Warner Bros/Joss Whedon/Ray Fisher Justice League

[Frontier]

Rege responded first Geoff is gonna need a good answer

Rege commented but it wasn't directly regarding Geoff Johns.

I know the answer is but Marvel but the average consumer of television who would sit down and watch Krypton would never know who that character was. Hell Supermans family past his birth parents are so rarely touched upon the average comic book fan probably wouldn’t be able to tell you his grandfathers name.

But if you're going to refer to that character as Superman's grandfather than you'd probably expect them to evoke a similar image to the character.

(Not that I'm justifying not going with a POC actor, but that's probably how it looked from a casting perspective).

[Jabare]

Walter never did anything wrong to warrrant AT&T firing him, hence why they literall extended his job after the investigation ended. I think Geoff is pobably done working on WB projects from this point on though. He may do small comics like the upcoming star girl one shot, but I think he'll just stick to indie comics in the future.

It's not like I know these people or was present during any of the allegations, but that is not a universal perception right now. Accountability starts from the top down so will see.

Honestly, you need a smoking gun (multiple) to get someone like Hamada out. Look at what it took to remove Les Moonves from CBS after everything he did and he still got his golden parachute. Took even longer to get Peter Dunn and his million-dollar golf club membership (on the company dime!) removed. Not to get sidetracked I could talk about years of immoral actions from a handful of CBS executives. Anyway, it's just an example. Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes among others. It took numerous severe allegations to remove them. To the public, Hamada doesn't fall into those categories and if he's truly been squeaky clean he has nothing to worry about but I'd say no one on the wrong side of the allegations looks good right now, especially to the general public that's been casually following this story. Whedon's taking the brunt of this but he's not the only one getting muddy.


As far as I know, Johns is still very much involved in DC TV and film. Unless somethings has been announced it appears DC is backing him right now, but that could change. People are never as secure as they think they are especially in media these days.

[dornwolf]

Rege commented but it wasn't directly regarding Geoff Johns.

But if you're going to refer to that character as Superman's grandfather than you'd probably expect them to evoke a similar image to the character.

(Not that I'm justifying not going with a POC actor, but that's probably how it looked from a casting perspective).

If the goal was to explicitly tie into Man of Steel, which I believe was the initial plan, then yes someone who invokes Henry Cavil and Russel Crowe would be the aim. Had they said great grandfather that’d be far enough back it wouldn’t matter.

[Jabare]

wasn't Zod black on the show? It wasn't tied into Man of Steel

[Thezmage]

As far as I know, Johns is still very much involved in DC TV and film. Unless somethings has been announced it appears DC is backing him right now, but that could change. People are never as secure as they think they are especially in media these days.

They’ve verbally gone to bat for Hamada in a way that they didn’t for John’s. Take what you will from that but it’s not telling me that he’s being backed up in quite the way Hamada is.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

wasn't Zod black on the show? It wasn't tied into Man of Steel

It was initially. Goyer sold it as a prequel to Man of Steel. Seg-El was originally meant to be the father of Russell Crowe and grandfather of Henry Cavill, which no doubt informed the final casting even though the decision was eventually made to make Krypton it's own distinct thing. I have no idea how far down the line it was when Krypton stopped being a Man of Steel spin-off, but my guess is that the producers still wanted the casual audience to think that it was indeed one if it got them to watch their TV show.

It didn't work, of course, because the show wasn't particularly compelling to audiences. The main actor wouldn't have really moved that needle. It might have helped, but the show around him still wasn't interesting enough to score a hit.

[BatmanJones]

But if you're going to refer to that character as Superman's grandfather than you'd probably expect them to evoke a similar image to the character.

This isn't in reply to you, Frontier--I've just seen this sentiment a lot of times here and I felt like I wanted to respond.

Is it really that odd that Kal-El would be 1/4 Black? Anyone could be 25% Black and be completely white presenting. I actually think it's odd that it was ever an issue. If I were auditioning a Black actor for a role, well, first of all I would never do that if I wasn't considering them. But if I was considering them and they were the best actor for the role, it would hardly occur to me that it would cause continuity problems. And if I was considering them and then wanted to cast them and then a comic book expert came around and said not to do that because Superman is white... I mean, does a casting director need a comic book expert to inform him that Superman is white?

