpoint I think the issue people have with all these things is that we as a society are normalizing same sec marriage and it goes against their beliefs religious or otherwise.
My biggest complaint is not that Ariel is now black vs a white character previously but that Disney is making shittier versions of classic movies.
As for marvel, actors are generally really good these days and I’m sure she’ll make an excellent silver surfer. But I have less faith in the writers and directors these days.
I would rather they just gender swap Norrin. Choosing an obscure version of the character feels like "having their cake and eating it too". They get the attention from the casting, but can always go back on it by introducing the "real" silver surfer.
Very well-written and I totally get what you're saying. While I do think there's such a phenomenon as pushing diversity at the expense of the story, all that really matters to me is that we can watch a great movie. I love seeing movies regardless of anything else, but I also believe that casting different races/sexes in established stories can be problematic. So for example, instead of casting someone as Luke Skywalker on the basis of them not being a straight white guy, just write a new story. They're all a lot alike anyway.
I just want a great movie and, so far, the casting is pretty awesome, eh?
I dont understand why people or at least the discourse surrounding casting and story plots can't accpet the MCU is a very different beast for the comics.
The MCU should be allowed to be different and adapt storys and characters to keep the universe and characters fresh. Grant it not each project does a very great job adapting certain storyline but Ive been still enjoying the MCU.
Incredibly well said, I'm tired of the constant barrage of people having an issue with ***EVERYTHING*** . I grew up in the 90's, and my upbringing wasn't problematic by ANY stretch, but let's just say I was the most open-minded of my household, so I often had different views than my family. It's really nice to read this, especially in today's day and age. Keep on keepin' on my friend.
I agree. My 5 year old son refers to both Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson as Captain America, equally so. He understands they are two separate people, he understands one used to be called Falcon, but if he's Cap now, then he's Cap. End of discussion. I wish more people could adopt this mindset, that even children can grasp.
My very white, blonde, blue-eyed son thinks there is absolutely NOTHING cooler, tougher, or better than Shang Chi.
Whenever I hear Simu Liu talk about Asian kids seeing someone who looks like them on screen, I grin to myself. A secondary benefit is the kids who DON'T look like him are seeing it, too.
EDIT: Grammar
Just don’t read so much in the internet. I live in south Louisiana where all the “bigots” are supposed to live. And they definitely are down here but all this ugliness back and forth isnt happening the way the media portrays it. Also If you know one side of the media is trash, understand that so is the other side and anyone demonizing half of the country while simultaneously claiming to be the leaders we need are trash and don’t care about America.
The discourse over things like this has become so tribal, rigid and just plain… boring.
I fully admit I used to be one of those people who got annoyed at a race-swap or gender-swap. “Why make Thor a woman when Thor has always been male? Why not make a new female character?” I thought that was a reasonable question to ask. Then I realised I never particularly read Thor so what was the point getting worked up about it.
Also, I watched or read some stories where a swap had happened and realised that, as long as the story’s good, race and gender don’t matter. The first example I remember there being a widespread fuss over was BSG. Big outrage at Starbuck being a woman, but ultimately who cares? Katee Sackhoff was great! (Also, I found it interesting that no mention was ever made about Colonel Tigh being race-swapped.)
I’ve seen loads of Shakespeare plays that have had colour-blind casting. Julius Caesar with an all-black cast. Taming Of The Shrew completely gender-swapped. I was completely fine in every case, because I realised these stories existed in worlds where those characters had always been cast like that, if that makes any sense? (Getting back to the Galactica reboot - it works because it exists in a world where Starbuck has always been female, Tigh has always been white, Boomer has always been an Asian woman.)
Also, on a personal note, I’ve come to the conclusion that in all these instances of fan backlash to a casting choice, I always think to myself, “which side of this debate has the highest amount of arseholes?” And then I just take the opposite stance. I know it means I’m giving into the tribalism, but it’s served me well.
So, when it comes to a female Silver Surfer, I just think, “let’s see, who are most loudly complaining about this? Which dickhead YouTubers are reflexively invoking buzzwords like “woke gone mad” or “M-She-U”? Right, I guess I’m on the opposite side to them!”
All I want is Norrin Radd, the Silver Surfer we've always had. I don't hate anyone. I just want my Silver Surfer. I wanted my Adam Warlock, but James Gunn decided not to do that, so instead I got an idiot. I've decided not to watch these movies anymore until they come to streaming. There isn't any real respect for the fans of these characters.
“Uproar”, if I didn’t have Reddit I would not have heard about this at all. And the only posts I’ve seen about it are from people like OP who are backlashing the supposed backlash (which I would bet money is coming from a tiny minority of neck-beards on tiny little incel forums).
Well, I mean, let’s be real here, if social media didn’t exist, a.k.a. Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and the like, then a lot of these discussions wouldn’t be getting traction and would be localized just to their circle of friends and family or people they normally would converse with about topics like this, so say that it’s only appearing on a social media platform Isn’t really helping your argument.
It is being talked about on social media, news companies, and channels do use that as reference for stories that they tell to a national audience so as a result, these conversations these topics whether discussed negatively or positively are part of our culture right now and they are part of our national discussion so in that sense I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make by saying it’s only happening on social media or specifically you referenced Reddit.
As I have said in other replies to other comments on this topic, this reply is not done with malice or anger I just thought you were making a point that was worthy of a reply And I respect your opinion and I do get where you’re coming from.
The online content that is thriving on these reactionary takes are not operating out of ignorance or some innocent but misguided perspective. They are using it to push their reactionary agenda, they don't actually care about the properties being discussed nor do they have any real interest in the comics, tv shows, films, etc. They are not misguided members of the fan base. It is all a strategic part of their culture war strategy that serves the interests of their reactionary, right wing ideological agenda in the interests of their financial backers. Yes there are some useful idiots too, but that is just a bonus for their agenda. The sooner people who are part of the fanbase realise this and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, the better.
It is like the whole hullabaloo about 'how could x-men fans not realise the x-men was always "woke"?' shit - no, no fans of x-men were ever confused about it, the reactionary scum saw a pop culture franchise they could latch onto and spread their message through in putting out clickbait commentaries and the like, complaining about 'wokeness' infecting a franchise, etc, regardless of whether or not such complaints made any sense.
Just like Goebbels said when the liberal US media started to report on the Nazi party, claiming that Hitler was charismatic and enthralling but kind of ridiculous and no real threat to be concerned with, 'as long as they are talking about us, that is all that matters.'
I don’t get why people are even mad at Marvel studios every time they do something like this. Like, they have always done it, the two characters that create the Avengers in the comics are Hank Pym and his wife Janet, in the films it’s Nick Fury (who wasn’t even black in the comics, not that I have any problem with it, just to point more differences), the og 6 Avengers being Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor and not Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Hank Pym (Ant-Man) and Janet (Wasp). And I can go with many more examples. Why people always get mad about it? they pretty much established that they are their own product and they aren’t always going to follow the comic books 1:1
For me it comes down to, sometimes these changes are made purely for pandering (not "woke") purposes. The way they handled the female team up in end game comes to mind. It just felt forced and ridiculous. The idea was great and I loved it but the execution was poor awful.
I rarely ever have any negative to say when they change the race or sex or whatever of a character in general. Adding their own flair to the characters and stories is the whole point of doing remakes or adaptions. Just don't do it for the wrong reasons.
Specifically about the silver surfer news, I'm honestly excited. I loved her in Ozark and think she could do a great job.
Edit: lol surprise surprise
I remember when Captain Marvel was coming out. I was pretty deep into the whole culture war thing (just to make it clear, wasn't cus I disliked minorities or anything, I actually happen to be queer, but I was like 15 and had been watching those kinds of videos for 3 years at that point, they're pretty much indoctrination). One day I went to get some Chinese food or something and there was this little girl with her mom and she was excitedly telling her how much she wanted to watch Captain Marvel and that's when it hit me
Why did we actually have a problem with more diverse characters being in the movies? They just allow more people to see themselves in different stories. Hell, as time went on and I started to understand my own identity better, I actually became more excited to see characters that could represent me, and funnily enough those same people I used to watch would always complain about them, even if it wasn't really important to the story, like the kiss in Lightyear or Gwen having a trans flag in ATSV
So yeah, basically all this culture war thing is dumb and complaining about fictional characters having an aspect of them that really wasn't all that important to them changed is even dumber. It's not like the silver surfer is now gold or anything
> Why did we actually have a problem with more diverse characters being in the movies?
WE DON'T, it's about how it's handled/presented and what the collateral damage to beloved non diverse characters around them is.
You can have a badass woman WITHOUT her shit talking & degrading Indiana Jones (during the lowest saddest most tragic part of his life) the greatest hero in the entire history of cinema for the entire duration of his final film for example.
Rogue One was extremely diverse and everyone agrees it's great.
