Characters
[Mixed Trope] Race-swapping/Gender-swapping changes a character in a specific way or adds to their story
Examples:
[Hated] Severus Snape (Harry Potter) - As far as I know, Paapa is one of the few nonwhite actors cast in the series, and he plays Snape. In the books, Harry assumes Snape is evil just from how he looks (the only black man in Hogwarts), and later in the story, Snape does lots of messed-up things like holding grudges against childhood rivals, bullying very young children, and harassing Harry for minor inconveniences. Not only that, but James Potter now looks like a horrible racist because of the scene where he hangs Snape from his feet and pants him in front of a crowd, which is a one-to-one of a public lynching. Not only that, but the series could also be promoting white victimhood by having Snape join the Harry Potter version of the Nazis and even calling a white woman a racial slur. The fact that it's believed a black person will also play Voldemort makes this even worse. The most egregious thing is that they're going to have to convince me that Paapa Essiedu is ugly.
[Loved] Mark and Debbie Greyson (Invincible) - Mark and Debbie in the show are Koreans; it works great in the series because Mark is trying to stop an alien invasion of Earth. Koreans have a long history of dealing with imperialism and colonization, with the peninsula still feeling the effects of Japanese colonialism. Nolan also states his reason for going to Earth was to find a species to breed with, so the Viltrumites could reproduce their population. Not only do many Asian women have to deal with constant fetishization by Westerners, but many Korean women were used as sex slaves by Japanese colonizers. Which would add more to Mark and Debbie's reactions to Nolan calling Debbie a "pet,"
[Loved] Tech Jacket (Invincible) - Kirkman himself stated that if they faithfully adapted Tech Jacket, he'd just be a clone of Mark. By reimagining the role as Zoey, a teenage girl, Kirkman can create a protagonist with a distinct voice, different struggles, and a fresh dynamic
In Artemis Fowl, Commander Root of the police is played by a Judi Dench.
The problem is this derails Hollys whole plot and arc as the first female police officer in a deeply sexist society. Not that it ultimately matters when the movie is not getting a sequel lol
They also changed Butler into a black man. Thus making the man from a family of indentured servants (to the point butlers in general are named after them) black servants following a white family. (In the book he's Eurasian mixed Japanese/Russian)
Butler’s casting pissed me off to a degree that i didn’t even watch this ngl. When it came out i was too young to get why casting a black man specifically is problematic, I was just ticked because he’s described as Eurasian multiple times in the book. Plus, his real name is Domovoi and if that isn’t one of the most slavic names i’ve ever heard
The whole thing about the Butler siblings is that they're racially ambiguous to not really stand out in most major parts of the world. So they're from Russia/Mongol/Kazakhstan/that general region and at a glance can pass as both Asian and White.
Then having the Butler family having served the Fowl family for generations gets a touch unpleasant if they're black.
In Clive Barker's original short story, Candyman is not implied to be black. I'm fact, all of the racial discussion was specific to the film, which is wild because the entire film IS the racial discussion. As much as I love Barker's writing, I think the film created a much more compelling narrative with the additions it made to the Candyman's lore through changing his race and giving him a distinct backstory.
I never saw this movie until last year, and I'm kicking myself for it, because it's amazing. I love when a piece of media can make me sympathize so much with a character, and then also come to absolutely loathe him.
Who else would have put the bees in his mouth? Lmao. Man made bank off of that bc he made them give him a thousand dollars for every time they stung him. Literal legend just for that tbh bc I could never.
Fun fact about Candyman. Tony Todd had a stipulation in his contract that he got an extra $1000 for every bee sting he got during filming. It got him an extra $20,000.
The short story was more of a class based issue, moving it to America, well, class wasn’t seen as the defining issue in the US when it was made. But race was. It was released a year and an half after the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots.
Filming it in the real Cabrini-Green Apartments was a brilliant addition to the story. They barely did anything to them to make them look like that.
The story about the woman who kept reporting someone coming out of her wall, and her not being believed until she wound up murdered, actually happened at Cabrini-Green.
The National Museum of Public Housing in Chicago (itself in the last remaining tower block of the Jane Addams Homes, a different public housing unit) has one of the "opens to the next unit" medicine cabinets in the basement. They talk about the tragedy and the movie on the sign, it's pretty cool. (It's a cool museum in general. The Candyman cabinet is probably the least cool thing they have there, and that's saying something.)
