joe_b

SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING RETRO MOVIE POSTERS

http://nerdist.com/spiderman-homecom...ller-and-more/

B5Erik

The diversity itself doesn't bother me in the least. The pandering and poor writing/characterization does. Flash, Liz, and Michelle were terribly underwritten and totally flat and one dimensional. The characters were lame, period. They took iconic characters and ruined them - not with their ethnicity, but with making the characters kind of pathetic (in Flash's case, totally pathetic).

Timber

Maybe that was my problem more than the forced diversity. If Flash was a Indian and a foil to Peter maybe it wouldn't have bothered me. If Liz even for a second seemed like a legitimate love interest for Peter I wouldn't have cared what her race was. I'm not even sure why Michelle was in the movie.

Hokeyboy

People are whining about "forced diversity" while the lead was a white guy, the villain was a white guy, the mentor was a white guy, the shlemazel was a white guy, the parental figure was a hot white chick... the horrors.

B5Erik

Yeah, I AM complaining about the forced diversity - because it SUCKED. HARD.

The characters were far worse than the originals (the originals were at least halfway interesting and fun to read/watch). So tell me how this diversity that the studio and creative people forced into the story made it any better...

You can't, because almost all of the complaints about the movie are how poorly written (and, in some cases, acted) the altered characters were. This movie could have been significantly better if they hadn't tried to reinvent the wheel.

The changes didn't make the movie better, they made it worse. They COULD have made it better, but the execution was GODAWFUL. It's like they spent all their time coming up with ways to change the characters and make the movie more diverse, and then didn't give a shit as to how interesting or entertaining the changed characters were (or, more accurately, weren't).

Josh-da-man

The leads in the new Star Wars movies are a black guy and a woman! The lead in the new Star Trek series is a black woman with an Asian woman captain! The Ghostbusters are all women! Peter Parker is going to school with non-white kids! The Gunslinger is black! The new Doctor Who is a woman!

What's next? A gay James Bond who's a bottom?

My GAWD, they're forcing diversity down our throats! It's an agenda! AN AGENDA!

Save us, President Trump! You're our only hope! Grab those pussies before they grabs us!

Hokeyboy

And if all those roles were filled with white actors, how would they have been any better?

fumanstan

Not speaking for anyone else that mentioned it too, but I don't think pointing out or noticing that it looked deliberate to cast actors of different races just to mix things up equates to "whining" about it or assumes that I must want more white actors cast in all of those roles. It was just an observation. Someone mentioned Power Rangers before, and I had the same thought of "oh, they needed an asian guy, a black guy, a hispanic girl, etc..."

You guys are so obnoxious

Timber

The farther I get away from this movie the worse I think it was. I still enjoyed Holland and Keaton but not much else. I hope it's just that Marvel Studios phoned it in since it wasn't really their movie, or there was too much Sony interference or anything really to explain why they made such an uninspired movie. It doesn't bode well for Black Panther or Captain Marvel.

B5Erik

You mean if they had just continued to honor the source material and not try to reinvent the wheel for PC and marketing reasons? Maybe they could have spent the time actually working on the script for those characters rather than spending time figuring out what ethnicity they wanted to change those characters to and how they would change the personalities and characteristics of the characters. They clearly spent a fair amount of time re-imagining all those characters rather than spending that time trying to make the characters interesting.

Time is a finite resource when you're making a movie on a schedule.

Timber

They needed an Indian guy in the movie so they made him smart and not an athlete. If Flash was Indian, a football player, and a bully the fact that he was Indian wouldn't have stood out. I just got the feeling that they wrote the part specifically for a race. Liz could have been black, white, whatever and she still would have been a horribly written character same with Michelle.

Obi-Wanma

In this film, Peter was in a science and technology school for smart kids. Dumb jock Flash would have been out of place in this environment.

Timber

fujishig

I agree that the diverse cast had little to do with how shallow some of the characters are. But despite the shallowness I think they did a great job.

The number one priority here was re re establishing Spider-Man and Peter which they did. Much of the movie is focused on him, naturally, which didn't leave a ton of time for the supporting cast. Flash was a joke and little more than comic relief but to be honest it's not like he's particularly memorable in any of the other films, and there was really no time to develop some complex bullying plot line that would do justice to the term in this day and age. Liz's main role was to get us to the Parker/Vulture dynamic, which it set up really well (and in terms of diverse casting that was definitely intentional and added a lot to the "twist"). Prowler had to be black, even if we never get a Miles Morales film. As for Michelle... well, that was set up, I guess.

It's like everyone wanted more Iron Man in their Spider-Man, and when he pretty much takes over Uncle Ben's role and squeezes out time that could have been spent on the side characters there's a lot of complaints, and yet most still love the fact RDJ was in this movie.

Most magnet schools at least around here don't have football teams. Not sure about Queens though.

TheMovieman

+1

Draven

Do you actually think that the casting and the writing were done by the same person?

devilshalo

I don't mind the diversity.. if they were cast as different characters not based upon any that were already established in the source material.

B5Erik

Of course not, but the producers and writers have to spend a significant amount of time brainstorming changes like that before casting can be done.

That extra time would have been better spent punching up the script itself since the supporting characters sucked so much.

Hokeyboy

So then you agree then, that the problem was not the ethnicity of the actors in their roles, but rather how thin and underwritten those roles were to begin with?

Ergo, "forced diversity" wasn't the problem.

musick

yep, I didn't go to see a Spider Friends movie I went to see a Spider-Man movie and on that this movie finally delivered

Draven

Exactly.

I for one had zero interest in seeing the same Flash and MJ/Gwen. We had that in two separate movie franchises. I wanted something different from Spider-Man, and a more modern take on a story first written when everyone was white is fine.

I also had no problems with the writing of their scenes. I thought they were a fun group of kids to follow and gave us a bigger number of people for Peter to interact with than we got with either the Maguire or Garfield movies.

csant

I have zero interest in all that extra miles morales stuff (I stop collecting/reading comics way before that story line was introduce) and dont care how they changed Flash/MJ.

B5Erik

Yes, it was. Because they spent their time unwisely. Rather than spending enough time to punch up the supporting characters so that they were NOT lame they spent time trying to reinvent the wheel and be inclusive.

They clearly didn't have enough time to do both.

Groucho

That doesn't make sense. There were no references to the ethnicity of any of the characters except Aunt May. You could swap out any of the actors with a white actor and it would work just the same way. These are issues with the script that have nothing to do with "inclusiveness".

B5Erik

That just points out how they needed to spend that time on the script rather than figuring out the new ethnicities and characteristics of the characters. They didn't spend their time wisely.