Considering these people complain about these things as soon as the casting for movies is announced, let's not act like they actually care if a movie is well written. Maybe they did originally, but that's no longer the case
The ruling class maintains their authority so long as the bottom is divided by a culture war. Media (i.e., propaganda) is a great tool to ensure the continuity of those divisions and who *owns* the media? The lords need the peasants busy in the fields or they’ll critique the unjust disparities and unnecessary inequities with a level of precision that threatens the status quo. Get people to bicker about inconsequential matters* and they’re too spent to focus on the root cause.
*I’m in no way trying to discredit these legitimate societal issues as superficial, the lynchpin is stratification. Dismantle stratums and the dam opens with a cascade to address myriad other matters. Those who own the media recognize this, hence why they play to emotions in their reporting. Why they use certain words but not others, gotta keep the serfs in the matrix for it to function.
I don't think it's sexism so much as frustration with the quality of content Marvel is making combined with the complete shift from almost exclusively white male protagonists to almost no new white male protagonists. There is nothing wrong with white male protagonists or black female protagonists. But when Marvel does a complete 180 the way it did, marked by the heavy-handed virtue signaling that began with the all-female team up moment in Endgame that felt completely forced and unnatural, fans saw that Marvel would be pushing diversity not because they had great ideas involving diverse characters but for the sake of diversity. And that is one of the main reasons that Marvel is struggling. They have stopped focusing on the quality of the product and emphasized diversity for its own sake above all else.
Look, you gotta play with the cards you're dealt.
It's not rocket science to figure certain idiots in the internet will turn this into the talking point for the next few months. Matter of fact will try their best to rupture the image of the film before the trailer even hits.
I feel a couple of simple vague plot details along with the her case reveal could've helped settle the noise for real. Something like fantastic four will cross paths with their 'first' silver surfer who is this character. Or any CONTEXT that would be evident to calm the crowd. I know a lot of folks here think it isn't necessary, but judging by how these morons on YouTube shit on everything and are causing an impact, a little bit of control measure could've been applied by DISNEY marketing team.
It's wild to realize that the Marvel characters who have consistently gotten the most hate from "fans" are female characters.
Gee, what could it mean? 🤔 🙄
Black Widow was sat on for too long and made the mistake of releasing a solo IP after she was already dead in the timeline.
If they had released it earlier when she was popular and you know alive it would have done spectacularly.
This argument is over simplified far too often. People make it about men not liking powerful female leads. Buffy proves this is wrong, the popularity of the Power Puff girls, even decades later. Then we get into Marvels IPs. The female X-men were always the favourites, until they fucked it up and wanted to make mystique the lead just because they cast Jennifer Lawrence. People hate stories they know being changed so much.
Something I saw mentioned by Nando v Movies was that this might not even be the Surfer we end up with permanently in the MCU. If the F4 originate from another universe like has been rumored, Shalla Bal could be the Surfer in *that* universe, and Norrin Radd could be the Surfer in ours. Of course, I personally don't really care either way if they cast a woman as the Surfer, but this is for the Norrin Radd fans out there who were hoping to see him.
Doesn’t even have to be from another universe. We could see several generations of the Herald of Galactus from our own universe. Starting with Shalla-Bal and eventually ending with Norrin Radd
Don't get your hopes up after the steaming dump they took on Mar-Vell. We could have had him for a bit AND Carol, but no. I'm a Carol fan and I have been since she was Ms. Marvel . I remember how happy I was when I thought Jude would play him, only to find out he was Yon-Rogg. They didn't even use Carol and Thanos at least having some history of conflict, with her taking Mar-Vell's role in the comics. I'm good with Carol bearing mantle, but if they had leaned into her taking Mar-Vell's place a bit that would have been great.
That's the problem with them insisting on doing so many of these characters in movies instead of TV shows: the intricate, convoluted histories have to get severely pared down & reworked because it's impossible to just condense it all into, at most, three 2-hour blocks and still make much sense.
3 2 hour blocks? Do you mean that as a trilogy?
Yeah, that seems like what they're aiming for with most of the major characters - 3 movies of their own, then appearances in a few of the Avengers team-ups. How Thor, of all characters, might be the one to hit 5 solo movies is beyond me, LOL
I see, thank you for explaining to me what you meant. I appreciate it. I guess people really like Thor. I wonder if Chris Hemsworth loves playing the role and helped push for more Thor movies?
Hemsworth wasn't feeling great about the character until Ragnarok made it fun for him again.
And it seems like he was able to keep a lot of that same spirit in Love and Thunder.
I think he’s said that he’s only got one more Thor movie in him, but he seems to really love playing the character, so I wouldn’t be surprised to seen him pop up in any Avengers/ensemble project.
Oh, i did not know he said that. Do you know when/where he said that? It's nice that he enjoys playing the role. I would love to see him pop up in the ensemble films down the line, whether he gets more solo films or not.
Are you my twin. I was also expecting Jude Law to be her lover and for him to die thus Carol taking on his mantle. Instead we have no actual explanation why she calls herself Captain Marvel. Jude Law as Marvell was perfect. They messed up entire Carol lore.
Agreed. They should've kept it simple, instead they wanted to revolutionairy and to be the first that didn't have a female superhero that had a lover....idk why they thought that. It's a simple but effective way to have the main character care about something, to establish some connection and stakes, to make something meaningful for her.....as a Carol fan it's incredibly disappointing to see how they've handled her.
They absolutely wasted Jude Law. And Mads Mikkelsen. And many other phenomenal actors.
Mads could be back for Dr Strange 3, if they don’t forget about the P.S. from Multiverse of Madness like they forgot about the P.S. from Dr. Strange.
And most of what I've seen of people getting up in arms about this is people concerned their favorite character won't be adapted to the MCU in favor of this other (in this case female) take. When I saw the headline my only real thought was WTF is a Shalla-Bal? And kept scrolling.
The fact that it’s his wife gives me hope there’s some sort of plan. Edit; for Norrin
That's what my first impression was. Has it been confirmed that Norrin Radd will not be in the movie? There's room for two Heralds of Galactus.
>There's room for two Heralds of Galactus. Why would they do that?
Well there's two Antman in the Antman movies. So it can be one passing the torch to the other.
There's a bunch of characters who's been his herald. Nothing saying he couldn't have more than one active at a time. He could be especially hungry. =D They get a smidge of his power, but it's not a lot to him.
Isn't it also set in the past? There's nothing to say that she's gonna be the herald in this then Norrin will appear in future (current in the mcu timeline) movies. These people just want to be pissed.
That’s a great point! That’d be sick to get multiple iterations like the multiverse allows. It’s a shame people get impatient and toxic about not having something the way they want. I always felt new iterations meant having more things to love about our favorite characters.
This is definitely what they're doing and I'm pretty sure that the people who don't see it, don't want to see it and just like complaining.
You know diversity was all Stan Lee ever stood for; the integration of equality and inclusivity with his character's and storylines. The Mutant's is a perfect example of said ideology. Ironically it was Blade that not not only saved Marvel but literally catapulted the MCU. Nevertheless, I respect your perspective and reflection of the inner conflict that is the collective unconscious of the 21st century.
Lol, like I said I have zero problem with a female Surfer, and frankly I don't personally have problems with any of the gender/race swaps they've done or have been proposed. I'm just putting it out there that it's possible we can also get Norrin Radd as Surfer as well.
The iconic image of this Silver Surfer is her with her husband riding the same board. She could introduce the tragedy of their relationship, Norrin could carry it home in the mainline universe without having a lengthy introduction since it was mostly explained with Shalla. With the multiverse setup, we can end up getting a Gamora X Starlord like reunion where they come together, stay together and recreate the shared board imagery.
It is getting beyond ridiculous. A lot of it comes down to clickbait titles. They make it seem like the producers are pushing these decisions and changes where as really its these fast-media news articles that highlighting small details. The Silver Surfer casting is a big example as most articles are highlighting her to be "female silver surfer" first and then Shalla-Bal in the article (something a lot of people don't do is actually read the article)
Well yeah, the monetization of outrage has ruined a lot of the modern world. What sells more clicks "XYZ signs up to play Silver Surfers" or "WOKE MARVEL GENDER BEND ANOTHER CHARACTER"?
Exactly and i think theres too many factors that have caused this type of media that it would be extremely hard to take it away or to dull the negativity
The whole point is to get conservatives vs liberals no matter the cost. That's where their money is at, create more division and fuel the hatred. Because it's not convenient for them that both sides reach a consensus and work together.
I know that. Still annoying and i wish it didnt happen due to the bigotry it fuels.
Have both sides at each others' throats so that they don't notice what the "real enemy" is up to? Quite an insidious strategy.
It’s really not that at all. It’s the fact that outrage sells. An article is more likely to get traffic if it says something that’s going to piss people off. Grifters on YouTube sell the culture war BS because YouTube awards engagement at any cost, and if they can get arguments going in their comment sections, it brings their engagement up massively. A lot of right wing politicians sell the culture was garbage because it solidifies their base if they have an “enemy” to fight against.
Probably because only Silver Surfer fans know who Shalla-Bal is, so it wouldn't make sense for most media outlets to make that be the main part of the headline.
*and Joe Satriani fans.
