I’m a big fan of Donald and I’d love to see him get Spiderman (as well as some side campains) but america is still so bad at talking about race that there is an odd dialog going on.
The big question seems to be “why go black?” and “does it make a difference?”. These questions seem to just be a failure of imagination to me. It’s as if people are expecting the exact same movie with just a black lead. And to me that would be a tragedy.
Race matters and should have an effect on the story. Different cultures have different perspectives and viewing those through a prism of a well known tale is a great way to talk about those experiences. This is even more interesting as comics have oftain been a haven of white only characters and have made grave missteps trying to represent other cultures. Hollywood is obviously not the kindest to other cultures but still comes off as worldly compared to comic books.
I hope Donald gets the role and I hope it had a meaningful impact on the story. I hope it’s a success and has broader impact on comics and how we view races other then whites as lead roles.