I'm reminded of a line from a play. Three Black playwrights are on a panel and the nervous, white moderator says to one, "O'Hara? That's an interesting name for a Black playwright. How did you come to have that name?" The playwright answers, "Slavery." I mention that to say that there have always been more mixed race people than we know and there are, of course, more all the time.

But so what about that. That's our history. Earth history. Superman is an alien. To say his lineage has to be white is like saying it's important that the grandfather of Santa Claus be white. Or that Jesus Christ be white, which he wasn't but I'll leave that there. And again, so what about that. Christ was from Earth. The show is called Krypton and it already beggars belief that an alien would look exactly like a white, Earth man and that all of his ancestors should also look exactly like white, Earth men. But again, white men can have Black grandfathers and it's not even an unusual thing for them to still look 100% white.

The Zod double standard bugs me on a couple levels. One, it's a double standard: if Kal can't be 1/4 Black because of how he looks in the comics, etc, how is it that Zod can? Which brings me to my second problem, which is that it's okay for a villain to be 1/4 Black but not a hero. That's obviously problematic in obviously problematic ways.

Maybe some or all of these points have been made already. They've just been rolling around in my head for this whole thread the last few days and I thought I'd finally post about it. Also, I'm a little buzzed which is probably a little obvious.

[BatmanJones]

It was initially. Goyer sold it as a prequel to Man of Steel. Seg-El was originally meant to be the father of Russell Crowe and grandfather of Henry Cavill, which no doubt informed the final casting even though the decision was eventually made to make Krypton it's own distinct thing. I have no idea how far down the line it was when Krypton stopped being a Man of Steel spin-off, but my guess is that the producers still wanted the casual audience to think that it was indeed one if it got them to watch their TV show.

It didn't work, of course, because the show wasn't particularly compelling to audiences. The main actor wouldn't have really moved that needle. It might have helped, but the show around him still wasn't interesting enough to score a hit.

I hadn't realized it was meant to tie in to MoS. That doesn't change my mind about anything but it does make me think, "What if Jor-El was adopted much like his son came to be?" That would be more interesting to me than anything I heard about that show.

[HsssH]

I'm just going to quote from Wikipedia about Man of Steel movie:

Man of Steel depicts Kal-El as Krypton's first naturally conceived child; most Kryptonians were artificially engineered newborns meant to fill predetermined roles in Krypton's society.

There was no "continuity" reason to make Superman's grandfather look like him since they were not directly related.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

There was no "continuity" reason to make Superman's grandfather look like him since they were not directly related.

Which is likely why they decided to not make Krypton a prequel. What Man of Steel had set up pinned-in what the show could be to far too specific a place. And there's no way that a Sci-Fi show would ever have the budget to replicate the world that Snyder had established.

That said, the casual audience would no doubt go into with the expectation that Superman's grandad would look like Henry Cavill (or Brandon Routh or Christopher Reeve for that matter).

This was before the days of Spider-Verse, when studios were still afraid of confusing audiences with multiple versions of the same character. Johns, and whomever else was involved in the decision, no doubt wanted to play it safe--which was the entire problem with their approach to Justice League. It was the safest, blandest version of that movie. Casting a dark haired white dude to play the grandfather of a dark haired white dude was simply another safe, bland choice. To apply racial animus to that decision is a bit of a reach to me.

[dornwolf]

Which is likely why they decided to not make Krypton a prequel. What Man of Steel had set up pinned-in what the show could be to far too specific a place. And there's no way that a Sci-Fi show would ever have the budget to replicate the world that Snyder had established.

That said, the casual audience would no doubt go into with the expectation that Superman's grandad would look like Henry Cavill (or Brandon Routh or Christopher Reeve for that matter).

This was before the days of Spider-Verse, when studios were still afraid of confusing audiences with multiple versions of the same character. Johns, and whomever else was involved in the decision, no doubt wanted to play it safe--which was the entire problem with their approach to Justice League. It was the safest, blandest version of that movie. Casting a dark haired white dude to play the grandfather of a dark haired white dude was simply another safe, bland choice. To apply racial animus to that decision is a bit of a reach to me.

