Celebrities In Adaptations Today More Into The Role Than The Character

Remember this headline from I/O9 when Donald Glover wanted to play Spider-Man? At the time there was no Miles Morales, which was created for Brian Michael Bendis’ kids. Glover wanted to play Peter Parker.

Yeah, we know at least partly where this is heading. I’m actually talking about a different character, but no matter what I write here the usual suspects will take one look at the intro and call me racist while the opposition will claim this is an anti-woke article. Political culture is seeping into pop culture thanks to people who hate entertainment and want you as angry and stressed as they are because they know no other way to live. While Glover’s declaration came during the downturn of the pre-“woke” “political correctness” I have no doubt he wanted to play Peter Parker…or rather he thought he did.

This really all came up because Winston Duke, during an interview to promote his role in the Fall Guy re-imagining (the original TV show was about a stuntman who paid the bills between movies by becoming a bounty hunter), said he would like to play Batman. In a way he did thanks to audio dramas…but he still didn’t. I don’t know why “news” sites who keep pushing the “superhero fatigue” narrative nonsense continue to ask these actors about MCU and DC Movie roles during non superhero projects. You’d think they’d want to ignore the superheroes if they dislike them so much, but that’s just me venting. The real takeaway you should have is when many of these actors say they want to play this or that superhero or other pre-existing IP role, even when they do resemble the character, they really don’t. And while Duke does make a social statement in his comments, I don’t think (on his part, like with Glover) they really want to play that part…or rather they don’t want to play that character.

The comments in question comes from /Film, where Duke mentions wanting to play Batman in the Gunniverse.

Every Batman fan knows the requirements for anyone hoping to become Gotham City’s Caped Crusader: a magnetic screen presence, a convincing sense of physicality, and a chiseled jawline. Much like Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, and Robert Pattinson, Winston Duke just so happens to fit every one of these categories … so it’s a little surprising that it’s taken this long for anyone to fire up their fan-cast engines and start campaigning for the actor to suit up as the brooding hero. Well, anyone even vaguely familiar with comic book fandom these days can probably guess why that hasn’t really happened with this traditionally white character, but Duke is certainly aware of how he’d be shaking up the status quo if he ever got his wish.

“While talking to /Film’s Ryan Scott, who mentioned that Duke actually has starred as Bruce Wayne before in the “Batman Unburied” podcast, Duke all but leaped at the idea of portraying Batman in a live-action film. Director Andy Muschietti’s reboot “Brave and the Bold” is coming up (relatively) soon, so there’s no time like the present! According to Duke:

“Listen, man, can you start that [campaign]? [Laughs] I would say I challenge you to get on all these socials and push for me. Get your community. I would love to. I would love to do that as Batman. I’d love any opportunity to explore new characters, to change narratives around some of these entrenched ideas of how these characters are supposed to look, sound, and perform. I’m all for it.”

“To change narratives around some of these entrenched ideas…” yada blah blah. This is another example of an actor who sees a role, not a character. Duke, who played M’Baku, enemy of the now dead Black Panther T’Challa in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, doesn’t want to play Bruce Wayne. He wants to play, as the article writer put it, “a magnetic screen presence, a convincing sense of physicality, and a chiseled jawline…the brooding hero”. That’s all they think Bruce Wayne is. Not his backstory, not his personality, and of course not looking like Bruce Wayne has looked since the character’s 1940s debut. Matt Reeves’ The Batman supposedly focused on the underexplored detective skills of Batman, but nothing about his world and decades of depiction match up besides “man in a bat costume”. So even white Bruce can be wrong, and I’m not convinced Robert Patterson or Snyder’s Ben Affleck couldn’t pull off the role if done properly. In short, not what Snyder and Reeves did.

As for the audio drama, Batman Unburied, I haven’t heard it so I can’t comment on it. For all I know he did a good job, but when it comes to voice acting I don’t think you have to look like the part to sound like the part. Good news as there are few elves, robots, and space aliens in the current voice acting community. However, he didn’t play Batman there, either. From Bounding Into Comics:

Working at Gotham Hospital outside his nightlife as a costumed vigilante, Wayne has to investigate the activities of a killer named the Harvester who, true to his nom de guerre, steals the organs of his victims.

To catch this serial murderer, he has to overcome his own mental demons to protect Gotham as Batman, and to aid him he turns to Edward Nygma, The Riddler.

Batman Unburied features a diverse English-language cast that includes Hasan Minhaj as Riddler, Gina Rodriguez as Batgirl, Lance Reddick as Thomas Wayne, Toks Olagundoye as Martha Wayne, the half-Thai Ashly Burch as Vicki Vale, and John Rhys-Davies as Dr. Hunter.