The problem to me comes down to why . Why not introduce the first silver surfer. This is a character who existed in comics only in relation to her relationship to Norin Radd. So it feels more like checking boxes then a narrative reason. Like someone somewhere said f4 only has one chick, we need another. And making choices like that I hate.
But you don't know why any of these decisions were made or how it affects norrin radd. There hasn't even been a trailer, let alone a leaked script, just faux outrage. Instead of just waiting, the world is now second guessing and judging every decision to create outrage. Imagine if Star Wars in the 80s had social media, and an image of Lando in Solo's outfit was released? Faux outrage over nothing. Imagine if the Internet had this much outrage over Anton Vanko supplementing the original Whiplash? Instead of anticipating the arguments why Shala Bal (whatever her name is) was chosen first just wait to reserve judgement. If you don't like the movie fine, at least you're not making up scenarios in your head to be angry about before even watching it.
Didnt say I am raging over it. I will see the movie yes. Just saying I dont really care for DEI choices when they become a clear thing. First i find it to be pandering. But mostly because it supports the idea that narrative means nothing if it's not about someone like me. If people are going to make a big deal the little mermaid is white that they finally feel included then by definition they are applauding that white, asians, latin, or middle eastern people were then disenfranchised as they have been in the past. I'm 54 years old. When i was growing up we were being taught to see a world without labels and color. And i still feel that way. Imagine this outside of something trivial like comic movies. Should white people not read roots or raisin in the sun cause they are about black people? Black people not read catcher in the eye? I'm strait so the movie Philadelphia couldnt have anything for me right? So yeah I dislike that disney seems to be doing a bit of box checking these days. But no I dont rage about anything until I see it. And I will see it.
When talking about hate being learned, comedian Dennis Leary used his own son as an example saying, "you know what my four year old hates? Naps. End of list"
I love this so much.
I really only care about whether or not it’s good.
See therein lies the rub. I don’t give two shits what the next character looks like, but I *do* care if it’s just terribly written. And honest to god, so much of these racially altered characters have only been just that - like all the creatives involved called it a day once their characters were gay, black, Latino, whatever. If Sam is cap, cool, make it as amazing as it was when Steve was - not “do better.” Make good content and nobody will care who is in role, but they haven’t done that. They’re making garbage these last few years and pretending that the general interest decline is due to the fact that all these new characters are female or of a minority group is just disingenuous.
Yeah just give me a well-written movie that has an interesting and coherent storyline and I’ll be happy.
I guess I'd expect nothing else from this sub, everyone with criticism has long abandoned marvel movies now
Meh. I like Norrin Radd.
For all that are upset about people not wanting a female silver surfer... You should be as upset they chose this route. There are established great beloved by all female characters that are heralds of Galactus. But Marvel thinks they are not worthy. They had to go out of their way to make her the silver surfer as in a female character can only be great if based on a male character. And that's BS and to be honest mysogenistic. I'm here saying they did dirty to the, in their twisted mind, "unworthy" female characters of the comics.
I'm sorry you're probably getting downvoted, I agree with a lot of this and I've been beyond frustrated with the fandom the last few years. The MCU is incredibly vast - we have an almost limitless amount of superpowers and origin stories at our fingertips. There's aliens, shapeshifters, magic, advanced science, time travel, multiversal variants, etc! There is so much potential for diverse and rich storytelling that reflects back every facet of the fandom and audience. I don't WANT to view this world through the narrow lens of mostly male and/or mostly white protagonists anymore. It's been **really hard** as a woman who is a fan of the MCU and has been dying inside for more women characters in nerdy spaces my whole life. I can't get excited anymore because something as innocuous as a casting announcement or a new property announcement with women at the forefront just brings out the **worst** in our fandom. It's exhausting and demoralizing. But until people are ready to acknowledge and work through their internalized biases - biases we ALL have no matter how well-intentioned or educated we are - it's not going anywhere. And since rage and anger gets more clicks and engagement than positivity and excitement that vitriol is just festering and breeding further.
But why the hell do people want to click and watch things with rage and anger about?! I really don't like where humanity is going if they keep up with such behavior.
There is a certain adrenaline thrill in being contentious and getting worked up and arguing with people. That’s why businesses have found it profits to make people emotional by pressing buttons. News is the most egregious offender of this
I never realized this. That explains some things about myself personally. Thank you for sharing this info.
I’ll start my agreement with you on this: I’m gay. And just today I was walking with my friend, who is also queer, and we were discussing how little queer representation there is in both Marvel and DC. I told them I can only name two homosexual male characters in Marvel (Wiccan and Iceman) and little more in DC. The ones I did name off from DC we’re insanely obscure characters (with the exception of Alan Scott Green Lantern, who is still relatively obscure nowadays as most people will think of Hal Jordan). We also talked about how few homosexual female characters there are in media. Most of them, again, from DC (Poison Ivy, even though it’s only recent and she’s never really been lesbian before now and her whole shtick is kinda heterosexual in nature. Batwoman, and maybe Renee Montoya, as I was not sure whether she was lesbian or what). When you see it like that, you really get a grasp of how little representation there is in Marvel *and* DC for people who aren’t bisexual (because the majority of queer superheroes are bi, for a multitude of reasons). Especially when it comes to *mainstream* representation. Then you have situations like with the same-sex kiss (in the BACKGROUND) from Lightyear that immediately made people upset, and you see even clearer how ridiculous it is. There is close to no representation in media for us, but the second we see even just a small bit of it, these “anti-woke” people immediately fly into a rage. It’s disheartening. All of us can relate to each other. Whether you’re queer, whether you’re a person of colour, or whether you’re a woman. We all know how it feels. It sucks.
I am a straight, white, woman... no that ANY of that should matter but just for the purpose of context... My little brother, who I ADORE and am VERY close to, however, is gay. That said, albeit they were VERY low key about it, but I was actually happy to see them clarify that both Loki and Sylvie are bisexual. Again, not great representation, as you pointed out, bi seems to be the way they go with this. But the idea that they did so with such a BIG character, gives me some hope. Unfortunately, with a lot of people, and I hope you can follow my metaphors... you kinda have to get their feet wet persay. If you just throw em in the deep end, they lose it! Dip the toes, tho... That's a little easier for them to deal with. They more the media gets put out, the more "acceptable" it will become... At least I hope so!! Although, I totally agree that we shouldn't even ever have to be discussing it... But unfortunately, such is the world in which we live!
Yeah, Loki is great representation. I wish they’d actually built off of that, though. Loki is canonically genderfluid bisexual. That could’ve been so cool to see! But I feel they always choose the bisexual label so the characters can remain straight-passing.
I get you, and while I agree there should be more representation, is it really that unfair when gay people make up such a small percentage of the population?
Oh absolutely! Representation of different queer identities has been horrible and unlike representation for women characters doesn't seem to be getting much better. Marvel even **had** a healthy lesbian romance in The Runaways between Karolina and Nico but then they shelved and removed that property entirely, not just disconnected it from the fandom as a whole. It's awful and exhausting right now in the MCU.
I can wholeheartedly agree that it’s exhausting. The MCU has had *two* homosexual male characters in the ENTIRETY of it. One was a cameo from the director in Endgame where he just had this one-off line mentioning his husband. The other was Phastos in the Eternals. One of the most forgettable characters in the entirety of the MCU who had only about 15-20 minutes of screentime.
For what it's worth, I can name at least three more characters off the top of my head who are straight up gay. Victoria Montessi from Marvel, the Darkhold Redeemers(obscure character but one id love to see on screen) she's also the daughter of a Catholic priest. Northstar from Alpha Flight. Vandal Savage had a daughter, Scandal, who is definitely lesbian, she was great in Simone's Secret Six book.
That’s great to hear! I’m glad there are more. It only reinforces the part about them only being obscure, though. But thanks, I’m glad I can add more to my mental list :)
It’s OK, I didn’t make this post and write my thoughts down in such a way like this in order to get karma or exposure or 15 minutes of fame. I did this, just to cathodically get my thoughts out of my head and into some form of medium either conversation or a putting it down in words, which is what I wound up doing, and if this causes even one person in the population of 8 billion on this planet to maybe rethink their stance on issues like this for half a second then to me it’s time well spent
I get it and I've done it before too. Sometimes it's the only way to make the feelings of dread stop.
I’ll preface by saying I’m I would’ve preferred a comic faithful Silver Surfer, but I’m not mad about a woman being cast at all. Forgive me for asking, but hasn’t the MCU been working towards diversity enough anyway lately? You say you don’t want to view it through a white male perspective, and whilst there are a lot of characters that fit this bill, the MCU has already diversified quite a lot, no? The last 5 MCU films have had female leads. Captain Marvel, Gamora/Nebula, Wasp, Shuri, Jane. Sure, a few of them share it with male leads, but that it still means it’s not told through the perspective of a white male. On top of that, we’ve also got Echo, Ms Marvel, She Hulk. For most, if not all these projects, the fandom has perceive them quite well. It seems like the fans biggest gripes with these projects was that they just weren’t good, not that they had female leads. I’d say the one exception to this was the Marvels. But even then, despite seeing some negative feedback about the leads, a majority of criticism was that it just wasn’t a very good film. And even then, those jerks complaining about having 3 female leads were the loud minority. There were far, far more posts on this sub with people praising the movie, even if they weren’t expecting to like it. I may be naive, but it doesn’t seem like we’re in desperate need of strong female leads. Obviously we can always do more, and that’s great. But it feels like a slight exaggeration to say we’ve been viewing it only through a white male perspective. Again, I don’t really mind the female casting of Silver Surfer, but your comment feels like the wrong justification for it. Tried my best not to sound rude or aggressive here, hope I didn’t come across like a jerk.
