Is there such a thing as black-washing?

Check out this awesome article: What if People Reacted to These 10 Roles Like They Have to Michael B. Jordan?

The article is by Gina Luttrell at PolicyMic and it details the outcry against the reports that Michael B. Jordan, a black actor, has been cast as Johnny Storm aka. Human Torch, a white character, in the (much needed) Fantastic Four reboot and why this casting decision is important. She goes on to list 10 famous movies that featured blatantly whitewashed characters.

I am curious to know if Marvel’s or Twentieth Century Fox’s PR team anticipated the backlash from the die-hard comic book fans and what they are doing, if anything, to prevent the casting decision from potentially hurting the film at the box office. The reboot is set to release in June of 2015 (so perhaps the protesters will have moved on by then) and is being directed by Josh Trank, who also directed the found-footage sci-fi film Chronicle.

Here are my favorite bits from the article:

“The point here is that the erasure of people of color from cinema has been so widespread, even in recent years, from roles that are originally supposed to be be played by them, that it has done damage to those groups.”

“The fact of the matter is that black people have been booted out of roles that were originally black for ages…Hollywood has a sordid history of whitewashing. It hasn’t gotten better in the last 20 years, and there is very little outcry from those wanting to preserve “source material” when the person being outed is a person of color.”

Image Credit: Marvel

Questions I Have After Watching The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Trailer

First off, amazing trailer. I absolutely loved it. After watching it a couple of times  (okay more like ten), I came away with some comments and questions that will likely remained unanswered until that fateful 2014 premiere date. I’ve provided the timestamp for your convenience.

0:02  –  Where is he falling from? The plane from 1:54?
0:17  –  How did that police car not crush him?
0:19  –  Whose grave is he visiting? Uncle Ben? Or….
0:43  –  Welcome to the MATRIX.
0:51  –  Why does Harry sound sickly?
1:04  –  What does sweet ol’ Aunt May know?? She’s being a bit hypocritical here if you ask me.
1:16  –  Are those wings? And is that Doctor Octopus’ limbs??
1:25  –  Are glowing fire eels really our future?
1:35  –  Ew. Gross.
1:35  –  Are Peter and Harry ever really friends in this version?
1:38  –  Was that the Rhino or Megatron resurrected?
1:49  –  What’s with all the maps Pete??
1:51  –  Why is Spider-Man on the television?
2:06  –  Is this the scene? Is this where Gwen dies?! Is the Green Goblin involved??
2:10  –  The best scene, but where are they? Some sort of futuristic electricity forest? Why would Spidey choose to fight Electro there, of all places?
2:02  –  Oh no! The future eels!

The Bent Bullet – Another Exciting Film Microsite

X-Men: Days of Future Past has created another viral microsite for the upcoming film. This site details the story of how Magneto was arrested and found guilty for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. According to the information on this site, authorities believed that Magneto used his mutant ability (he is able to alter magnetic fields) to change the trajectory of Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullet, asserting this so-called “Bent Bullet Theory”. The site itself is interactive and allows you to scroll through a series of panels that chronicles the events that took place. The site uses grainy, full-framed, and sometimes moving images to tell the story. The creators did a great job at giving this site an old-yet-sleek, 1970s-feel and did an even better job at getting X-Men fans (like myself) even excited to see the film – if that is even possible. My favorite part is the tour of Magneto’s prison cell, built courtesy of the great people over at Trask Industries. The narrated informational tour explains in detail how Trask Industries was able to design a cell that is capable of containing a man who can manipulate metal.

Something worth noting here is that I discovered the site after seeing a tweet with a link to an article about it. The website and corresponding  YouTube video (below) have already garnered a good amount of online media coverage and will certainly help generate significant social media buzz for the film and its (very slowly…) approaching release date (which is May 22, 2014 – in case you don’t already have it in your calendar).

Check out my screen grabs and the YouTube video that goes along with the site and, of course, the website itself. While you are doing that, imagine how much fun the people behind this site had while making it.

Front Page

Tour of Prison Cell

Microsites and Viral Marketing for Films

This is the kind of stuff I want to do for a living.

There are many things I would love to be a part of at some point in my career in the realm of television, film and entertainment in general. One of the things at the top of that list is to create online content for films that further immerses viewers into the fictional world, deeper than the film itself. (Think this dream job is too far out of my league? Yeah, I don’t care.)

The Daily Bugle The Amazing Spider-Man

This example for the Daily Bugle, the newspaper that employs Peter Parker/Spider-man, is a rather simple approach, but still awesome. All the writing must be done in-character while also aligning with the theme/tone of the film. What I think I love most about this, from a marketing standpoint, is how it never directly promotes the film out-right (as it would be breaking character), and yet still manages to build excitement through rich content.

Oscorp Industries The Amazing Spider-Man

(The site has been removed.)

Another great example of an off-screen, interactive fan experience are websites that serve as a ‘real’ version of fictional entities pulled from films. Prior to the release of The Amazing Spider-Man, a microsite was created for the fictional Oscorp Industries. Any web-slinger fan would recognize the company name and, upon visiting the site, would find it to be both content-rich (concise copy, images, videos and even mini-games) and very well-aligned to the representation of Oscorp through the comic books and other media. Additionally, taking in the content provided on the site gave fans clues to the plot of the film, which helped to build anticipation without spoiling the story. This microsite was a part of a comprehensive viral marketing campaign

Trask Industries  X-Men: Days Of Futures Past

My final example of this is the website for the upcoming film X-Men: Days Of Futures Past. (Sensing the superhero theme yet?) Any Marvel fan can tell you that Trask Industries plays a major role in the world of X-Men and the super-microsite launched to generate buzz for the film is Trask Industries company page. The interface is very interactive and the information is presented in a manner which one would find on any corporate website. The very creation of this microsite gave fans a hint of the plot of the film well before any information had been release. The site itself allows users to share links onto their own social media feeds, leveraging user-level advocacy to build awareness for the film. This site sparked interest, from inciting peer-to-peer level discussion to garnered media coverage from prominent online entertainment blogs and publications.

Update:

As I mentioned above, the use of microsites is excellent for attracting media attention. The latest post from the Daily Bugle viral Tumblr page was published yesterday from the point-of-view of J. Jonah Jameson, the fictional publication’s editor-in-chief. Today, I came across an article from ScreenRant discussing the post (they actually embedded the entire post into their article) and speculating whether or not this meant the eccentric character would be making an appearance in the sequel. This was, of course, one of the desired results of the viral site.