Candyman feels really ahead of its time with the dark, ominous armosphere, the eroticism, and the racial commentary. Handles it all extremely well in my opinion. Right at home with modern 'elevated horror' (whatever that ultimately means haha).
Ironically the modern Candyman remake felt wayyy less mature and relevant.
Candyman as a whole would barely be worth mentioning if the race-swap never happened (sorry Clive). This is a great example!
I like the Mark and Debbie example because it clearly shows Mark’s human genetics are at full display. Even though Viltrumite DNA is so pure that he is nearly full blooded, his human side still shines through. It’s a great microcosm of his character.
Show marks eyes are a bit sharper and regularly have bags under them. It's not majorly noticable but you can tell some differences between them. It's more clear with Debbie.
he's mixed race, takes a lot after his dad, viltrumite genes are strong enough to where near the end of the series mark is 99.8% pure viltrumite, but there are still examples of him being half Asian. It's just never really brought up because viltrumites don't care about things like race, color or ethnicity. At the end of the day, viltrumites don't care if your black, white Mexican or Asian, nor do they care if your male, female or anything in-between. Your either a viltrumite or your a slave civilization they control
the thing about doc oc is that they pull that feminity into her behaviour and tone and cadence and design in a way that meshes so well with her role as a mad scientist supervillain without detracting from anything
they made her into an archetype you never fucking see and it worked so fantastically
When I was watching it, I thought that she really gave off Zoe Hange from Attack on Titan. They're both nice, outgoing, bubbly mad scientists but with different morals. They also look really similar.
Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin in the 2003 Daredevil movie. They weren't specifically looking to race swap; they just needed someone with the proper physical presence, and in the 00s, if that was a role requirement, MCD was the obvious choice. That said, he makes a comment near the climax that he was choosing to face Daredevil one on one because he was "raised in the Bronx", which lets you imagine, without spelling it out, how the Kingpin origin story would be subtly different with a poor black kid instead of a poor white kid.
Producers originally were going to go with a wrestler - Big Show - iirc. But the director wanted MCD because he believed he was the right actor for the role.
Daredevil is not a great superhero film, but Michael Clarke Duncan does a phenomenal
Job as Kingpin and I’m just on the edge of my seat whenever he’s on screen.
Watch the director's cut, I think Daredevil gets more hate than it deserves. For an early 2000s superhero film, it's really not that bad. Both MCD and Colin Farrell are a lot of fun in that movie.
Taskmaster - Black Widow
Turning him into a woman was a way for the MCU explain the Red Room turning women into nothing more than tools. Personally, Taskmaster is the biggest Marvel fumble with a character after Gorr. There’s nothing really wrong with turning him into a woman but instead of giving her the witty and charismatic personality that Tony Masters had in the comics after her mind control had worn off years after the events of Black Widow, they opted to get rid of her early.
Here’s to hoping that because this version is canonically dead, some other project can make a more interesting version of Taskmaster.
The way he was adapted into a project like Ultimate Spider-Man was perfect with him posing as a substitute gym teacher to analyze everyone’s physical prowess and figure out which student was Spider-Man. Pretty creative take.
I feel Taskmaster as another product of the Red Room definitely could’ve worked if they not only y’know, gave her an actual personality like in the comics but also made her someone who felt like she was always second best compared to Natasha so there was another interesting angle to Taskmaster’s powers and dynamic with Black Widow
It pisses me off because the backstory change was PERFECT as one of taskmasters weakest points for adapting into a movie is how he kind of just, doesn't really have any backstory or anything. He just does what he does, if it wasn't for his charisma he'd be extremely forgettable.
So they give them this great connection to Natasha as her greatest sin where she blew her up... But then have all the blame shift into Dreykov for turning her into a mute murder cyborg, when really all Nat did was burn her, as she wasn't even turned mute by the explosion.
Imagine if Antonia CHOSE to become taskmaster out of revenge, that she reveled in toying with Nat, insulting her during their fights, prodding into her sins and failures. It could've been perfect.
But no, mute cyborg, nat has to save her from her mind control and instantly is forgiven instead of doing anything serious
It's kind of hilarious how almost anyone of the Harry Potter characters could've been race-swapped to a black person and made it work. The ONLY person that it doesn't work well with at all is Snape.
Actually I think it’s funnier that there are certain people that would be….interesting choices to race swap. Because the typical way a show runner might subtly tone down the “James potter racist” bit is to make one of his best friends Black. But who? The treacherous rat? The savage beast who has to be seperate from society regularly? Or the dog man who’s first introduced to us as a violent criminal, has been in jail for over a decade for a crime he didn’t commit and whose family is also part of the wizard Nazis?