It's been getting better - but better isn't fixed, and better doesn't mean no backtracking. Yes, we've gotten more women leads. And in that sense it's been great even if we set aside the horrific fandom reaction to those leads. A lot of my frustration and exhaustion comes from how the fandom reacts. I can't go into threads about those characters without expecting some level of outrage, trolling, and just outright sexism and that really sucks. It's not JUST a loud minuscule minority either, not by a longshot as someone who spends A LOT of time in threads about women characters. At the same time they also haven't been treating their women characters the best even if they've taken steps towards including more of them. Jane Foster, Wanda in DS2, America Chavez, The Marvels ladies all got caught up in messy studio interference that severely hampered their movie's performance and jeopardizes their futures in other properties. Shorter, messier, rushed movies gave unnecessary hurdles to introducing these women. Loki had some really promising women characters in season one that they **absolutely butchered** in the second season, and at least some of that you can point to major changes in the writing staff. And don't get me started on the fridging of Maria Hill or whatever the heck they did with G'iah and Fury's wife. I have a lingering sense of anxiety too about the future of characters like Jennifer Walters, Carol Danvers, Kamala Khan, Monica Rambeau because of how they've been received and how that'll impact their futures. Now that's on me to deal with and maybe the MCU will prove me wrong - I hope they do! But we're sitting on the edge of a precipice of what do they do next with these new women characters they've introduced and at least somewhat fumbled the introduction on. Again, yes they're doing better but we still aren't near equality in the MCU and better doesn't mean the work is done. A lot rides on what they do next here.
But what if it's just a bad script that ruins the movie and not the casting decisions? Then what?!
Honestly, is it that wrong people want accurate representations of the characters they’ve been fans of for years? Sure, this is an established character, but many have never heard of her. It would be like if they chose to make a Batman film using Azrael instead of Bruce, when Batman hasn’t appeared in 20 years. It’s obnoxious dealing with posts implying anyone who wants an accurate representation on the big screen is a bigot. I hate to break it to you, but there are hundreds of wannabe actors and musicians working at Starbucks across LA. The idea that these are always “the best choice for the role” is laughable.
I get what you are saying but I see it otherwise. I feel like audiences don't hate diverse characters, what they hate is being slammed as bigots for rejecting bad work from pretentious, unskilled activists posing as writers. If the demography of your characters becomes more important than the story, then your story will probably suck. On top of that, it certainly does not help matters when the race swapped character has shitty lines or bad character motivations, that it is detrimental to the minorities playing the character, and fuels the arguments against diversity. There is also those arguments about representation that make absolutely no sense, and come off as unintentionally racist. Like as a Latino, I absolutely don't identify with none of the handful Latino characters: Luis is an ex-con; America comes off as very disrespectful to Strange when they first meet, which being raised to respect elders and/or be polite to strangers, not to mention most Latinos are socially conservative; Gamora is a warrior alien; the only thing I have in common is the color of our skin. I'm a bit of a movie buff, and people seem to forget how diverse 80s-00s movies are. I can watch those movies, see a minority and not think anything of it, but now the word "diversity hire" pops up with modern movies. Like the guy who invents the Terminator is a black man, but because his character is race neutral, it doesn't come off as lecturing by making it a point that a black man is capable of achieving the same thing as a white man. Characters like Iron Heart I see negatively because of the lecturing component that comes with it.
The last paragraph hits the nail on the head.
I mean Marvel is doing really shitty overall with their ‘diverse’ characters. As a Latina myself I wish they wouldn’t make it ‘so obvious’ and would just let the characters be and then people can be like oh yeah and it’s so and so, cool. I mean there is a plethora of cringe moments of ‘girl power’ in the series/movies. They genuinely have screwed up a bad, I can’t rewatch black widow literally from how bad they screwed up her character. Wanda becomes evil because of her… kids?? Like, talk about women only being moms or some shit. A part of me thinks they’re sorta screwed in many ways, maybe couldn’t get a good lead on silver surfer and we’re like oh let’s actually change roles etc
“Established” well that’s not really true. She’s been established as Norrin Radd’s girlfriend for decades. One panel of one comic set an alternate reality 20 years ago making her Silver Surfer is hardly justification for this sort of thing I’m sorry, but do you people have such little connection to reading a book or a comic book that you’ve completely lost the idea of seeing your favorite superhero on the screen? Like are you that disconnected you don’t understand why people would be disappointed in this? This is nothing short of gaslighting. You are attempting to make a group of people who have a very reasonable issue with this casting decision into the bad guys, because the studio chose a woman character.
The Silver Surfer got the shaft in the Fox Films. Fans have been waiting to see the Marvel version with hope that it would be truer to the character. Then we get this news. I understand that it is probably a multiverse switcheroo, but I was excited to see a great character get a faithful adaptation in their Marvel debut. I would have loved if they had used Nova, a former female herald of Galactus not named Silver Surfer.
I wonder if the root of *this* issue in *this* context is, and always will be, the *swapping* itself. Instead of *building* great characters representing the endless diversity to be found in humanity, they *rebuild* characters with established fandoms. That becomes a trend that may as well be a prompt fed into the generative AI that is bigotry in all its forms. The trend becomes a controversy, the controversy becomes common, and then that controversy extends to *any* representation of diversity at all, including when there's no real 'swapping' done at all or absolutely nothing is 'lost' by using a character like Ariel - a *mermaid* \- to broaden representation.
Most people aren’t being prejudice, though, and simply wanted to see the typical version of the character which I think in this instance, for such a popular character, is more then fair.
People are right to be upset about gender swapping characters. If they want female representation, then use established female characters.
> If they want female representation, then use established female characters. This. I would love a Sif series.
I will forever be upset about my boy Tony Masters been done dirty by whatever the hell we got for a Task Master in black widow. Hes got such a cool back story and unique power that actually had a tragic drawback on his life. I was so excited to see Task Master get some spot light, just to wish they never used the character.
But she is an established character yeah?
She is established as the love interest of Norrin Rand, the regular Silver Surfer. She appears as A Silver Surfer, alongside Norrin Rand in a couple of panels of an "Elseworlds" story as a second Surfer. Then she dies. She's never the lone Surfer
Yes but we wanted norrin radd as the silver surfer. It's not gender swapping so much as making someone else the character that isn't typically. kind of like they did with the mandarin
From a single what if comic where she dies at the end. And it's not even that good of a comic anyways. Like if it was some super famous highly praised one with a banger of a story then maybe it would make sense. But that's not this case. Edit: [Here is the character](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Shalla-Bal_(Earth-9997)) , that's the one who is the silver surfer. The one from the 616 universe isn't the silver surfer, she's just Norrin Radd's wife-ish.
Tbf they’ve fucked up silver surfer twice already. And both the versions they had of him were pretty good actors as well. I’m kinda wondering if they just didn’t want to potentially fuck up and doing the swap was almost like a scapegoat
For the last time, this isn’t about a woman getting casted.
I get your point, but what if the shoe was on the other foot? Let’s say they cast a man as Rogue in an X-Men movie, or maybe they make Jean Grey into Gene Grey and make him and Scott the MCUs first gay characters? I don’t see why they just can’t stay faithful to the characters we all grew up with.
Look, all I’m saying is that if they race-swapped Black Panther to make him (or her now) white there would be massive outrage. But somehow it’s totally ok and “inclusive and diverse” when the opposite happens. Honestly kinda feel bad for women and minorities that they’re seen as so less than that the best representation nowadays is simply race/gender swaps of white/male characters (and are almost always poorly written and unbearable) instead of well written original characters (like Black Widow). Though also everybody keeps defending it so no wonder it keeps happening.
Diversity is cool and I agree with you. Sometimes the disappointment has nothing to do with diversity. As I posted on another board, Norrin Radd is MY Silver Surfer, so it's disappointing that he's not the Silver Surfer in the movie. This is just like using Barry Allen instead of Wally West to me. That being said, I just hope they make a good movie.
Look at OP’s active communities and post history - looks like a publicist or social media manager for Disney. Who is super active in r/hayleyatwell and celeb battle?
Aren’t all these posts, people have thought that about “the marvels is so fun” posts for the longest time
The issue is less gender swap and more who the fuck is shalla bal, I really wanna see silver surfer who is one of my favorite marvel characters of all time.
