In contemporary film and television, the idea of changing the race of one or more main characters when making a remake seems to have become an obsession, although the modification does not work if it is due to questions of political correctness rather than necessity or validity plot.
It was no surprise to see Denzel Washington as Don Pedro de Aragón in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (1993), a version of William Shakespeare’s play by Kenneth Branagh. Six years later came ‘Wild wild west’ (1999), a film inspired by ‘Jim West’ (1965-1969), a modern Western television series, but with a secret agent as the main character. Will Smith assumed the role that a white actor had developed in cathode fiction, Robert Conrad. The change was the most relevant detail of a very free version.
The Superheroes
The code was also subverted with superheroes. The cinematic Nick Fury is still one-eyed, but if in the Marvel comics he is white, in the movies he appears with the features of Samuel L. Jackson. Human Torch is also black in ‘Fantastic 4’ (2015). Idris Elba, who in 2018 sounded to be the new James Bond, played in ‘Thor’ (2011) Heimdall, a god from Norse mythology.
It is no coincidence: the director is the same Branagh who already turned Don Pedro into a racialized prince. Despite some criticisms, the same ones spilled when the rumor that he would be agent 007 jumped, Elba repeated as a Nordic super-warrior in the following Thor and ‘The Avengers’ films. Denzel Washington, again, became the gunman of the ‘remake’ of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (2016), when in the original 1960 film he was played by Yul Brynner.
Denzel Washington played the role of Yul Brynner in the original film in the ‘Magnificent Seven’ remake
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In the recent version of ‘The Witches (Roald Dahl)’, the Nordic grandmother and grandson in the 1990 film and story are now black and the action takes place in 1967 Alabama, albeit reversing segregation .
Two other 2020 films are inspired by classic literary characters to delve into racial diversity: ‘Once upon a time …’ is a fiction about the childhood of Alice’s Lewis Carroll and Peter Pan, who have a white mother (Angelina Jolie) and black father (David oyelowo), while in ‘Wendy’, the Lost Boys are of both races.
The bet is just as decided on television. The owner of the record store ‘High Fidelity’ (2000) was a Caucasian man (John Cusack), but in the 2020 TV adaptation of the same Nick Hornby novel, the character is played by Zoë Kravitz, actress of African American and Jewish descent.
It may interest you
The racial diversity of ‘The Bridgertons’ (2020) has just been added to the French series ‘Lupine’ (2021), an update on the adventures of the white-collar thief Arsène Lupine, now of Senegalese origin and played by Omar Sy |. And let’s not forget that seven years before Barak Obama became the first black president of the United States, the series ’24’ already showed an African American as the main tenant of the White House.
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