LAURENCE FISHBURNE WILL BE PERRY WHITE, AND THE BUTT OF A THOUSAND RACE JOKES

Perfect casting, really.  Perfect.  

The man can play 'authority' in his sleep.  I just hope the script gives him something more to do.

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Originally Posted by CHUD Main Site Feed 

 It’s the 21st century, people. Any day that Fishburne isn’t considered right for the editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet is the day I don’t care about comic fandom any longer.

Amen Ms.Rappe. Larry Jnr is yet more inspired casting for this movie. God damn is it looking stacked.

His casting is a great solution to the problem SR suffered from. How to make White a tough-talking newspaper man without coming across like a weaker clone of J.K. Simmon's brilliant JJJ.

Langella's SR take turned White into a pretty warm grandfatherly type.  Which was fine, if not at all memorable. Fishburne, on the other hand, projects pure authoritative cool. His role can be written closer to the comic's version and - because the audience already loves Fishburne's distinctive persona - he won't feel like a been-there-done-that type of character.  This really is a win for all involved. 

Perry rhymes with Larry.

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Originally Posted by Episode29 

His casting is a great solution to one of the problems SR suffered from. How to make White a tough-talking newspaper man without coming across like a weaker clone of J.K. Simmon's brilliant JJJ.

Fixed that for you.

I doubt this is going to cause any "controversy" among nerds. I mean, for one he's a minor character. And two, it worked for Nick Fury. 

Wasn't his carachter in Mystic River named "Whity Powers"?

Anyway, just more excellent casting. Hopefully the movie lives up to the casts potential.

Laurence Fishburne, Russell Crowe, Amy Adams, Henry Cavill, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, etc.  WB and Snyder are really pulling out all stops for this sucker.  I just hope they have a great script to back it up and with the postponement, they ought to.

Has Jor-El's wife been officially cast yet?  I know a few names were mentioned, but I don't recall seeing anything about somebody actually signing the dotted line.  After that, who is left?  Jimmy Olsen?  A Lex Luthor cameo?

This is great fucking casting. Anyone having a problem with Fishburne's casting as White should get their heads examined. But I really don't think there will be too many of them. Weird comic book geeks only have problems with race when it concerns characters they identify with.

Haven't read it, but I'd like to think it speaks, in part, to the quality of the script that's getting all these great actors like Fishburne attached. 

But it's probably more likely Fishburne is just,"Give anything out of that stack that isn't the next episode of CSI.  I'll fucking do anything else. Anythihng else."

Hopefully he'll have more to do than he did in M:I-III, he seemed half asleep in that thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by S.D. Bob Plissken 

Laurence Fishburne, Russell Crowe, Amy Adams, Henry Cavill, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, etc.  WB and Snyder are really pulling out all stops for this sucker.  I just hope they have a great script to back it up and with the postponement, they ought to.

 

Has Jor-El's wife been officially cast yet?  I know a few names were mentioned, but I don't recall seeing anything about somebody actually signing the dotted line.  After that, who is left?  Jimmy Olsen?  A Lex Luthor cameo?

I believe Mrs. Jor-El is Julia Ormond, but I could be wrong, it did seem like a bunch of names floated in and out of there.  I rather hope it's NOT her...

I only have a problem with it in that I wanted Ian McShane cast and for him to play it as "Al Swearengen runs a newspaper". But then that's how I feel about 75% of all upcoming roles.

Yep, pretty perfect casting if you ask me.  As you mentiond in the article the cast for this is amazing, it's just a shame i have no enthusiasm for another Superman flick.

I'd assumed that Ormond was officially cast, but it seems as if the only thing that's happened is that she's been in talks for the role.   No actual confirmation that she is.

Smilla's Sense of Steel, remember?

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Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

I only have a problem with it in that I wanted Ian McShane cast and for him to play it as "Al Swearengen runs a newspaper". But then that's how I feel about 75% of all upcoming roles.

If I could populate every major movie release with either Fassbender or McShane - or heavens to mergatroid, BOTH - I'd never leave the house again.

I'd had my fingers crossed for Clancy Brown, but Fishburne is awesome. This thing has an unbelievable cast. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by S.D. Bob Plissken 

Laurence Fishburne, Russell Crowe, Amy Adams, Henry Cavill, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, etc.  WB and Snyder are really pulling out all stops for this sucker.  I just hope they have a great script to back it up and with the postponement, they ought to.

 

Has Jor-El's wife been officially cast yet?  I know a few names were mentioned, but I don't recall seeing anything about somebody actually signing the dotted line.  After that, who is left?  Jimmy Olsen?  A Lex Luthor cameo?

Russell Crowe's in it? I had not a clue.

But yeah, the cast is looking great. So did the cast for WATCHMEN. Snyder's 2 for 4 (or 5, counting that owl movie) in my book, so I'm wondering how this is going to turn out.

Just checked the IMDB - Crowe for Jor-El? Interesting.

Also - the IMDB, which isn't the most reliable source for movies in pre-production, I know, is listing June 2013 as the release time for the film. Has it been moved from the December 2012 berth?

For some reason Crowe as Jor-El doesn't work for me in the slightest.

My only "problem" with it, is that Fishburne would have been bad-ass as Lex Luthor.

Fishbourne was my choice for Doc Ock before Alfred Molina was cast.

Damn fine choice. They are really stacking the cast. I'm honestly middle of the road about the movie but i'll have to see it just for this cast they are putting together.

Does anybody else have a hard time imagining Fishburne exclaim "Great Ceasar's Ghost" and not break out laughing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

For some reason Crowe as Jor-El doesn't work for me in the slightest.

If you want a nice nod to Donners original, the casting of Jor-El needs to evoke old school Hollywood. 