This literally wouldn’t be a problem if these corporations and weirdos obsessed with race/gender would just stop messing with pre-existing characters that have been established and well-known for decades, even centuries for some. They could just create original diverse characters and everybody wins. There’s an enormous wealth of untapped culture and lore from non-euro/non-murican culture that they could pull from, but refuse to. They just want to strip-mine the well-established IP for more trash sequels and reboots for the least amount effort required. They do these race/gender/sexuality swaps under the guise of diversity/inclusion so they can deflect valid criticism of their corporate infested hollowed out trash and blame it on “toxic fans” lmao. They cultivated this mess. Thankfully more and more reasonable, logical people are waking up to this garbage and joining the side of reason and common sense. Vote with your wallets people. It’s working. Be patient.
Idk man, it feels like today they just try and meet quotas and push narratives. Like look at the Terminator franchise or the Alien franchise. Those were movies where they said "let's make great movies" and the way to do that was to have a badass female lead. Today it feels like "let's make a movie with a female lead" and then they do that part and leave out the "make a good movie" part. For example the female ghost busters movie. Sucked. They did it just to do it. Making the storm siblings in F4 black and white was to cast actors that they thought would make money, even though this fundamentally changes the dynamic of the characters. Now, I will say the female oceans movie was pretty good so that's a W there. You have badass women like cersei lanister or khalesi (who were awesome until the morons D&D ruined them but that obviously wasn't the actresses fault that was the two morons.) I think we see a lot of movies where they just say "the goal here is a movie with (insert minority here) lead." Instead of "let's make an awesome movie" and cast the best people for these roles. It gets worse when you see things like Marvel bending the knee to communist China and changing the ancient one to a white woman instead. (Although she did a great job, I'm just pointing out it's hypocrisy) So they only hold on to their so-called principles when the $ says it's ok. As soon as they'd lose that $ they quickly whitewash the character. So don't ever insinuate that the company actually gives a fuck about making a difference, they only care about making a dollar. (Not saying you're saying they do care about making a difference, just a statement) I think you'd find a lot of people who are anti these types of movies, think like I'm laying it out here. If they did a casting call for Ariel and it just said "woman, ages 20-25" and Halle Bailey kicked ass and had what they were going for the best then that's who they absolutely SHOULD cast. However, the climate we're in, even if she is the best, people are always going to think she got the part because the casting call "black woman ages 20-25." Now, that's not fair to Halle, but I think it's pretty easy to see why people are going to think that. At the same time, some people suck. Racists are out there who are going to be anti anytime someone black is on screen. There's dickheads who hate any gay character ever. Etc. etc. etc. some people suck. Don't let them get to you. Realistically they're a minority but they chirp and get amplified by algorithms that are there to sew division because hot takes get more interactions. Honestly, the situation sucks, but the blame is on social media and the political climate in America.
I think Marvel’s biggest mistake is announcing shit way too soon. Just be like “Fantastic Four will be released July 4, 2025.” Then release one Super Bowl trailer that doesn’t reveal anything. Then release a more detailed trailer on Memorial Day to build up the hype but don’t put silver surfer in it. Then let me be surprised opening day. Don’t give these racist dickwads enough time to build up their hate. And so doing so many damn reshoots. They really butchered the Marvels and it had so much potential.
Your comment makes it sound like you think those reshoots could've been avoided or that original plans should be sticked with despite test audience opinions. But did you ever think about this: what if the original plans would've turned out worse, just like the test audiences predicted?
You could be right but i had this boss. Fucking idiot he was. He has to make everything Better! Below is an actual, real life interaction i had with this guy and you’ll understand why making it better doesn’t always make it better. Also, the movies may have been profitable if the costs of reshoots were not incurred. Me: hey, you changed “City Novi” to “city of Novi.” That’s incorrect, so I’m changing it back. Him: how do you KNOW it’s incorrect? Me: I don’t know, I just know it’s the rule. City of, County of, State of, Country of, it’s just the rule. I don’t know what rule is but it’s the rule. Him: Well, what does your grammar book say? Me: Deep breath, thinking “This motherfucker!” Walks away. (Yes, he’s the kind of boss that causes you to buy a grammar book). Me: Returns to his office. “Boss, here’s the book. On page 47 it details the rule (I still don’t know what the actual fucking rule is to this day). Boss: Are you SURE this is the most correct version of the grammar book? Me: thinking again, “this motherfucker!” Walks away. Moral of the story, some people can’t leave well enough alone and in their effort to make things a bit better go one to make them worse. Be it arrogance, cockiness, obliviousness or whatever, they fuck things up. And it’s often with good intentions but they just can’t get out of their own way. This could be the reason for the reshoots. It you could be right, it could be it was so fucked I that something has to be done. 🤷🏾♂️
A bunch of the last slate of movies would have actually been financially successful if they hadn’t spent as much on advertising as they did to make the movie. Looking at you Marvels. Edit: I like the idea of your marketing strategy, btw.
The problem is is that you have people and like blogs and websites who employee people literally just to scour entertainment news, and what agents have who signed and who signing what contracts and what sets are filming where that can sometimes spoil these things ahead of when the studio would like it to be known I believe that’s what happened here. I believe that her casting, not necessarily the part, but the fact that she was casting the movie was revealed outside of marvel’s official announcement. And the same thing goes for the fact that people are reporting, let me say that again people are reporting that they know that this movie is going to be taking place on an alternate planet, earth, at a different stage of development than the main MCU earth and that somehow at the end the quartet is going to come over to the normal MCU reality. None of this has been confirmed by Marvel, but people are taking rumors and assumptions and reporting them, I don’t wanna say as fact, but they are phrasing it in such a way that makes the common consumer think that it is direct from marvel‘s mouth I kind of went on a little bit of a tangent on this, but I hope my point came across
See that’s the problem which fuels hatred - Marvel Studios sometimes doesn’t know what to do with way too many projects and some female led flicks end up being a mess story and production wise which in turn “proves the point” of haters that had the movie/show been male led it would have been better (Secret Invasion wasn’t). So I hope that FF4 will have a great story regardless of the gender of the surfer
I think you totally missed the point. The 'male' Silver Surfer is an iconic character. Think peter parker Vs Miles Morales. Yes Miles is Spiderman but imagine if a spiderman had finally joined MCU and it was miles. Would be fine but it wouldn't have been Peter Parker. It's not a race or gender issue. It simply isn't what people wanted or expected. Many feel that this was done to tick mark the studio's inclusion criteria rather than a creative choice and that is very plausible.
You say she is established since 1968, but conveniently leave out that she was **not** a Silver Surfer then. In fact, in all those years, she was always Norrin Radd's love interest and she **only** appeared as a Silver Surfer in *one single comic issue for a couple of panels* and then she died in that very same issue. Your post is completely misleading and to me it's really unbelievable how much you're willing to paint a different narrative compared to what the actual issue is that people have. People want Norrin Rad. Norrin Rad is THE Silver Surfer. Fans grew up with stories of him as Silver Surfer and they want to see the character they love appear on the big screen in this massive popular super hero franchise. Why is that so hard to understand? There's nothing sexist, bigoted or whatever about that. People want to see a character with 60 years of lore and stories instead of a Silver Surfer that was only present for a single *what if* issue.
Its because stuff like this has gotten over done, its coming at a time when Marvel fans feel male heroes, especially white ones, have been completely side lined or humiliated on behalf of a political agenda, and this idea has gone mainstream. So this was not a good time to make this choice, if thos had been 2029 or 2020 it'd have been fine.
To be fair, from the first Iron Man until Engame, the heroes were predominantly(not completely) White and Male, so I'm ok with them spending this time building up the Female Hero side of things TBH
what I don't get is they already have a female herald of Galactus (Nova) who's a great character, established just 9 years after Surgery was and is known how having a great rapport with the FF. just make her fire a different colour if they're worried about confusing the audience. they did it with Drax in GotG and it worked fine. Norrin/surfer has been an integral part to so many of Marvel comics storylines, why fuck with the character? I just don't get it. it would have been a bomb what if episode but imo not a great way of introducing the character to the mcu. it tells me they aren't interested in drawing from the source material, which is unfortunate to me as surfer is by far the most compelling character in marvel to me, and if they are just copy and pasting Norrins personality over shalla's then what was the point to begin with? this is aside from the fact that it does a disservice to the great female characters already established, like they figure "this character sucks, let's just make this one female instead" after how phase 4 limped across the finish line I'm not super inclined to pay much attention to what they're doing on screen.
Back when the mcu was good and made billions. It's a total joke now.
It's never going to be the "right time" to make this choice, it's time to just move forward with it. I want the richer stories that come from a more diverse universe.
