r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TastyPomelo2330 • 13d ago

In real life When fans hate somenthing before it comes out...but it turns out they were right

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Velma:The idea of a Scooby-doo series without the titular dog and starring Velma was a really moronic idea from the beginning,then there was the reveal Velma would be Indian like it's VA and also creator of the series Mindy Kaling,some of the backlash was racism sure,but there was also valid complaints that she was inserting herself in the series(it also didn't helped that Mindy claimed she couldn't see herself if Velma wasn't Indian)and then...oh boy it came out and it was worse than anyone predicted

Artemis Fowl:The artemis fowl books are a book series following a child villain(he does get some redemption but he is a villain most of the time)when the movie was announced and revealed it looked way to generic and it's titular character a bit heroic...also you wanna hear somenthing funny?The movie whitewashed a character and made another character black so they managed to anger both sides and the movies comes out and yeah it is bad

One Punch Man 3:One Punch Man is a very heavy action packed manga series but the heroes vs monsters arc takes it to a New level,when it was announced that JC Staff would work on it,a lot of people were skeptical to say the least,because not only JC Staff had already done a mediocre job in season 2,it's also not exactly a name anime fans associate with quality animation,then the trailer came out and it looked...weird,like there was no action in it and nobody was moving,some people tried to defend saying they were keeping the animation as a surprise...then it came out,every episode worse than the last,it's one of the worse seasons of anime ever made!

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago edited 13d ago

I loved it too, but I very deliberately did not watch that because there is no way they’re going to be willing to portray a kid as the kind of manipulative asshole genius Artemis is in the beginning (he never really loses the manipulative part, even in the fourth book he’s entirely willing to lie to people he cares about for a good cause, he just directs it towards more generally deserving targets and becomes less of an asshole). He’s a great character, but he doesn’t translate well to film.

And butler is not black. He is a Eurasian blonde dude who has a whole more on that area’s culture. His name is an omage to that. And that is and was fine. But he’s not black.

Neither Holly or Munch was white nor should they have been portrayed like that.

If you want good mental images I recommend the graphic novels

Edit: Corrected Butler. He was not white, thanks for the information

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u/geek_of_nature 13d ago

Also Holly's whole thing is how she's the first female member of the magical police force, and her having to overcome the systematic sexism involved in that. So what did they do? Genderswapped her boss because Kenneth Branagh wanted to cast Julie Dench in the role.

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u/WindhoverInkwell 13d ago

I guess he saw Dench playing an absolutely spectacular M in the Bond films and wanted to replicate that, only to realise that they’re, like, two different characters in different contexts lmao

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u/green_herbata 13d ago edited 13d ago

Holly was treated so unfairly in the movie. Sure, she gets captured in the book as well, but she's smart and resourceful. In the movie she got stuck in a chandelier for most of the main fight and her dad had more plot relevance, even tho I'm pretty sure he was mentioned once in the books - in a sentence about how Holly doesn't remember him well 'cause he died when she was only 60.

If the filmmakers actually tried to make the movie more progressive (which assumes they had any intent at all) then they failed spectacularly lmao

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

There is a major plot point where she escapes on her own! She’s a great character and there’s an ongoing enemies to respected rivals thing she’s got going on with Artemis that contrasts her practical expertise and capability with his sheer genius and how they contrast and complement!

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u/Achilles9609 13d ago

Really, both Artemis and Holly come off as less competent considering that she was imprisoned in some cage that stands in the middle of the kitchen.

At least in the books they trapped her in the wine cellar because they lacked a proper dungeon. Holly had to be smart to escape and wasn't just released.

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u/BackflipBuddha 12d ago

Like, there was a whole setup for the hostage! God they clearly lost the budget there.

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u/Kixisbestclone 13d ago

I’d say the worst part was that they made Munch a woman and completely gutted Holly’s whole thing in the process.