This is the company that supposedly had the Batman rule in effect during Nolan’s time with Batman.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

This is the company that supposedly had the Batman rule in effect during Nolan’s time with Batman.

I think Johns loosened that up substantially during his tenure, but there were still silos up in regard to what could and couldn't be done. I'm sure the old tired ideas of "audience confusion" informed the choice to go with a white dark haired grandpa for Superman more than racism. If Johns didn't have such a strong record in regards to introducing so much diversity into the DCU, I might be more skeptical, but nothing I've heard so far makes me think that Johns is some racist that needed Superman's grandpa to be a white guy because he has issues with black people, which seems to be what they're trying to paint him as.

Being racially insensitive is one thing, but denying people roles because he's racist is simply not supported by the evidence at hand.

By the way, Warner Bros. doesn't need to recast Cyborg. They already did for the Doom Patrol show, to which Johns reportedly called up Fisher to inform him. At first I thought Fisher was exaggerating, but, given what we know now, I can absolutely see how that could easily be viewed as a passive-aggressive move on Johns's part. I don't know if it was, but given the issues that Johns & Fisher had during production, I can't imagine why Johns would want to call up Fisher to tell him that yet another guy is playing Cyborg in live-action.

I suppose it's possible that Johns wanted to make sure that Fisher wasn't going to take it personally, but that feels...unlikely to me.

[dornwolf]

I think Johns loosened that up substantially during his tenure, but there were still silos up in regard to what could and couldn't be done. I'm sure the old tired ideas of "audience confusion" informed the choice to go with a white dark haired grandpa for Superman more than racism. If Johns didn't have such a strong record in regards to introducing so much diversity into the DCU, I might be more skeptical, but nothing I've heard so far makes me think that Johns is some racist that needed Superman's grandpa to be a white guy because he has issues with black people, which seems to be what they're trying to paint him as.

Being racially insensitive is one thing, but denying people roles because he's racist is simply not supported by the evidence at hand.

By the way, Warner Bros. doesn't need to recast Cyborg. They already did for the Doom Patrol show, to which Johns reportedly called up Fisher to inform him. At first I thought Fisher was exaggerating, but, given what we know now, I can absolutely see how that could easily be viewed as a passive-aggressive move on Johns's part. I don't know if it was, but given the issues that Johns & Fisher had during production, I can't imagine why Johns would want to call up Fisher to tell him that yet another guy is playing Cyborg in live-action.

I suppose it's possible that Johns wanted to make sure that Fisher wasn't going to take it personally, but that feels...unlikely to me.

The Batman rule was basically can’t have multiple live action Batman’s that could confuse the general audience. I can totally picture a similar argument for something like Krypton ignorance yes racist no.

The Cyborg recasting thing. Odds are if there was a phone call It was maybe Geoff calling to reassure Ray that any movie project going forward he was still cyborg on the big screen. Considering from my point of view ray seems to constantly miss understand things that it might’ve been a misunderstanding.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The Cyborg recasting thing. Odds are if there was a phone call It was maybe Geoff calling to reassure Ray that any movie project going forward he was still cyborg on the big screen. Considering from my point of view ray seems to constantly miss understand things that it might’ve been a misunderstanding.

That's entirely possible, too. It's very likely that Johns was clueless to have much animosity Fisher had for him at that point. Hollywood execs are notorious for being surrounded by people blowing smoke up their ass, so Johns could have easily seen the call as a friendly courtesy to make sure Fisher knew he was still the movie Cyborg, but it came off as a threat to Fisher.

[Johnny]

Unless casting decisions like this are somehow related to some form of whitewashing, then isn't it a bit odd that producers need to publicly justify not casting actors who they didn't think were right for particular roles, or else they must be racially-motivated. If anything couldn't that end up having the opposite effect of sorts to where it might actually discourage some producers from putting diverse casting on the table more often and instead turn it into a minefield that's better to be avoided, since if a POC doesn't get that role it would always be spun into a racism-based clickbait headline.