You’ve got to wonder if there’s going to be anything that’s free of controversy ever again since this time it’s the Halo TV show that’s being presented by Showtime, a show that a lot of gaming fans have been waiting on for years and have been anticipating in a big way. Now if you want to say that it’s about the same as any fan base anticipating anything else that might have taken years to finally develop into something you’d be right, but the fans don’t want to hear it since they tend to think that their situation is unique, that their experience is all that matters. When it comes to Halo however Mansoor Mithaiwala of ScreenRant has shown that acceptance is a conditional thing at best, and almost non-existent at worst. In this case it has to do with a few characters and a couple of developments that fans are already criticizing pretty heavily since the differences fly in the face of what they’d known of the game for so long. It’d be kind of ironic if some of those calling out the differences over Halo were those telling Star Wars fans to calm down about the disappearance of the EU, wouldn’t it?
In all fairness to Halo fans it is kind of annoying when the creators of these shows and movies take what’s there and chuck it in favor of something they want to do, especially when it seems like it might be to gain points with others when it comes to being more diverse. Yes it’s true that a lot of programs, games, and movies could stand to become a lot more diverse, but at the same time it’s hard to say, with a straight face, that simply putting in people of color and folks from different backgrounds is going to make a project any better thanks to being inclusive. Case in point, the part of Captain Jacob Keyes is being taken by Danny Sapani, while the part of Dr. Miranda Keyes is being played by Olive Gray. Gender-swapping is usually frowned upon by a lot of people depending on the story and the impact it might have with everything else that’s bound to happen, but race-swapping has been a massive headache for a lot of people since it usually only seems to be deemed inappropriate when it leads to whitewashing, which is more than just frowned upon as it’s shamed relentlessly the moment even a hint of it occurs. The argument that white people have taken over Hollywood and have dominated it for so many years is hard to argue fully but in the current era it’s been seen that more people of color and women in general have gained a great deal of prominence, which is quite positive in a big way, but with the benefit of a double standard that a lot of people seem eager to simply sweep under the rug. A great example is that of The Dark Tower, the tale of Roland of Gilead, who was, in the books, a white man. I happen to like Idris Elba, and do think that he could have played a fine gunslinger if the dialogue hadn’t been so horrible and the story would have spanned at least three or four movies instead of mashing them all into one with no redeeming value. In a sense they took the first and third book and smashed them together in an attempt to create something new, and it failed horribly.
But the point being, Roland was a white man in the books, for good or ill, and he did eventually meet up with a black woman in the second book, but no one is going to know this but those that read the books since the movie was so tragically terrible and as a result a lot of people might think the story wasn’t as worthy as some might think. The whole issue of race-swapping isn’t such a big deal really since it matters more that an actor, no matter their color, can perform the part they’re given without fault. It’s true, putting Matt Damon in a movie where he interacts with an elite fighting force of Asians protecting the Great Wall of China against a monstrous enemy was said to be whitewashed, but in truth there were few Caucasians in the movie and they were deemed as outsiders, so the whitewashing was a crock. In Halo however, there is a clear swap that is angering a lot of fans already and is likely to be called out again and again. Like it or not, people can’t simply forget that the gender and race-swap is a two-way street, and can anger fans on both sides without question. If the actors in question do the job credibly and are able to make it work, then so be it, but to do it simply for a gimmick is a sure way to lose a great deal of the fan base.
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