Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Jul 11, 2013 1:06:11 GMT -5
But if they reboot it, they could make Peter Parker gay. I don't think it would make much difference to the character. If it was someone like James Bond then it wouldn't work as he's famous for womanising but when I think of Spider-Man it's a long time before I think of a love interest. It's funny you mention Bond there, being that Skyfall had that throw away Bond = bi line. I wouldn't like to see a gay Spider-Man simply because that isn't Spider-Man and I like my adaptations to be faithful to the comics. That and because Wiccan and Hulkling need to be Marvel's first gays on the big screen in a Young Avengers movie. Or TV show. With Kieran Gillen writing, producing and directing. I get that. Would be interesting to do, too, and less boat rocking. Thing is, there need to be more visible gay icons, just as there needs to be more female ones or other underrepresented groups. This isn't about being PC or appeasement, it's because white men, myself included, have a wealth of characters to compare ourselves with. It seems unfair to expect every freakin' superhero to be a straight white guy. That said, it's not like people aren't used to making do. I wish I had the origin of this quote to attribute it to, but I found this in my notes. "All my life I imagined being Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Batman, or Iron Man or The Punisher. What it would be like to be the King of Wakanda . All my life I've been black. Other flights of imagination have seen me Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, James Bond and Steve McQueen. Do white people see the skin of Usain Bolt or Avery Brooks or Blade or Barack Obama and think "I could never run that fast, lead a space station, hunt vampires or be President, those are black guy's thing's."? Do white people never see something of themselves in the heroic deeds of others unless that person is white?" This is a pretty complicated dilemma for writers, but maybe they've been taking the easy way out a little too often in the past.
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Post by Hurbster on Jul 11, 2013 1:30:27 GMT -5
Last thing Spider Man needs is another reboot, because that is what it would take.
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SEAN CARLESS
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Post by SEAN CARLESS on Jul 11, 2013 3:13:26 GMT -5
It's funny you mention Bond there, being that Skyfall had that throw away Bond = bi line. I wouldn't like to see a gay Spider-Man simply because that isn't Spider-Man and I like my adaptations to be faithful to the comics. That and because Wiccan and Hulkling need to be Marvel's first gays on the big screen in a Young Avengers movie. Or TV show. With Kieran Gillen writing, producing and directing. I get that. Would be interesting to do, too, and less boat rocking. Thing is, there need to be more visible gay icons, just as there needs to be more female ones or other underrepresented groups. This isn't about being PC or appeasement, it's because white men, myself included, have a wealth of characters to compare ourselves with. It seems unfair to expect every freakin' superhero to be a straight white guy. Every attempt to market a female comic superhero in a film has bombed or severely underperformed. For a huge franchise, designed intrinsically to make the most money possible for the studio, I doubt they'd ever even entertain the idea of a gay Spiderman for those reasons, no matter who's being unrepresented or whether it could or would fit a story. The entire vehicle is an exact formula that they ain't never tweaking until what they produce stops producing. It'll never happen, so the entire argument is kind of moot. Fun to discuss or dissect, but moot.
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AFN: Judge Shred
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Post by AFN: Judge Shred on Jul 11, 2013 3:23:29 GMT -5
I get that. Would be interesting to do, too, and less boat rocking. Thing is, there need to be more visible gay icons, just as there needs to be more female ones or other underrepresented groups. This isn't about being PC or appeasement, it's because white men, myself included, have a wealth of characters to compare ourselves with. It seems unfair to expect every freakin' superhero to be a straight white guy. Every attempt to market a female comic superhero in a film has bombed or severely underperformed. For a huge franchise, designed intrinsically to make the most money possible for the studio, I doubt they'd ever even entertain the idea of a gay Spiderman for those reasons, no matter who's being unrepresented or whether it could or would fit a story. The entire vehicle is an exact formula that they ain't never tweaking until what they produce stops producing. It'll never happen, so the entire argument is kind of moot. Fun to discuss or dissect, but moot. Making bad movies with awful marketing is why they bombed though. If they gave Captain Marvel some respect and threw her on the big screen it could work. It just has to be the right way.
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SEAN CARLESS
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Post by SEAN CARLESS on Jul 11, 2013 4:20:33 GMT -5
Every attempt to market a female comic superhero in a film has bombed or severely underperformed. For a huge franchise, designed intrinsically to make the most money possible for the studio, I doubt they'd ever even entertain the idea of a gay Spiderman for those reasons, no matter who's being unrepresented or whether it could or would fit a story. The entire vehicle is an exact formula that they ain't never tweaking until what they produce stops producing. It'll never happen, so the entire argument is kind of moot. Fun to discuss or dissect, but moot. Making bad movies with awful marketing is why they bombed though. If they gave Captain Marvel some respect and threw her on the big screen it could work. It just has to be the right way. I know what you're saying. But it's still only hypotheticals. Hollywood when it comes to these types of movies doesn't really take chances or think outside the box.