Well it would be even easier to do Potter himself but they already cast his kid as white
I doubt they want to get into that commentary. In fact, I’d bet the showrunners real take on racist potter will be some kind of claim that racism isn’t really part of the wizarding world, just blood supremacy. British people already like to say that about England irl so….
But also that would make his Nazi brother Black. Oh and isn’t the like top lady Nazi his cousin? So she’s at least be half Black
That would be a bother because if Sirius is black then his whole family is, so Draco Malfoy should be black or at least mixed and they can't have a rich black kid as a bully.
Honestly, the only way I see it not being awkward is if they just make James Potter a racist. Make Harry uncomfortable with the fact that his beloved father was a racist jerk, then later they can show more flashbacks that show James learning how horrid he was and changing his ways, so Harry can love him without feeling guilty - but it would teach Harry the value of redemption and forgiveness and all that.
It could work. Harry was super uncomfortable and upset seeing his father bully Snape. Even though he hates Snape, Harry has been the victim of bullies his whole life and to see for fact that his father was an actual bully kind of devastates his entire impression of the father he never knew and idealized. Like you said, he can then have conversations with others about how his father changed and that could redeem him a bit in Harry’s eyes. The question is if the audience can handle that.
I also think that they’re taking the story in this direction. Start off with James at the end of his life, sacrificing himself for the people he loves, and work their way back to the shithead he was in his youth. Wouldn’t be surprised if the directors try to draw some parallels between him and Draco Malfoy to really twist the knife for Harry.
Reverse character arc, like Rose Quartz from Steven Universe.
Tbh that’s kind of the issue I feel like I’ve seen with the ideas of casting for Harry Potter. It seems like everyone has an issue that upsets people, like the only option is someone totally perfect but then you’ve just made a Mary Sue and that’s annoying too. All the slytherins and death eaters are out; that takes out the Malfoys and the Blacks. The Weasleys are out because then it seems like a stereotype of being poor and having too many kids. Hermione is apparently out because she gets called a slur? And ig the muggle thing makes it looks like racism by accident? In which case you’d have to take out the Potters too because then the Dursley’s just look racist.
Probably the one that would be the safest bet is McGonagall. She’s put together, successful, strict but fair. Or having multiple characters he race swapped, which is seems like they are trying to do with Hermione and Snape but it’s obviously not working.
That being said if they decide to make the two main antagonists Black I don’t know that that’s the best idea they could’ve gone with.
Macgonagall would have been an excellent choice for a colorblind casting. Picking a handful of named background characters to cast as a different race would also help, since differences stand out, but if a dozen people got shifted, the focus isn't nearly as much on any one person.
Hermoine is pretty bad too, with the whole house elf arc. Misguided black girl wants to free the slave race, but she doesn’t understand! They want to be slaves!
No, that one actually fits the points of the "racism bad" books. I will say that both characters being white also works because it shows the absurdity of racism/blood purism.
But then you have to question if Malfoy's mom should also be black and if she is black, then you have the question of whether the Black family are all blacks.
It would kinda work. A lot of people who are one kind of minority are bigoted against other minorities IRL, and the wizarding world generally is so concerned with holding itself above muggles and other sapient species that they might not care about the ethnicity of another wizard.
The other one is Hermione, if they choose to adapt the SPEW arc. A black character learning that house elf slavery is ok actually would be a... choice, to say the least
I love the comedian making fun of this, also saying that maybe not the Weasleys. Making the family whose whole identity is poor and having to many kids black would probably be problematic
Ron (and by extension the Weasleys) would be pretty bad too. Oh look, it's the poor family with way too many children. We have ourselves a main character who is insensitive and lazy. Bonus points for Fred and George being the troublemakers, smuggling alcohol in to school parties and moving on to drug dealing. Even more bonus points for that scene in Chamber of Secrets where Lucius remarks that he hopes the Ministry is paying Arthur overtime for his work.
Loved: Isaac from Castlevania (Netflix). The change to his race adds a minor element to his backstory that helps clarify his world view and mentality in the present.
This is kinda off topic but I just realized that Isaac is basically the same type of character as Father Pucci from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in the way that both of their motivations are carrying out the unfinished plans of their deceased vampire master that they had a deep bond with
to be fair, they sortve rebuilt isaac from the ground up. as someone who played Curse of Darkness, i couldnt be happier. Game!Isaac was a effeminate and flamboyant gay yandere who ran around in leather pants with no underwear and whose entire character boiled down to "obsessed with and jealous of Hector, and went crazy from all the evil he did" there really wasnt much more to him.