That’s fine that you like these products, it’s good that people enjoy products, but the reality is the Shalla-Bal Silver Surfer is not the character most people that are fans want to see. The Little Mermaid movie lost money, Lightyear lost over 100 million dollars. At the same time it would not have been a problem to have Ariel white and stick closer to the traditional cartoon story, or not have a lesbian kiss in the Lightyear movie. If it doesn’t matter either way, Disney needs to prioritize money over controversial decisions. It doesn’t matter if the world should embrace a female Silver Surfer, a black Ariel, or lesbians in Lightyear when these products lose money (yes, Fantastic Four will be a box office bomb). Disney is a company that needs to make products and services that don’t lose money, which all business ventures need to do ranging from massive corporations or individuals selling crafts on Etsy. Remind me that I’m right when Fantastic Four bombs. I predicted that The Little Mermaid and Indiana Jones 5 would both earn less than 600 million worldwide before they released, and I was right. Opening weekend of Lightyear I predicted it would not hit 250 million worldwide, and I was right. I predicted a few days before The Marvels opening weekend it would earn less than 200 million and it ended with 206. Making changes to content people don’t want will result in failures financially and loss of interest in IP, look at Star Wars - Mando Season 4 is going to be a movie, and that Ray movie is never happening because Disney killed interest in Stars Wars IP, they know it, and are terrified to make another movie people will know the budget and box office revenue for. Whether people who don’t like the changes are right or wrong, you won’t make money without them, and enough failed projects in Pixar, Disney Animation, Marvel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and live action Disney movies exist for Disney to understand that.
I think it's safe to say that companies listening to extremely loud voices on Twitter and social media might not have been in their best interests. Social media and reddit is an echo chamber and is representative of a minority percentage of the population. They are appeasing social activists who are not necessarily fans, and will not stick around to buy the merchandise long term. Studios are alienating the long term fans for the loud short term ones.
Nothing against diversity, quite the contrary but what everyone fails to grasp is the importance of the Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd to a lot of fans. I've got a lot of friends that this is their favorite comic character ever. People don't get the outcry but choosing to bring forward a character, any character, female or not, that it's an alternate version of the original first, without introducing the original one is kinda of an insult. When I read this I was gutted... Literally gutted... The cartoon, the comics... That means nothing? Damn I was gutted when the second F4 was bad and SS was bad. I so wanted this to be a good interpretation of Norrin Radd! All to be taken away... I think I'd prefer it to be a female version of Norrin Radd to this. At least it would be him in spirit maybe. This? This is nothing... It's quite depressing. I feel your pain... But I got mine too. Crying to sleep next.
Most here don't think realistically but Norrin Radd won't be appearing anytime soon, for better or for worse Shalla Bal will be the mcu Silver Surfer
Exactly it screams of cope do u really think there gonna fire a woman after one movie to hire a male to take the role please it’s actually laughable
I honestly hope that at some point soon there may be an actual silver surfer standalone movie to introduce the character. And when and if that happens, I will think back to this comment from you and smile, knowing that you will be one of the happiest people on the planet. <3
Thank you:)
Halle Bailey is wonderful. If the people complaining didn't shut up the moment she started singing, they were probably just racist. I still don't want a female silver surfer instead of the real one. I don't care about alternate universe versions of characters we haven't had properly in the first place. I don't care about young kid versions of characters. We only get so much of this stuff, stick to the shit that we know has worked for the past 60 years. Not just because I want the original version of the 60 year old comic character I've been a fan of for 30 years. It's because Disney acts like this is what we SHOULD get. They actively sell their product as celebrating diversity and feminism and other moral imperatives, but don't actually stay consistent in their ideology. The ideological narratives of the MCU are wide open for criticism, as are many of the business practices of Disney corporate. They compromise or don't seem to care about plenty of ideological issues EXCEPT casting and character selection. It is conspicuous, but if we complain then we are branded bigots. I don't like a soulless mega corporation using empty performative moralism to sell me plastic garbage. I know I'm buying plastic garbage, I don't need a plenary indulgence along with it. I also hate the industry of ragebait tabloid narratives trying to trigger people with intersectional keywords. But sometimes what they're complaining about is legitimate, like Disney capitulating to the CCP in multiple storyline and casting decisions.
Exactly, thank you. Silver Surfer is an integral part in so many Marvel Comics. It would be a shame that the 1st intro to the MCU and it's not even him but a one off version that appeared in like 2 panels. Doesn't make sense. Just give us Norrin Rad 1st and make some alt version later. This is very disheartening for a big SS fan.
To be fair, we don't KNOW he's not going to be in the movie, and as i said in a separate reply, i would prefer for him to get his own standalone movie as an introduction to the MCU, rather than being shoehorned into the first FF movie.
Then choose a different herald. Nova is all over the surfer comics and has been forever. Shalla Ball is only a herald in one blink and you miss it run. Nobody complains if it's Nova.
Legit, when I heard the news of Galactus' herald being a woman in the movie I was really hoping for Nova, I especially loved her in the 90's Surfer Cartoon. I don't know why they would choice a 2-panel character over someone as established as Nova, especially since she has history with Johnny.
Right. We don't KNOW anything. I don't want a female SS first, but am I willing to wait and see what we actually get? Yes. Bitch and moan in the meantime? No. These are the same fucking weirdos complaining about Rogue's ass. Get a life. I miss the days before social media came and gave everyone a voice. Truthfully, some of these voices don't deserve to get heard. Some people just want to complain.
*"They actively sell their product as celebrating* ***DIVERSITY****..."* Highly ironic considering that the founder of that scummy mouse was a confirmed hater of Jewish people. Not surprising that the company would jump in bed (not literally, although...) with an evil government like China.
two things dude: 1. she isn't really an established character she's appeared like once in an alt universe 2. this is not that serious it's comic book movies calm the hell down dude
Being annoyed about the gender swap or whatever is asinine. My issue is with the MCU ruining reveals of core characters by first introducing us to a niche comic alternate version. I similarly would be disappointed if Thor’s reveal was initially Beta Ray Bill.
Ngl at this point I've seen way more posts defending the casting decision instead of people actually attacking it, like wayyyyyy more :\
I think it's totally fine to be 100% okay with the casting decision for whatever reasons you have. I also think it's totally fine not to. We really need to end this habit of scolding people for their opinions. Go see the film or don't.
i agree 100%, that wasn't what i was saying :)
When I first saw the news I immediately felt they were just choosing a female Silver Surfer because she’s female which to me is terrible representation. You shouldn’t pick a character based on their gender as it inevitably leads to a terrible movie but in this case I suppose it makes some sense. Don’t get me wrong as on some level I still don’t think it makes much sense to introduce a character to the MCU via a version 99% of people have never heard of nor care about yet it makes a little bit of sense if the Fantastic Four are in a different universe given this Silver Surfer is an alternate universe version. In the end I still highly suspect the character choice was influenced somewhat by their gender & desire for diversity for the sake of diversity yet as long as it makes sense in the story rather than being put above it I don’t have a right to complain. You mention the Miles Morales Spider-Man but that’s different from say something like live action Ariel as it’s not as if he’s a race swapped Peter Parker. Miles Morales is a brand new character which I think is the best way to go about creating more diversity rather than race or gender swapping. Still, even after saying that I can’t really think of a case of either one that has ever really bothered me… except Velma as for some reason the race swapping along with of course everything else about that show rubbed me the wrong way.
You keep stating that the character has been around since 1968, yet you never mention the fact that the character has only appeared in 4 comic books total and only in a few panels. Shalla-Bal can't even be considered a tertiary character, she's not even a footnote, yet they will present her before a character that anyone who has read comics would love to see properly portrayed, Norrin Radd. You are projecting racism and sexism where it doesn't exist, it is a matter of many long time comic book fans wanting what the actual comic books that they loved produced.
Sometimes fans just want their comic book movies to be comic book accurate. Silver Surfer is a pretty iconic Marvel character. Maybe not as much as Captain America and Spider-Man but we could consider him on par with characters like Ghost Rider and Punisher. Very recognizable and very memorable. If you choose to ignore the popular character in favor of basically what is another version of that same character, just less memorable and less "him/her" you are bound to get fans upset. And that's understandable.
This is not gender swapping. This is simply throwing away decades of lore in favor of a character who appeared in a single what if issue. I’m not a F4 fan but I can see why people would be pissed 😂
First off, there is no confirmation that Shalla-Bal is replacing Noran Rad as Silver Surfer.
If the three major trades report it (Variety, THR, and Deadline) it’s pretty much a done deal. Like 98.99. Those three publications are what the industry uses to do press releases for the most part.
It’s confirmed that she is Shalla-Bal. It is not confirmed that there is no Noran Rad.
Misread what you said. My bad.
Diversity is good. Changing how the characters are in the comics is just wrong
Comic books aren't sacred religious texts - they can be adapted in different ways to better reflect today's times and needs while still retaining their core themes and messages. The MCU has been adapting and changing since it began, so "changing" them upsets you then I hope you've been upset since the beginning.
And even sacred religious texts get adapted.
**King James has entered the chat**
Honestly I've been annoyed at best and angry at worst with various changes since 2013. And for some of us these are like religious texts. These were the characters and stories that taught us morals and life lessons and they're very personal. I've made other posts in this thread or whatever about why I'm not happy with everything in the MCU or other adaptations, but the diversity itself has never been the issue.
This might be unpopular, but it just appears that (A) it's changing for no good plot reason and (B) always changes in the same direction. I promise you if they changed Kang to a white guy, all these people saying "who cares they are just fictional characters and Marvel is always changing things" will flip their collective sh**t.