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Post by crowwreak was WRONG on Jul 11, 2013 4:38:46 GMT -5
If you're going to make Spiderman Gay, why not have it as Miles Morales?
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Post by DrewVonAwesome on Jul 11, 2013 4:44:15 GMT -5
Why not just make movies of the superheros who are gay? Id love to see the great lakes avengers movie. Even better... Young Avengers.
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SEAN CARLESS
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Post by SEAN CARLESS on Jul 11, 2013 4:46:42 GMT -5
"Guess Where Peter Parker Wants To Park His Peter?" -headline, somewhere out there I'm sure.
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4real
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Post by 4real on Jul 11, 2013 5:04:39 GMT -5
even so, there's still no money in it. even a casual person (with rare exception) would have difficulty taking a Spider-man movie where the character wasn't Peter Parker seriously. it's not like Spider-man is some barely known character you can do whatever with. But if they reboot it, they could make Peter Parker gay. I don't think it would make much difference to the character. If it was someone like James Bond then it wouldn't work as he's famous for womanising but when I think of Spider-Man it's a long time before I think of a love interest. And speaking of James Bond some people weren't happy that Daniel Craig was the new Bond because he's blond. BLOND for goodness sakes! That's the kind of society we live in!
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Allie Kitsune
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Jul 11, 2013 9:33:48 GMT -5
This confirms Andrew Garfield is a member of FAN and trying to steal our serious gay wrestler obsession!!!! What's next Drax getting angry by a basketball? The Rock playing a character named Rick in one of his movies? A random comedy where one of the jokes is that his neighbors above him are having sex to loudly while he's trying to play Mario? The entire rest of the cast arguing over whether Rock's character "really" counts as black or if he's "just" Samoan.
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Lt. Palumbo
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Post by Lt. Palumbo on Jul 11, 2013 9:38:15 GMT -5
Peter Parker should be bitten by a gay radioactive spider, make it completely absurd. gay-dioactive
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Allie Kitsune
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Jul 11, 2013 9:40:09 GMT -5
I don't at all dig this sort of "Keep your forced diversity out of my stuff!" vibe a lot of this topic is getting. Though I somewhat feel that a response like that kind of turns the conversation into a "Rules For Radicals" style 'all-or-nothing', 'with-me-or-against-me', 'support-it-or-you're-a-bigot' direction... It's scorched-earth and doesn't really foster discussion. It just forces people to defend a position that they never took.
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Mochi Lone Wolf
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Post by Mochi Lone Wolf on Jul 11, 2013 9:51:56 GMT -5
It would take a pretty big reboot since a big part of Spiderman's character revolves around his relationships with Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson , however, I don't see why it wouldn't work within those requirements.
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Post by HMARK Center on Jul 11, 2013 10:31:00 GMT -5
As I've gotten older, my ways of thinking about adaptations has changed, and I'm pretty firmly in the camp of "change whatever the hell you want, just tell me a good story". I'm a bit flexible on that, admittedly: adapting, say, Superman or Spider-Man is different from adapting a TV show or single book into a movie, since Superman/Spider-Man have decade upon decade of backstories, retcons, and all manner of other retellings that make it clear "there is no one single way to present this character", whereas a standalone book or TV show does exactly that, stand alone.
But for the most part? Go ahead, change the plot. Put different characters in different situations. Make somebody a different race/sexuality/etc. Doesn't really bother me, so long as you're still telling me a good story that feels like I'm watching a film set in the universe of the property you're adapting.
In a way there's be something off about completely changing a major aspect of a character's personality, making them seem like an entirely different person from what he/she was before...but to me, changing a character's sexuality doesn't fall under that. You can still have Peter Parker, nerdy kid who's a bit socially awkward yet gains incredible powers, but just make him like men instead of women; it would not have to fundamentally alter who he is. Just make MJ a guy, and you're pretty set.
As said before, I don't foresee this actually happening in reality, so it's kind of moot, but yeah, if somebody came along and felt like changing Peter Parker's appearance or sexuality...why care? Comic book characters get changed constantly, anyway.
One thing about the "why not show another hero who actually is gay?" argument: the main reason is that there are no gay superheroes who most people actually know about. I don't read comics, I only know about most comic book happenings in passing, and I don't know the name of a single gay superhero. I know they exist, as I've heard about them, but I know nothing about them. How likely is a mass audience to flock to a movie featuring a hero they've never heard of, or know anything about vis-a-vis his/her powers, enemies, etc.? Given that, no studio is really going to get behind such a flick.