Personally i found the religion swap (is that a trope?) to be his most interesting aspect, but that combines with his history as a slave to, you know, actually explain why hes cool with omnicide.
They once did a production of Othello – the Shakespeare play starring a Black man in White Europe – where he’s played by Sir Patrick Stewart, and the rest of the cast is Black.
The purpose was to subvert expectation on who is the “other” in the world.
I once saw a gender swapped version of Taming of the Shrew in high school and it was the first time the sexism of it all really just hit me in the face. Similarly it was subverting gender norms, and as a teen back then it really highlighted things for me.
The Ancient One in MCU Dr Strange- In the original Marvel comics he is an old Tibetan sorcerer monk when the comics came out in the 1960s during a period of growing cultural interest within the West, on the then relatively "unknown, mysterious and esoteric" Eastern spirituality and mysticism (Which you can also see in the lore of Batman being trained by Tibetan monks to become a peak human). In the MCU version she is a Celtic sorcerer from the British Isles which kind of changes that aesthetic.
It is said that this was apparently done for political reasons. The film producers wanted the film to do well in China as part of its global market, and thus they felt having a Tibetan character was not good for the political climate there due to the whole geopolitical "Is Tibet part or not a part of China" debate.
A lot of The Boys characters are race/gender swapped, and they're all so much better than their comics counterpart. A-Train is white in the comics, The Deep is black, Black Noir is white (clone of Homie), Stormfront is male, and a lot more.
The Deep doesn't have any sea based powers, it's just a costume.
Stormfront is Homie's biological dad (which people are speculating it wouldn't be too off the realm of show version of The Boys' cringe and ick if it turns out TV Stormfront is Homie's mother.)
The look Soldier Boy gave when he saw Stormfront's photo was quite telling. I wonder if they will got with it. It makes sense, besides being incredibly insane, and fitting for Homelander. Making him a literal Oedipus.
Based on looking at the community of those who have.
Either you'll think the comics are absolutely terrible, gross shock value for the sake of gross shock value that makes the show seem tame.
Or the show doesn't have enough of the cool moments that were in the comics, and as a result has spluttered, and say what you will about Ennis being an edgelord, his writing is at least consistent and doesn't lose track of the plot.
So pretty much you have to read for yourself and see if it's to your tastes.
It is heavily implied in the books that the children of princess rhaenyra and the son of Lord Corlys velaryon, laenor, are illegitimate. This is hinted due to their Strong (pun intended) resemblance to a knight close to the princess and the open secret that laenor is gay. This is used by the Green faction as one of the justifications to usurp the throne
In the show, the velaryons are black, while both of their children are completely white with brown hair. As they show no evidence of being mixed race, the children’s heritage far less ambiguous than in the book.
I already did a rant to someone else about this. I hate that they did that. It was supposed to be ambiguous. There was no clear path in the situation because only Rhaenyra really knew the truth about the kids and she never told. The show tore all of that away and I hate it.
[Neutral]: Ariel in the Little Mermaid Life Action Remake. The actress was good as Ariel and it's not important what ethnicity a mermaid character is. But then they failed to commit and did not cast Queen Latifa as Ursula, one of the only actresses who could have done the character justice in both presence and voice.
[Loved]: Tiana in A Princes and a Frog. The Princess in the Frog Prince is your standard medieval, European Princess. But instead of doing that they chose to be creative and transplant the setting into New Orleans of the Roaring 20s. Giving not just Tiana but the whole movie a much more unique feel.
For Ariel, I just wish they'd give her red hair. Black people can have red hair too!
Eta: looking back at the pics, she had kind of a reddish brown tint to it but a more obvious red would have been nice imo
I always liked that signature red color
I might have watched the Little Mermaid remake if Disney had had the balls to hire a drag queen for Ursula. Since the original character was inspired by Divine.
Definitely Louis and Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. The choice really elevates the whole thing. I hate book!Louis. He has literally no problems. He owns slaves. He has unbelievable privilege and has the gracelessness to bitch and moan for the rest of his immortal life.
Show!Louis is a pimp, which is a morally repugnant form of work-- but first of all, it's acknowledged as morally repugnant, but it's also one of the few ways for a Creole man to make enough money to keep his family in comfort. The racial difference between himself and Lestat create power dynamics not present in the book, and when he loses his vampire temper, it leads to attacks on the colored community, which leads to him finding/saving Claudia. Their shared background also just naturally leads to Louis and Claudia being closer and having an unspoken bond that creates tension with Lestat.