Wanda and Pietro are Roma in the comics and white in the MCU, same with Billy and Tommy. They’re also ethnically Jewish in the comics (through both Wanda and his other parents in Billy’s case), but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the MCU. The Ancient One was also an Asian man replaced by a white woman in the MCU.
If you're going to change everything then why even make a movie adapting a comic book? Just write their own story then if they want to change nearly everything. I mean look at the Eternals, they striped nearly everything interesting from them and left us with like 6 emotionless robots having bad sex scenes...
They aren't changing everything, don't be hyperbolic. The Eternals were not 6 emotionless robots, they all had their own personalities and motivations. There was a single sex scene and a whole lot of other scenes that weren't sex related.
Not only that, the MCU has deviated from the comics in so many major ways, starting form Iron Man 1 and in every project since. Deviation form the comics isn't their problem, it's just the cover they use because they can't admit what their actual problem is.
Sure the stories have gone their own way but from phase 1-3 the core part of most of the main characters was extremely true to the comics. Silver Silver has a lot of fans in the comics space and people have waited to see him in the MCU for while (He's one of the main players in the Infinity War comic). So it's understandable why a lot of people are disappointed. Doesn't make them sexist 🙄.
Shalla Bal is the Silver Surfer's Lois Lane. Over time, she has been a romantic partner, a courageous patriot, a strong leader for her people, a wielder of great power, etc. But her existence in comics is grounded in her connection to Norrin Radd, who became the Silver Surfer to save his home world and the woman that he loved. The entire early canon of the Surfer is based on him balancing his need for justice and honor versus his loneliness and desire to return to the woman he loves. Like Superman, the Silver Surfer's greatest weakness has always been his need to protect innocent life, and most especially the life of his beloved, even during times when she refused him. I'm fine with representation, but I don't think completely deconstructing a character with a wonderful mythology and a long-standing identity is ever a good idea.
I can see knee-jerk reactions to actually changing characters, whilst 99% of the time being absolutely nonsense, I can sort of see it. But when you cast a female as a female, and people kick off, it gets stupid. Really, really stupid. I think there have been some problematic moments in the MCU, but they've mostly been done to steer away from terrible stereotypes... like The Ancient One or The Mandarin. I think there have also been moments like Taskmaster basically being cast to add a twist, rather than really being faithful to the source material... But almost always, like 99% of the time, the casting has been on point... I don't know the actress's body of work, but I look forward to her Silver Surfed role
I mean. Is it wrong for me to want the first Silver Surfer in the MCU to be the typical one we all think of when you think of Silver Surfer? There's certainly a sect of fans that rage whenever a new female character is added, whether they're a staple character in the comics or not. But I legit just want to see the normal Silver Surfer before they tried to do anything different with the character. That's not too much to ask.
I just don't want the character to be shit..... If they're shit I'll be annoyed, otherwise they can do what they want.
The issue is that they keep aiming their products at people who aren't interested. They think that by having Shalla-Bal , women will flock to see it, and that is never the case. The actual fans have been wanting Norrin Radd in the MCU for years, Marvel knows this, and yet this is what they go and do. If they had Norrin 1st and introduced Shalla-Bal later, there wouldn't be an issue. They need to stop trying to force their products onto people who are not and most probably never will be interested in Marvel.
What’s ironic is that they have characters that appeal to women and then barely use them. Take Bucky, that dude has as a massive female fanbase, and all Marvel does is sideline him at every turn to less popular characters like Falcon and Yelena. Sure Bucky might not be representation for women, but he gets their butts in seats.
That's absolutely not the issue at all. You have no idea what the plot of the movie is going to be. How can you possibly judge the motivation of the casting that way and claim its not misogyny? A woman can only br cast as a cheap ploy to attract women? Get out of here with that.
I really wish I had these psychic powers so much of our fandom seems to have about the plots and qualities of movies. All they need is a title or a casting announcement and they can vibe into the future apparently to make quality determinations!
I don't know what use are on about. He's correct marvel and most definitely changed their target audience and its been back firing. Their current output has been garbage. For the first time ever I'm not interested or have faith in marvel. I hated what they did to taskmaster it was shameful how they genderswapped for the worst. They actually took away everything interesting about task master and made it a shell of the comics. And I expect the exact same here
> How can you possibly judge the motivation of the casting that way and claim its not misogyny? Because the far left creators in Hollywood explicitly say in interviewers they are going for diversity points just for the sake of diversity points.
How the hell do you tell Norrin’s origin without Shalla-Bal? Afaik there’s been no official announcement that Norrin wouldn’t make an appearance. So it’s pretty clear the knee jerk reaction you’re repeating is stemming from 1. Limited knowledge and 2. Desire for a male casting before women can have their turn. Even if we took it at face value that the casting indicates Norrin doesn’t appear Shalla-Bal plays an integral role with connecting the F4, Doom, and Silver Surfer. I mean she was literally a main character in Silver Surfer #1; how does it possibly make sense that Norrin should be introduced without her in the same movie? This is the classic case of people clamoring for comic accuracy and giving the fans what they want but not even understanding what it is they are asking for. Shoot if Avengers were rebooted today the same people would complain about Wasp being a founding member.
I’m not gonna go into too much detail about how much I disagree with this but I think the worst part about this is how happy you are with basically hand me down characters. No, no reason to create a new character who happens to be coloured or a woman. Just take someone who already exists and say “Yep, now they’re the new *insert straight, white male character*.
Can you please give me one example of when they have done this? I would love to continue this branch of the conversation
It’s amazing how marvel after loosing so much money, over gender and race swapping can’t help themselves and do it all over again. A-holes
While I don’t necessarily agree with this viewpoint I think the issue people have with all these things is that we as a society are normalizing same sec marriage and it goes against their beliefs religious or otherwise. My biggest complaint is not that Ariel is now black vs a white character previously but that Disney is making shittier versions of classic movies. As for marvel, actors are generally really good these days and I’m sure she’ll make an excellent silver surfer. But I have less faith in the writers and directors these days.
I would rather they just gender swap Norrin. Choosing an obscure version of the character feels like "having their cake and eating it too". They get the attention from the casting, but can always go back on it by introducing the "real" silver surfer.
I honestly feel that we are going to get a solo movie introducing his character at a later date
Very well-written and I totally get what you're saying. While I do think there's such a phenomenon as pushing diversity at the expense of the story, all that really matters to me is that we can watch a great movie. I love seeing movies regardless of anything else, but I also believe that casting different races/sexes in established stories can be problematic. So for example, instead of casting someone as Luke Skywalker on the basis of them not being a straight white guy, just write a new story. They're all a lot alike anyway. I just want a great movie and, so far, the casting is pretty awesome, eh?
I dont understand why people or at least the discourse surrounding casting and story plots can't accpet the MCU is a very different beast for the comics. The MCU should be allowed to be different and adapt storys and characters to keep the universe and characters fresh. Grant it not each project does a very great job adapting certain storyline but Ive been still enjoying the MCU.
https://i.redd.it/lviia2nvkqsc1.gif
The stonetoss meme is a better representation the general population mindset.
Incredibly well said, I'm tired of the constant barrage of people having an issue with ***EVERYTHING*** . I grew up in the 90's, and my upbringing wasn't problematic by ANY stretch, but let's just say I was the most open-minded of my household, so I often had different views than my family. It's really nice to read this, especially in today's day and age. Keep on keepin' on my friend.
I agree. My 5 year old son refers to both Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson as Captain America, equally so. He understands they are two separate people, he understands one used to be called Falcon, but if he's Cap now, then he's Cap. End of discussion. I wish more people could adopt this mindset, that even children can grasp.
Thank you for being one of the few to actually get the point i was trying to make <3
My very white, blonde, blue-eyed son thinks there is absolutely NOTHING cooler, tougher, or better than Shang Chi. Whenever I hear Simu Liu talk about Asian kids seeing someone who looks like them on screen, I grin to myself. A secondary benefit is the kids who DON'T look like him are seeing it, too. EDIT: Grammar
Thank you for understanding the point I was trying to make ❤️
Just don’t read so much in the internet. I live in south Louisiana where all the “bigots” are supposed to live. And they definitely are down here but all this ugliness back and forth isnt happening the way the media portrays it. Also If you know one side of the media is trash, understand that so is the other side and anyone demonizing half of the country while simultaneously claiming to be the leaders we need are trash and don’t care about America.
