GILF McGonagall!? Count me in!!

 

How dare you imply that Maggie Smith wasn't a GILF and a half.

 

Black Dumbledore would be pretty cool. He's a strong character, important to the plot in a way that's hard to write out, and appears in each book/season.
But does it tread too close to the magical negro trope?

A lot of characters aren't hugely plot relevant, so it's almost just

Snape opens up the, as mentioned, "Harry's parents are racist" can of worms.

Hermione has the SPEW thing, and nobody taking her seriously on that, which might not be a great look.

James... James has potential. Keep Lily white, and you have the Dursleys having another reason to hate Harry, and for the plot to vilify them, not that you need it. People would moan, but given that the Magical World is supposed to be kept separate from the Muggle, there's no reason that the Potters had to have been white.

Making all of Sirius' family black probably wouldn't be worth the backlash, regardless of whether it was funny.

 

instead of liking chamber music he’s a fan of gangster rap.

 

Rumor has Mark Strong as a potential Albus Dumbledore. Which is an opposite of what I would cast him since he could be a really good Voldemort instead.

 

Solid choice. Fits so much better with her book version description than ol Dame Maggie.

I can sorta see the vision. Take his look from The Eagle, make his his wig and beard silver-grey, lengthen it, slap a pair of half moons on him. Yeah. It could work.



Haven't really ever seen him play a jovial / kind lighthearted character before though.

 

Is black!Snape such a big deal? In the end this is about fiction and acting. If you care that much about an actor's physiognomy compared to that of the character they are playing, as you picture it, then you end up not being able to enjoy Macbeth played by a non-Scottish actor. It feels a bit too constricted, doesn't it? At some point you have to engage with the simulation game and apply a modicum of SoD.

As long as the actor does a good job conveying Snape's pettiness, frustrations, grudges and unrecognized talent it should be ok, I think.

Sure, if the series overtly depicts prejudice against Snape's race, instead of his magical blood status or unfriendly disposition, then it may get in the way.

 

Well, yeah, it does. There's plenty of movies based on Japanese anime featuring caucasian actors, for instance. Shakespeare's Othello quickly comes to mind as well, I'm sure there's more examples.

If you mean exclusively black characters played by white performers, probably not many, but I'd say this could be attributed mostly to a lack of opportunity. After all, most African countries don't have the socioeconomic infrastructure or international relevance to create worldwide impacting media, and African-American culture is still dominated by the trauma of slavery and racism.

 

People have mental images of characters in their heads. They naturally want to see that image respected, especially when it was 100% formed by in-depth book descriptions — or an existing movie series. Drastically changing a character's appearance is going to be as jarring as changing parts of their personality. Humans are visual creatures and we associate visual aspects of people with their personalities.

I wouldn't say it's a "big" deal, but it definitely makes me think we're going to be fed a bunch of corporate slop. If you can't follow something as clear cut as Snape's canon appearance, why would I expect you to follow other aspects of canon? We saw this with Rings of Power, we saw it with Netflix's Witcher. Plenty of other examples too.

I would feel the same if they gave McGonagall a bunch of tattoos, or made the Weasleys not-gingers, or if Hermione had a buzzcut.

 

I just want someone to stop fucking around with an adaption and just make it like it is on the page.

Is that so much to ask?

 

Apparently: yes.

 

Yet here we are in a HP fanfiction forum, where canon is subjected to many permutations and that's considered part of the fun.

I dunno, maybe I'm too used to the opera and theater worlds, where scenographers take huge liberties with stage environments, costumes and all kind of race/gender/species bending, while respecting the text, music and themes of the original work. Those are understandably controversial choices, but so ingrained in the culture by now that no one would bat an eye at something so comparatively tame as a character being portrayed by someone from a different racial group.

 

But this isn't fanfiction. It's an adaptation of canon meant for the masses, and the masses don't read fanfic.

And anyway, my argument has nothing to do with where I post it. Would it be any more or less valid in your eyes if posted elsewhere on the Internet?

Again, I don't really think it's a big deal on its own. I do think it's generally a warning sign that the creators don't care that much about canon accuracy, but race bending aside, I don't trust corporations to do anything proper anymore anyway. Netflix has outright admitted they make shows with distracted idiots in mind. I don't think this reboot will be good, and the racebending is only a very small part of that. Genuinely hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

 

I mean, there's no difference really. Copyright is for legal shit, it doesn't matter outside that framework.

Virgil didn't hire a bunch of ancient roman copyright lawyers, does that mean the Aeneid is *just* fanfiction? Do all stories from oral tradition not count as *true* fiction?

It's all fanfiction all the way down, friends. Bad movies are just bad fanfiction, good movies are just good fanfiction.

Corpo goon #97's take on what "canon" is, isn't better than anyone else's just because they inherited a bunch of money to buy up some copyrights. It just means legally they're the only person/corp that can sell their fanfics until it expires.