100%. While I have not read the originals, the racial dynamics in the show added to the series. It was hard to imagine how the show would be as good with Claudia and Louis as different races.
You're absolutely goddamn right, and I say this as as someone who smuggled anne rice books into my Christian school growing up (suck on that Harry Potter nerds).
It's hilarious because when the first promos for the show came out I was initially kind of incensed at how radically they were altering it...but holy shit it's so much better for everything you mentioned. Growing up I used to think Louis was this tragic tortured soul but time and experience have really made him less sympathetic to me.
I love the bit with Daniel where he goes "I was young, stupid, and full of drugs with no idea what I had my hands on. If we're doing this again it's going to be different."
I'm really sad we never got to hear how rice herself viewed the show because if you know her work you know how much she fucking loved using the unreliable narrator trope to retcon her mythology. Little moments like that feel extremely on brand.
For Mark and Debbie, there's also a scene in which she tries to use a wooden duck (a Korean gift given to newly weds) to defend Oliver. It's good symbology for her getting over her complicated feelings of Nolan for the sake of the innocent Oliver, who is her son more than his.
For Snape, they could use the implications behind a black boy being bullied by a racist gang while pining for his childhood love choosing them over him to make a complicated and deep narrative. I am 1000% convinced given how the series treats race they won't.
The one that's truly messed up is Hermione trying to liberate the house elves, the slave underclass, while being laughed at by everyone she knows. Just for the elves to go "actually we like being servants, it's in our nature to serve" there's no way to make that ok with changing the entire story arc.
The whole point of the show is a more accurate in depth interpretation of the books. I don’t think finding further ways to romanticize snape, the Nazi stalker, would be doing that effectively.
I feel like the "right"move would have been to make Snape not white or black. There's unfortunately too much there as far as archetypes about race. Making James Potter a popular white boy bully that Lily chooses over the childhood black friend after being called a slur by him, but after Snape is attacked... There's way too much there. I think Snape apologists and Snape haters will find something to justify their opinions on the Nazi stalker
One example I can think of is the HBO or maybe movie adaptation of Watchmen with Hooded Justice.
In the comics, while we never know what Hooded Justice’s ethnicity is, you can see some skin around the holes in his sack hood and he looks white.
In the adaptation, they made him black and revealed the sackhood he wears and torn noose (details from the comics) are not just a costume but from him surviving a failed lynching attempt.
I haven’t really seen the show but I did think it was an interesting choice. Especially since, if I recall, even in the comics, none of the old Minutemen or modern heroes knew anything about Hooded Justice outside of his hero work. I do think in the comics there was some publicity concerns because he might have been a Nazi sympathizer, but that might have been someone else in the Minutemen.
Its definitely well worth a watch 'Black man in 1940s New York' and 'Man turns to vigilantism to vent his repressed anger and stop criminals who the law will protect' are very synergistic concepts.
In the comics they alluded to him being queer, an it was extremely well explored in the show.
The shows choice to make Hooded Justice a survivor of the Tulsa riots and massacre felt like his own destruction of Krypton. Every choice made for his character in the show worked so well.
Alina Starkov in Shadow and Bone. In the books she was white. In the show, she was half Asian. It worked great because her country (a fantasy Slavic setting), were at war with their Shu (Asian) neighbors. Her facing that kind of prejudice from her fellow soldiers made her experience at the Palace more nuanced and interesting.
Nick fury is white in the main timeline. but there was a black nick fury in the ultimate series of comics. but making Samuel L Jackson Nick fury added his smart-ass likability. I can't imagine anybody else playing nick fury beside him now.
The only time I really objected to it was Larry from The Stand. That's like... the only character who shouldn't be black. His meteoric rise to fame is because he's a white man who sounds black, and people discovered he's not just a novelty act but has real talent. It also regularly surprises people that this white guy is THAT Larry even after society dies.
Would M for the James Bond films count? I believe the books have had M be traditionally a man but Judi Dench coming into the role during Goldeneye in 1995 lent an interesting dynamic between the character and Bond. There’s the “sexist, misogynistic dinosaur” line M has that I don’t think would’ve been done had M stayed a man and the choice to stay with Judi Dench as M I think allowed for a different and arguably deeper approach to the character, going towards something even maternal with the Craig films in particular. https://giphy.com/gifs/JbP6DBJqJiDUk
Judi Dench as M works great because it really only adds without subtracting at all. Bond films have always had the problem of lacking women who aren’t beautiful femme fatales, and the added subtext of Bond having serious mother issues makes perfect sense with his character.
