Kyle wrote: โSun Oct 12, 2025 4:04 pm
Those movies didnt bomb because they cast different races people, they bombed because they were
bad movies, with poor direction.
I'm willing to concede that SW was poor in a lot of ways--I was an audience of one in liking some of the alterations because I'm not overly fond of some things in the original--but TLM was one of the best remakes overall, up there with Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, and L&S. There's no denying the decision to take an iconic character with red hair and cast someone who looked nothing like her had a major impact on that film's performance, and SW was standing in it (as well as Mulan's) shadow, where audiences gave them no grace at all when there was even a hint everything was being changed and thrown out even if the film did end up having the Dwarfs, iconic outfits, and lifted big moments known about the original (SW's terror in the woods, the Queen descending the stairwell, etc.). They made their own bed.
I don't see racebending a character as "social progress," as PoB referred to. It was more of a gimmick they thought they could use to their favor, they could create a media storm where they could neutralize the fandom criticism that always follows the remakes whenever they cut songs / characters wholesale and add dumb story beats by labeling them as "racist" and get points from mainstream audiences at the same time. But at a certain point, even the general audience started to see what the fandom was seeing when Mulan drops and there's no music or Mushu / Mulan has magical powers (and after pricing it $30, that likely made people even more angry), then TLM and SW come out and cut songs / race and genderbent several characters (and press for the films highlighted how they had *considered* even worse things like Lady Gaga as Ursula which I guess would have been a "thinbend" lol, cutting Vanessa, cutting the Dwarfs, etc. etc.). That's what happened to TLM. Mulan would have been damaged by the pandemic anyway, but it being as bad as it was likely left a bad taste in the same audience of people who had driven the success of other '90s/'00s remakes (people who grew up with those who have their own children now) that TLM would need. Things like that add up with an audience over time. SW never had a chance for big success being an older property, but they destroyed the chance for even minimal success coming out the gate.
Rapunzel is another like Ariel and SW where a race bend of the character would just be laughable to most people. She has long, golden hair just like Ariel had red hair and SW has pale skin like snow. At least that last one they might could have racebent with an Asian actor, perhaps, and it would still have fit the description. Belle is probably the easiest of the white protagonists they could race bend with at least a degree less controversy since she has brown hair. Of course H.E.R. in that show just couldn't sing that well, which mattered more with it being live... (Shania as Mrs. Potts was worse though.) And racebending characters like Triton or Gaston just feels odd considering what those characters' stories are. It would be like racebending Frollo...a character largely driven by racism.
As for Johanssen, I do like her, she's a good actor. And some of my dislike of Gothel in the animated film is the same as with the Queen in SW--she's really not that pretty for a character focused on vanity. That's partly why I like Parilla, Theron, and Gadot more as other versions of the Queen over the animated film because they are all very beautiful. So I guess if they couldn't get Cher, the perfect cast based on the design the character had, at least that point would be something of an upgrade to the story, I guess. But she's really not that old... It would be odd to see her playing mother to a teenager (and personality-wise, who knows how old Gothel actually is). IDK, it wouldn't be terrible, I suppose. She or Sarandon would be fine, Cher would be magical.
(Sabrina Carpenter)