Speaking of voice acting, back when I was able to go to conventions I did a BW Panelling episode where I recorded a women of voice acting panel. A number of the voice actresses said they wanted to play the Joker. Not Harley Quinn or Joker’s Daughter, or a Joker type like the Punchline character that didn’t exist back then, or the heroic Tangent Universe Joker that hasn’t been seen outside of comics and I doubt they knew of her. They specifically wanted to play the Joker because they thought the role would be fun to play. Like Duke and Glover, like Mindy Kaling and not-Velma, it isn’t so much that they want to play the character, but are in love with the character type because they would be fun to play or the type of character they relate to. See also Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and the movie that screwed up every lady hero in Gotham City they could, especially Cassandra Cain.

I keep coming back to that part in Duke’s comment earlier: ” to change narratives around some of these entrenched ideas of how these characters are supposed to look, sound, and perform”. How characters look, sound, and perform are the character. If you write Captain Kirk as an asexual prude with drug issues, that might be an interesting character…but it wouldn’t be Captain Kirk. Replace that name with any character who isn’t an asexual prude with drug issues from any show, movie, book, or whatever in the history of storytelling, and that statement is still true. You can bring different things to a role, to a character, but there is something I call “Multiversal Continuity”, the core concept of a character in a continuing franchise. Even if you liked the original movie, the sequel will fail if all the characters are out of character from the first movie without a good reason, like being out of character was the point due to mind control or something.

I’m not picking on Duke because he’s black, folks. The crackers ain’t exactly innocent here. Ryan Gosling isn’t playing Colt Seavers in the Fall Guy adaptation Duke’s supposed to be promoting. In the show with Lee Majors from the 1980s, Colt was a stuntman who took bounty hunting jobs between movies to pay the bills. In the movie with Gosling, he’s a stuntman who lost his nerve after an accident and has to regain his confidence to stop the bad guys and win his girlfriend back. In this case he just wanted to play a crimefighting stuntman, and that’s fine. I can point to crimefighting actors and stuntmen/women in other media. I even created my own stuntman and stunt rider superheroes. Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise may be loved, but they turned the hero of the series into the villain of the movie to push Cruise’s role, a terrible torch pass. 21 Jump Street and Chips both turned the shows’ heroes into total putzes for the sake of comedy, and didn’t do it nearly as well as Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks’ Dragnet parody.

The A-Team made the soldiers of fortune who only helped people in need into the very criminals they were falsely accused of being in the show. They aren’t looking to properly adapt the thing they’re adapting. They just see a story idea and a role they’d like to play, and make that, using the popular name as cheap branding and less and less people are falling for it. That may be why The Fall Guy, despite fair reviews, isn’t getting a lot of attention by the moviegoers. It’s another adaptation more interested in their story and characters than faithfully adapting and updating the originals. You can be white and still be guilty of the same sins, even if the end product is somewhat to really good. I’m even having second thoughts about Henry Cavill at this point, considering he actually seemed to like playing Snyder’s “Superman”, meanwhile two of the Madame Web actresses actually trash their own movie because it was trash as well as a bad adaptation. Not that they probably care about that last part.

I don’t think Duke really wants to play Bruce Wayne or Batman, except that the name is big so it would good on his resume. It’s a role he would enjoy portraying but not because of who Bruce as a character is but what he’d get to do as “Batman”. Being a movie and TV actor, a voice role in a Spotify audio series isn’t enough for him. It’s the same mentality that led Dwayne Johnson to want his Black Adam to fight Superman instead of Black Adam’s actual nemesis in the comics, Shazam/original Captain Marvel. Why be Darkblade or the Loner, two actual Batman-type characters in comics (we briefly looked at the Loner yesterday in Hero 9 To 5 as a supporting cast member and Darkblade comes from the excellent Love & Capes series), or some original Batman-esque hero or anti-hero, that you can do whatever you want to without upsetting those comic fans the /Film writer hates so much. You want THE name, but not THE character, THE personality, THE backstory, THE specifics that make a Batman story a Batman story. Parts can be interpreted but if all you want to do is the brooding loner hero from the shadows he doesn’t have to be Batman/Bruce Wayne to show black kids they can be just as smart and fight for justice as much as any other kid. I can point out a bunch of them I grew up with (and have, and will again) and my favorite version of the Ninja Turtles included a black Superman stand-in called Silver Sentry…who is one of my favorite superheroes despite his brief appearances in the show.

Meanwhile the Batcave has The Signal, Batwing, and probably a few other Batman Incorporated bat-type characters of color (Signal might be closer to Robin or Nightwing, though) to choose from. If all you want is to be a Batman-type character, I don’t have a problem with that. The more superheroes, the happier I am if they’re actually superheroic. Too many modern superheroes are while the classic heroes have been slowly brought down to their level rather than the opposite. I’m not even trashing any of these actors for wanting to play a part more than faithfully adapt a character. Just admit it, go play the role in something original (you can help push for it and plenty of moviegoers will back you up), and leave the character adaptation to someone who actually wants to adapt the character properly.