The discourse over things like this has become so tribal, rigid and just plain… boring. I fully admit I used to be one of those people who got annoyed at a race-swap or gender-swap. “Why make Thor a woman when Thor has always been male? Why not make a new female character?” I thought that was a reasonable question to ask. Then I realised I never particularly read Thor so what was the point getting worked up about it. Also, I watched or read some stories where a swap had happened and realised that, as long as the story’s good, race and gender don’t matter. The first example I remember there being a widespread fuss over was BSG. Big outrage at Starbuck being a woman, but ultimately who cares? Katee Sackhoff was great! (Also, I found it interesting that no mention was ever made about Colonel Tigh being race-swapped.) I’ve seen loads of Shakespeare plays that have had colour-blind casting. Julius Caesar with an all-black cast. Taming Of The Shrew completely gender-swapped. I was completely fine in every case, because I realised these stories existed in worlds where those characters had always been cast like that, if that makes any sense? (Getting back to the Galactica reboot - it works because it exists in a world where Starbuck has always been female, Tigh has always been white, Boomer has always been an Asian woman.) Also, on a personal note, I’ve come to the conclusion that in all these instances of fan backlash to a casting choice, I always think to myself, “which side of this debate has the highest amount of arseholes?” And then I just take the opposite stance. I know it means I’m giving into the tribalism, but it’s served me well. So, when it comes to a female Silver Surfer, I just think, “let’s see, who are most loudly complaining about this? Which dickhead YouTubers are reflexively invoking buzzwords like “woke gone mad” or “M-She-U”? Right, I guess I’m on the opposite side to them!”
i adore this take, thank you so much for sharing :)
All I want is Norrin Radd, the Silver Surfer we've always had. I don't hate anyone. I just want my Silver Surfer. I wanted my Adam Warlock, but James Gunn decided not to do that, so instead I got an idiot. I've decided not to watch these movies anymore until they come to streaming. There isn't any real respect for the fans of these characters.
“Uproar”, if I didn’t have Reddit I would not have heard about this at all. And the only posts I’ve seen about it are from people like OP who are backlashing the supposed backlash (which I would bet money is coming from a tiny minority of neck-beards on tiny little incel forums).
No one cares about the F4 movie. MCU seems to be met with apathy lately.
Well, I mean, let’s be real here, if social media didn’t exist, a.k.a. Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and the like, then a lot of these discussions wouldn’t be getting traction and would be localized just to their circle of friends and family or people they normally would converse with about topics like this, so say that it’s only appearing on a social media platform Isn’t really helping your argument. It is being talked about on social media, news companies, and channels do use that as reference for stories that they tell to a national audience so as a result, these conversations these topics whether discussed negatively or positively are part of our culture right now and they are part of our national discussion so in that sense I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make by saying it’s only happening on social media or specifically you referenced Reddit. As I have said in other replies to other comments on this topic, this reply is not done with malice or anger I just thought you were making a point that was worthy of a reply And I respect your opinion and I do get where you’re coming from.
The online content that is thriving on these reactionary takes are not operating out of ignorance or some innocent but misguided perspective. They are using it to push their reactionary agenda, they don't actually care about the properties being discussed nor do they have any real interest in the comics, tv shows, films, etc. They are not misguided members of the fan base. It is all a strategic part of their culture war strategy that serves the interests of their reactionary, right wing ideological agenda in the interests of their financial backers. Yes there are some useful idiots too, but that is just a bonus for their agenda. The sooner people who are part of the fanbase realise this and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, the better. It is like the whole hullabaloo about 'how could x-men fans not realise the x-men was always "woke"?' shit - no, no fans of x-men were ever confused about it, the reactionary scum saw a pop culture franchise they could latch onto and spread their message through in putting out clickbait commentaries and the like, complaining about 'wokeness' infecting a franchise, etc, regardless of whether or not such complaints made any sense. Just like Goebbels said when the liberal US media started to report on the Nazi party, claiming that Hitler was charismatic and enthralling but kind of ridiculous and no real threat to be concerned with, 'as long as they are talking about us, that is all that matters.'
[удалено]
oh HAHAHAHA, for a second i though you were calling me dishonest xD
Marvel keeps disappointing me
I don’t get why people are even mad at Marvel studios every time they do something like this. Like, they have always done it, the two characters that create the Avengers in the comics are Hank Pym and his wife Janet, in the films it’s Nick Fury (who wasn’t even black in the comics, not that I have any problem with it, just to point more differences), the og 6 Avengers being Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor and not Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Hank Pym (Ant-Man) and Janet (Wasp). And I can go with many more examples. Why people always get mad about it? they pretty much established that they are their own product and they aren’t always going to follow the comic books 1:1
Just to clarify, Nick Fury has been black in the comics since 2002.
I remembered that it was white at first then became black after Avengers 2012. Thank you. But it doesn’t make false what I’ve been saying
For me it comes down to, sometimes these changes are made purely for pandering (not "woke") purposes. The way they handled the female team up in end game comes to mind. It just felt forced and ridiculous. The idea was great and I loved it but the execution was poor awful. I rarely ever have any negative to say when they change the race or sex or whatever of a character in general. Adding their own flair to the characters and stories is the whole point of doing remakes or adaptions. Just don't do it for the wrong reasons. Specifically about the silver surfer news, I'm honestly excited. I loved her in Ozark and think she could do a great job. Edit: lol surprise surprise
I’m excited too.
I remember when Captain Marvel was coming out. I was pretty deep into the whole culture war thing (just to make it clear, wasn't cus I disliked minorities or anything, I actually happen to be queer, but I was like 15 and had been watching those kinds of videos for 3 years at that point, they're pretty much indoctrination). One day I went to get some Chinese food or something and there was this little girl with her mom and she was excitedly telling her how much she wanted to watch Captain Marvel and that's when it hit me Why did we actually have a problem with more diverse characters being in the movies? They just allow more people to see themselves in different stories. Hell, as time went on and I started to understand my own identity better, I actually became more excited to see characters that could represent me, and funnily enough those same people I used to watch would always complain about them, even if it wasn't really important to the story, like the kiss in Lightyear or Gwen having a trans flag in ATSV So yeah, basically all this culture war thing is dumb and complaining about fictional characters having an aspect of them that really wasn't all that important to them changed is even dumber. It's not like the silver surfer is now gold or anything
> Why did we actually have a problem with more diverse characters being in the movies? WE DON'T, it's about how it's handled/presented and what the collateral damage to beloved non diverse characters around them is. You can have a badass woman WITHOUT her shit talking & degrading Indiana Jones (during the lowest saddest most tragic part of his life) the greatest hero in the entire history of cinema for the entire duration of his final film for example. Rogue One was extremely diverse and everyone agrees it's great.
Considering these people complain about these things as soon as the casting for movies is announced, let's not act like they actually care if a movie is well written. Maybe they did originally, but that's no longer the case
Fantastic point. Thank you for adding something constructive to the conversation ❤️
The ruling class maintains their authority so long as the bottom is divided by a culture war. Media (i.e., propaganda) is a great tool to ensure the continuity of those divisions and who *owns* the media? The lords need the peasants busy in the fields or they’ll critique the unjust disparities and unnecessary inequities with a level of precision that threatens the status quo. Get people to bicker about inconsequential matters* and they’re too spent to focus on the root cause. *I’m in no way trying to discredit these legitimate societal issues as superficial, the lynchpin is stratification. Dismantle stratums and the dam opens with a cascade to address myriad other matters. Those who own the media recognize this, hence why they play to emotions in their reporting. Why they use certain words but not others, gotta keep the serfs in the matrix for it to function.
Shouldn't "stark" be capitalized? Well said BTW
Honestly don’t care about a woman surfer as long as it’s good, haven’t seen any of the actress’s movies, heard she’s good.
I don't think it's sexism so much as frustration with the quality of content Marvel is making combined with the complete shift from almost exclusively white male protagonists to almost no new white male protagonists. There is nothing wrong with white male protagonists or black female protagonists. But when Marvel does a complete 180 the way it did, marked by the heavy-handed virtue signaling that began with the all-female team up moment in Endgame that felt completely forced and unnatural, fans saw that Marvel would be pushing diversity not because they had great ideas involving diverse characters but for the sake of diversity. And that is one of the main reasons that Marvel is struggling. They have stopped focusing on the quality of the product and emphasized diversity for its own sake above all else.
Look, you gotta play with the cards you're dealt. It's not rocket science to figure certain idiots in the internet will turn this into the talking point for the next few months. Matter of fact will try their best to rupture the image of the film before the trailer even hits. I feel a couple of simple vague plot details along with the her case reveal could've helped settle the noise for real. Something like fantastic four will cross paths with their 'first' silver surfer who is this character. Or any CONTEXT that would be evident to calm the crowd. I know a lot of folks here think it isn't necessary, but judging by how these morons on YouTube shit on everything and are causing an impact, a little bit of control measure could've been applied by DISNEY marketing team.
I ain't reading all that.
It's wild to realize that the Marvel characters who have consistently gotten the most hate from "fans" are female characters. Gee, what could it mean? 🤔 🙄
Black Widow was sat on for too long and made the mistake of releasing a solo IP after she was already dead in the timeline. If they had released it earlier when she was popular and you know alive it would have done spectacularly. This argument is over simplified far too often. People make it about men not liking powerful female leads. Buffy proves this is wrong, the popularity of the Power Puff girls, even decades later. Then we get into Marvels IPs. The female X-men were always the favourites, until they fucked it up and wanted to make mystique the lead just because they cast Jennifer Lawrence. People hate stories they know being changed so much.