The Fantastic Four: Does It Matter If Johnny's White?

Earlier this week, a pair of casting rumors leaked out, suggesting that Josh Trank and 20th [...]

By Russ Burlingame

fantastic-four-casting-rumors

Earlier this week, a pair of casting rumors leaked out, suggesting that Josh Trank and 20th Century Fox may have found their Sue and Johnny Storm for the forthcoming reboot of a film franchise based on Marvel's Fantastic Four. While Allison Williams, rumored to play Sue Storm, went largely unremarked-upon (she's pretty, and part of one of the most popular shows on cable, so it's not surprising that most fans had no particular qualms with her playing the part), her brother Johnny is another matter. And frankly, some of it got pretty ugly, pretty quickly. That's because rumor has it Michael B. Jordan from Chronicle and Friday Night Lights will be offered the role. Jordan, who is black, wouldn't be the first member of the Fantastic Four to be altered to make the team a little less lily-white...but the first time around, it was Jessica Alba, who is not only a big star but who also has a kind of pan-ethnic quality that makes her seem like her family's history is whatever the writers say it is. There wasn't much (that I can recall) made of the fact that she and Chris Evans didn't much look like siblings, possibly because Alba could "pass."

Human Torch Dies

Jordan--if both rumors hold--will be playing Williams's sister, and it would be difficult to believe that the two share both of the same parents. She's not only white, but a very pale white. And that's the only place where I get bent out of shape. The Fantastic Four is a family more than any other superhero team (even things like Justice Society of America, where that term gets thrown around), and their dynamic is a delicate one. Tinker too much and it will feel all wrong. Something as basic as making Sue and Johnny half-siblings, or making one of them adopted, could materially affect the team's chemistry. While Sue and Johnny are arguably the least essential to many FF stories (Reed moves the plot along and Ben is the most likable, making them the center of many tales), they're the core of the team in that they represent the actual, literal family of which Reed and Ben are the extended members. Do I think the pair need to be white? No. But I do think they need to believably look like they could be full-blooded siblings, and that to cast these two actors would necessitate wasting screen time on expository dialogue that explains their relationship. Given the choice between the two, I might opt for Jordan and ask that the studio find an African-American actress up to the task of playing Sue. The problem with using siblings for this kind of thing is that changing one might mean needing to change the other, and so the fans already upset that you're altering the source material in any way have twice as many reasons to complain from the outset. Still, Williams is a strong choice, Chronicle is beloved and Trank knew what he was doing with that cast. The studio would likely go the other way, as Girls is hot and Williams is a rising star that a lot of people would like to hitch their wagons to.

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Honestly, while I understand the fans who want their favorite characters to appear onscreen as they have in the comics for all of these years, I also appreciate why they can't always. The world is different than it was 50 years ago and if these characters were being created for the first time now, you can be certain that there would have been a non-white Avenger or two in the mix. That there was a point in our not-too-distant past where featuring such a character on the cover of your comic could actually hurt sales seems preposterous now, but it was the logic that the publishers operated under during the Silver Age, when the blueprint for modern comics was forged. Changing a character's race serves a number of purposes. The first and most frequently-cited (because it sounds more noble) is that since superhero stories are watched and enjoyed by kids, changing a character's physical appearance can give readers/viewers an opportunity to aspire to and relate to characters that look more like they do. This reason is altruistic, but often derided by opponents as being a "politically-correct" motivation which, for some, is enough reason in and of itself to reject the idea. The second, and arguably more important from the corporate point of view, is the hope that doing so will court a broader demographic spectrum and potentially make more money. This one obviously has its detractors in that making a change to an artistic product with the bottom line as your motivation is rarely a popular decision. From a filmmaker's perspective, it could just come down to getting the best actor you can get for the part. This can result in the kind of conflict that you get when you're drafting a football player: What if that once-in-a-decade player is available, but not at a position you need to fill? You're left to decide whether your team would be better with that player than they would if you took a lesser player who fills a more obvious hole in your lineup. The problem that's presented is that comics are a visual medium, and fans are so attached to the visual elements of their favorite characters that it's difficult to change one on a dime without provoking outrage in the longtime readers. In the case of changes to a character's race or ethnicity, that outrage can find its outlet in pretty toxic ways, often starting with "I'm not a racist, but...". That's more true the bigger and more essential the character is to comics's overall mythology, meaning that the characters most easily changed tend to be the Perry Whites and Heimdalls of the world--characters who will never sell an action figure or be most kids' favorite part of the ensemble. At the end of the day, though, unless you get lucky and land Idris Elba or Laurence Fisburne, a minor character like that isn't likely to draw a lot of interest or attract viewers to the theater. Of course, while these are interesting conversations to have in theory, nobody will really know what Trank has in mind until we've seen some footage from the film...

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