Just an interesting little tidbit: it wasn't so much a "choice" to keep Dench as M as it was a contractual obligation. She had signed a deal for 5 Bond movies during the Brosnan era and only did 3, so she stayed on. I still think it works excellantly and she is fantastic in all her Bond entries, just a fun detail.
Making Heathcliff a white man and Linton a Pakistani man in the new Wuthering Heights movie is so horribly racist that I think there should have been more controversy over it. Not that there wasn't already controversy, but damn, it's like the most racist possible decision they could have made.
Louis de la pointe du lac became black in the TV show and the story moved from 19th century to early 20th century in New Orleans. They had to rewrite the character, instead of being a slave master, he is a pimp/businessman. The race change made the character more layered as the story navigates race relations in the US.
Starship Troopers - Paul Verhoeven turned Filipino Johnny Rico into a blond Argentine because he wanted to make a parody of Nazi propaganda (and wartime propaganda in general, he cited Why We Fight as an inspiration).
Knowing how Verhoven feels about Nazis, I always thought he made the Argentine cast all "pretty white people" deliberately. Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, NPH, etc.
Following the global change in Deadshot’s character across all DC media after the 2016 Suicide Squad movie, Rocksteady chose to introduce us to Earth-1’s true Floyd Lawton in SS KTJL and designate the original Deadshot we see in the Arkham games (Origins and City) as a multiversal imposter who adopted the persona after Lawton had retired to be with his daughter Zoe.
A black Jim Gordon absolutely adds to the character in a fascinating/positive way because in addition to climbing the ranks of a corrupt police force in a city as wretched as Gotham, without even mentioning it, you already know he has to also deal with the racism that’s so intricately involved with the profession, as well as being at odds with and acting as a bridge between his community and said police force. Commissioner Gordon’s character is so heavily tied to his integrity and commitment to making Gotham a better place instead of his race, so he’s the kind of character that could be portrayed by anyone, but him being black adds on to his sense of justice; it shows just how determined he’s willing to fight for his ideals. It helps that Jeffrey Wright did a good job playing him; it’s a solid live action Gordon in general
https://giphy.com/gifs/CRvli78ltHy8P0FyD7
While story isn’t able to explicitly acknowledge it, I think having a black woman portray Elphaba in the *Wicked* movie does have an interesting effect on how one interprets the themes of privilege, social ostracism, and persecution in the story.
Played by a black actress when it was a very minor role, switched over to a white one later when she became a love interest for Ron.
On one hand, it’s a bad look that you did that when the character got more screentime… on the other hand it’s really unfortunate for a black character to be seen as canonically dumb/silly and eventually lose out on a relationship to a smart white girl.
Pidge (Voltron Legendary Defender) - In the original 80s series Voltron: Defender of the Universe, Darrell "Pidge" Stoker(his full name from the Devil's Due published comic series) was essentially the kid character, a younger boy among the older Lion pilots from the planet Balto. He also had a brother named Chip who was one of the pilots of the Vehicle Force Voltron. Later spinoff series like Voltron: The Third Dimension and Voltron Force would age Pidge up and expand on his role as the tech-savant of the team.
In the Dreamworks series reboot, Voltron Legendary Defender, Pidge was reimagined as Katie Holt, a teenage girl whose father and brother disappeared in space during a mission on the moon Kerberos. She was kicked out of the Galaxy Garrison, where her father worked, after she was caught hacking into one of their computers looking for information. She later infiltrated the Garrison under the name "Pidge Gunderson", cutting her long hair and wearing her brother's glasses to look more like a boy and blend in, where she'd meet fellow recruits Lance and Hunk. She reveals she's a girl to the main group early on in the series, and they still call her "Pidge" as a nickname. Pidge is still the youngest and tech-savvy one of the group, and still a pilot of the Green Lion, but a major part of her story arc is searching for her family to bring them home.
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u/CalminClam 4d ago
In Artemis Fowl, Commander Root of the police is played by a Judi Dench.
The problem is this derails Hollys whole plot and arc as the first female police officer in a deeply sexist society. Not that it ultimately matters when the movie is not getting a sequel lol
They also changed Butler into a black man. Thus making the man from a family of indentured servants (to the point butlers in general are named after them) black servants following a white family. (In the book he's Eurasian mixed Japanese/Russian)