While Nick Fury is a rare success story, though as
Adamant said, one that was in the making years before Sam L. Jackson was cast in the MCU movies, it seems that the majority of publicity stunt racelifts in pop culture at the moment are getting criticised by the very people they're trying to represent. It's a classic case of trying to appear progressive without actually
listening. Like with the Ta-Nehisi Coates
Superman script, roughly 90% of complaints against it came from black people... including the bloody prospective lead himself, Michael B. Jordan! Jordan's deep enough into the nerd lore that he managed to get a Val-Zod miniseries greenlit instead. Studios need to understand that the real demand is for films and shows about canonically black characters. The massive popularity of Miles Morales should be undeniable proof of that.
A film addressing the occasionally spotty past of Superman lore (as late as 1971, they were printing about Vathlo Island on Krypton, home of the "highly advanced black race"
) could be super intriguing, or truly going the distance with portraying a version of Clark Kent who struggles against the additional prejudice of being a black guy in America. At the very least, I think Coates could've done that well. It's more a case that everyone is burned out by other performative racelifts that have zero bearing on the characters' portrayals which immediately rubbed people the wrong way, so a black Kal-El movie was screwed right out of the gate.
I think a major issue is the idea that colourblind casting, a theatrical tradition, can be translated exactly over to cinema when they are two very different mediums with different expectations. On stage, it's awesome that anyone can play anyone, you can have an 80-year-old white Hamlet or an 18-year-old black Macbeth, but theatre by nature relies on imagination and immersion in the story which allows for massive suspension of disbelief. With film, there's always an expectation of verisimilitude, i.e. a sense of realism and internal consistency, even with fantasy stories. After all, a stage performance is a fleeting experience, a film performance lasts forever. If all the Hobbits were played by the same actors from the LOTR movies except Merry who's now played by Shaquille O'Neal or some shit, that's gonna take you right the fuck out of the story. This extends to period dramas based on actual history, such as the recent
Anne Boleyn TV drama starring Jodie Turner-Smith as Boleyn, which was a blatant shit-stirring publicity stunt for what ended up being a mediocre show. If the artists behind it
really want to racelift a character or even a real historical figure, I support their right to that freedom of expression 100%, but the execution can still be criticised, especially when it's not done with any legitimate artistic purpose.
The Personal History of David Copperfield is a great film that actually handles colourblind casting really well by emphasising the theatrical nature of the story, but even in that, there are some distracting examples: James Steerforth played by curly-haired white guy Aneurin Barnard, then his mother Mrs. Steerforth played by
very black Nikki Amuka-Bird, who's also supposed to be a Victorian noblewoman. She turns a great performance honestly, but the idea that she's meant to be related to James is... unconvincing, to say the least.
IDK how I can tie Dragon Ball back into this rant but uhhh yeah, another major minority character (by Japanese standards) besides Uub would be pretty lit I guess.