I passed over a tweet this morning from Newsarama noting that Community star Don Glover was campaigning to play Spider-Man in the upcoming movie reboot.
Casting choices are always contentious decisions. You may not like Christian Bale’s bat-growl. You may think Ryan Reynolds is too young to play Green Lantern Hal “Highball’ Jordan. You may have thought Brandon Routh channeled the quiet ease of Christoper Reeve just fine. Patrick Stewart was a spot-on Charles Xavier. You may have even thought that Shaq was the perfect Steel.
No matter what you think about casting choices, there is a certain amount of thought that goes into why an actor is chosen to play a particular hero, villain, or supporting character. Sometimes, that choice is based purely on the star power attached to the lead. There’s one case where this has really gotten the in way.
Hallie Berry played a convincing (thought somewhat too Westernized) Storm in the X-Men franchise. Bad wigs aside, fans embraced her in the role. What Berry did not fit into was Catwoman’s leather. It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t based on comics, and it was poorly written. Simply stated: it was a flop. Surely the star power of Ms. Berry should have made it work on some level. Why not? She was Selina Kyle, but really she wasn’t the Selina Kyle. Comics fans like their stories based on the greater mythology that has been at work for–in many cases–over seventy years.
I once read an interview with one of the DC Comics executives where they discussed interpretations, legacy characters, and the immutable elements of their mythologies. He argued there are three elements in defining the way a character is represented: 1) the absolutes; 2) the negotiables; and 3) the things up for grabs. He used Superman as a prime example.