Some folks have said that instead of having a gay Spider-Man, "maybe the writers should get behind a gay character and really push to make him/her closer to an A-list hero that could get his/her own movie", and that's a VERY fair argument to make, but we also can't forget how these industries tend to work. Don't overstate the place of comic book heroes in the public consciousness; Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man are iconic, but very, VERY few others are, and even some who currently are only have that status due to recent movies, not comic books. As DiG said before, the vast, VAST majority of the public couldn't give less of a damn about the "lore" or backstories these heroes come with...plus those backstories are constantly changed and toyed with at the whims of new writers, anyway.
So yeah, long story short...go ahead and mess around with these characters, just make sure it's a good movie.
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Jul 11, 2013 10:33:20 GMT -5
I will say that i dont think we'll ever see a gay Batman. Why? Because of Dr. Frederic Wertham. His book "Seduction of the Innocent" implied that Batman and Robin were gay lovers, even saying "If Batman was in the State Department he would have been dismissed". If they made Batman gay, that would have validated Wertham's claims, which means his OTHER claims would start being looked at (and before you say that nobody would remember that, SOTI is still in print). we already have gay Batman though. his name is Midnighter and he's even cooler than regular Batman.
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Jul 11, 2013 10:36:35 GMT -5
Every attempt to market a female comic superhero in a film has bombed or severely underperformed. For a huge franchise, designed intrinsically to make the most money possible for the studio, I doubt they'd ever even entertain the idea of a gay Spiderman for those reasons, no matter who's being unrepresented or whether it could or would fit a story. The entire vehicle is an exact formula that they ain't never tweaking until what they produce stops producing. It'll never happen, so the entire argument is kind of moot. Fun to discuss or dissect, but moot. Making bad movies with awful marketing is why they bombed though. If they gave Captain Marvel some respect and threw her on the big screen it could work. It just has to be the right way. if Marvel has any brains she'll be in Avengers 2. seriously, the first movie was a total sausage fest with probably the least interesting female Avenger they could've picked.
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Post by Hurbster on Jul 11, 2013 10:43:09 GMT -5
Spider Man and his Amazing friends Big Bear and the Daddy...
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the2ndevil
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Post by the2ndevil on Jul 11, 2013 11:09:24 GMT -5
If you're going to make Spiderman Gay, why not have it as Miles Morales? I was going to ask about this because I remembered hearing that the current Ultimate Spider-Man was gay. Doesn't seem to be much of an issue, there. As long as there's a good story, I really could care less if he's Gay, Straight, or Captain Jack Harkness.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2013 11:55:38 GMT -5
I don't at all dig this sort of "Keep your forced diversity out of my stuff!" vibe a lot of this topic is getting. Though I somewhat feel that a response like that kind of turns the conversation into a "Rules For Radicals" style 'all-or-nothing', 'with-me-or-against-me', 'support-it-or-you're-a-bigot' direction... It's scorched-earth and doesn't really foster discussion. It just forces people to defend a position that they never took. People did take that position. I didn't say that for shits-and-giggles, man. I was referencing things already said here. Why would I even pull that out of nowhere? I think "Marvel should adapt it's already canonically gay characters to the screen" is a fair point, but one that doesn't directly address the topic. "Marvel shouldn't make Spider-Man gay just to do it/force people to accept it" isn't a good point at all.
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Post by Michael Coello on Jul 11, 2013 11:56:36 GMT -5
I have three words to combat the idea of how you can't make a movie of a gay character that isn't well known: MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE. I guarantee that, before Iron man 1 hit, most of the MARVEL heroes of the day were not as well known to the people, from Nick Fury and Black Widow and even the main 3 of MARVEL to an extent. Hell, we have a big budget movie that features a talking raccoon from space in production. Not to mention a lot of third party companies having movies of comics being made cause filmmakers want to make comic book movies in general now.
Also, the issue of telling a good story isn't as crucial to me as making a good character. You can't make a good character gay if that's his defining character. Him being gay should have zero impact on a character doing his job or performing what he does. You don't hamper on and on over how "hey, this character is gay" every time he shows up, like you expect to win an award for it. If you have to ask yourself what a gay character needs to do to come off as gay, you're writing him wrong.
Finally, one issue I had with the idea changing characters is the reasoning to do it to attract a certain group, not in the interest of a good, or better, story. To use the Spider-Man example, it's to show a gay character to apparently attract gay audiences closer to the character. so, does this mean straight people can't identify with Peter? Does it mean white people can't enjoy Shaft or Sheriff Bart from Blazing Saddles the same as black people? Does it mean I, as a Latino, have sole rights to root for Danny Trejo characters and Zorro over anyone else?
Hell, Dorothy from Wizard of Oz became an icon for the gay male community, even without needing to be a)gay or b) male in the first place.
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