Love him or loathe him, Crowe's the closest we have to that nowadays.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelM 

Just checked the IMDB - Crowe for Jor-El? Interesting.

 

Also - the IMDB, which isn't the most reliable source for movies in pre-production, I know, is listing June 2013 as the release time for the film. Has it been moved from the December 2012 berth?

Even more interesting when you consider his band's first single was "I Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando".

And yes, it was officially moved to June 2013.
 

This is funny stuff. Whats funny isn't that a Black man is playing Perry White its that there is some sort of universal wow factor to this. Perry White is a secondary bit player always has been. Doesn't that perpetuate another myth about Black actors in geek properties?

Love Fishburne and wish he had picked better roles after the Matrix sequels.

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Originally Posted by Johnny Daywalker 

 

Love Fishburne and wish he had picked better roles after the Matrix sequels.

I wish he had picked better roles during the Matrix sequels.

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Originally Posted by MikeI 

I wish he had picked better roles during the Matrix sequels.

you stole my joke...haha

This film has one hell of a cast!

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Originally Posted by DamnDirtyApe 

My only "problem" with it, is that Fishburne would have been bad-ass as Lex Luthor.

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Originally Posted by Walker 

Fishbourne was my choice for Doc Ock before Alfred Molina was cast.

 

Wow. I kinds like these suggestions.

Reading DamnDirtyApe's idea for Lex Luthor makes me think he'd also be a killer General Zod.

However, it's kinda sucky that the roles we're ethnically retconning for Fishbourne are all villians.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walker 

Reading DamnDirtyApe's idea for Lex Luthor makes me think he'd also be a killer General Zod.

 

However, it's kinda sucky that the roles we're ethnically retconning for Fishbourne are all villians.

 

Is there a way to win in this situation seeing how cripplingly tied up with the politics of race the Us is culturally speaking? If he's being fan cast as villains it's derogatory, if he's only playing a second tier character people don't care about, it's derogatory. We could make ole supes himself black bbut then  the outcry from other sectors of society would be outraged while others would simply claim its pandering.

Really, is there a way to not be seen as pandering or being racist on some level as far as somebody's concerned in the bloody US when it comes to casting non-caucasians in traditionally pretty lilly white original properties??

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

Is there a way to win in this situation seeing how cripplingly tied up with the politics of race the Us is culturally speaking? If he's being fan cast as villains it's derogatory, if he's only playing a second tier character people don't care about, it's derogatory. We could make ole supes himself black bbut then  the outcry from other sectors of society would be outraged while others would simply claim its pandering.

 

Really, is there a way to not be seen as pandering or being racist on some level as far as somebody's concerned in the bloody US when it comes to casting non-caucasians in traditionally pretty lilly white original properties??

I don't know. I guess this is just white guilt at it's most thick.

And the "sucky" I used was meant to be a kinda half joke because I had a conversation on Facebook about this very thing. I commented that same Doc Ock idea I said earlier on Nooj's activity of "liking" this particular CHUD item. With a tone of being tongue in cheek, he cried foul about Fishbourne being cast as a villian. I laughed, but mentally, I had a defense of "But he's playing a world renowned scientist!! It's not like he's going to use his tentacles to eat fried chicken and watermelon then washing all that down with malt liquor and grape drink* ". The fact that Fishbourne would be playing a highly applauded, yet troubled, scientist absolves any wrongdoing of the charactor's hypothetical ethnic retconning. 

Now, here's something weird: out of all these conversations about racial retconning that we talk about -either to applaud or decry- no one ever really talks about Billy Dee Williams playing Harvey Dent in Burton's Batman. At least, I don't think anyone does. I've never read any outrage, and I've also never really read anyone showering it with superlatives. It's just a fact that's collected within Batman.

*Please know that I do not endorse that in anyway. I was heightening a grotesque stereotype to prove a point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walker 

Now, here's something weird: out of all these conversations about racial retconning that we talk about -either to applaud or decry- no one ever really talks about Billy Dee Williams playing Harvey Dent in Burton's Batman. At least, I don't think anyone does. I've never read any outrage, and I've also never really read anyone showering it with superlatives. It's just a fact that's collected within Batman.

 

Maybe if he'd played Two-Face into the bargain there may have been outcry - but really my guess is it simply comes down to Batman '89 being made in 1989 - long before a little thing called the internet arrived to "democratize" information to such a degree that nerd outrage about film fancasting could sit equally alongside discussions on much less interesting and important things like world events or politics.

I'm not a Superman reader, but as he's portrayed in the comics, but I've always been led to believe that Luthor is much more multidimensional in the books than he has been in the movies. That he was pro-human, anti-alien defender. If so (and there's a chance I'm making that all up), then that is a role I'd love to see Fishburne play. Aside from playing to his strength and nobility, it sidesteps the "black people are always villains" thing. Not that I feel it needs to be sidestepped.

It's solid casting.

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Originally Posted by Doc Phibes 

It's solid casting.

...and really nothing else should fucking matter.

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Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

...and really nothing else should fucking matter.

Exactly.

Well, it should matter that Fishburne phones it in something like half the time nowadays.

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Originally Posted by Gabe T 

Well, it should matter that Fishburne phones it in something like half the time nowadays.

That's kinda irrelevant to the discussion tho, no ones faulting the casting decision on the basis of a possible bad performance.

...and frankly if 'phoning it in' gives another scenery chewing turn on a par with what we got from his breif appearance in Predators, then I'll take Larry phoning it in over many other bland performers doing their best.

See compared to most good Fishburne performances Predators comes off as part of the problem.

Thats why I can't get too excited. That was some bland Fishburne.

I'll take calling out Fishbourne for past iffy performances as opposed to unfairly calling him out because of his skin color(which, by the way, I have not yet read anyone doing).

Has any one checked Stormfront yet? 

(note: I am not about to check out Stormfront)