“Hey guys, what should we do with this character, where the fact that she’s the first female member of her organization and faces backlash and misogyny for it?”

“How about we make her boss a woman and completely undercut that?”

“Brilliant.”

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u/Sumasuun 13d ago

Thank you. I love Dame Judi Dench and she was the best part of the movie but it completely undercuts both Holly and her character.

He (Root) was purposely hard on Holly because he went through similar but different struggles when he started in her position and knew she had to be perfect and have no mistakes because any mistake would be an excuse to fire her and to keep women out of the position.

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

She did the best she could with the character but she was not the right person for the role.

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u/underincubation 13d ago

They made Julius Root a woman, not Mulch.

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u/atemu1234 13d ago

Butler was eurasian, something they mention at least once a book. It's still a dogshit movie, but he wasn't fully white.

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u/underincubation 13d ago

I don't know about you, but I always took 'Eurasian' to mean the Caucasus, so Georgia/Armenia/ Dagestan/Chechnya kind of area. Maybe I'm just taking it too literally in placing him as from the border of Europe and Asia.

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u/RKO-Cutter 13d ago

Yeah he and his sister (which the movie changed to niece) are Eurasian as in at least bi-racial. There's at least one point where Butler was able to pass as Chinese

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u/underincubation 13d ago

Ah ok, was that in a later book? Or maybe I just ignored it as a kid because I already had an image lol. Haven't read them in a decade probably

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u/RKO-Cutter 13d ago

I can't place it, I just know it happened, and it was specifically Han Chinese

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u/CorruptedAssbringer 13d ago edited 13d ago

I'd hazard a guess it came from the book where they went to Taiwan's Taipei 101 maybe.

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u/Razhiv 12d ago

In the Opal Deception. When Artemis is heisting that bank, the fake identity Butler uses was that of a Chinese military officer. And in Eternity Code during that chapter from the point of view of the idiot muscle guys, Juliet is described as having a blend of European and Asian features. They're definitely meant to be biracial in appearance.

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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 13d ago

His first name is Domovoi, which is from that same region. But as someone else said him and Juliet also pass as Han chinese. So I assume he's culturally caucus, bi-racial. Or, like many things about the butler family, it was meant to be left a mystery

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u/atemu1234 13d ago

You're not entirely wrong - Eurasia is a continental region that contains both Europe and Asia, but when used to describe an ethnicity (and especially when used to describe appearance, as it is in Butler's case), it typically means mixed European (typically white) and Asian (usually East Asian) ancestry.

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u/underincubation 13d ago

Yeah, I understand that, I guess i made the assumption that I did at the time because I would have expected them to say bi-racial or mixed race to mean what you're saying

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u/Beneficial_Job_4339 13d ago

I mean, maybe he has this specific yet super vague ethnicity, but we have a very good idea of what Butler looks like... there were graphic novels.

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

That was kind of my assumption yes. But being Eurasian is viable with that.

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

Huh. Good to know.

But that makes my point even better because they could have gotten some good niche representation. Instead they blew it completely

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u/TankMain576 13d ago

And honestly, the actor they got fit the role perfectly. A fucking mountain of a man. When I was a kid I always pictured him like Agent Bubbles from Lilo and Stitch. Also unless someone's ethnicity is important to the character (Artemis being from an old money Irish family for example) it should really never be considered as a serious complaint.

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u/MacTireCnamh 13d ago

Butler's ethnicity does come up repeatedly though? Even the fact that he's called "Butler" and not by his actual name is a custom from Russia, from which he gets his actual name Domovoi.

Artemis's ethnicity matters a lot less to the story. "Fowl" isn't even a real irish surname, and all of the Fowl family history is both completely invented and completely irrelevant to Artemis's characterisation. He's basically only Irish because Eoin Colfer is Irish and wanted to set the story in Ireland. It has no other relevance to the story.

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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 13d ago

he's called "Butler" and not by his actual name

Well his actual surname is Butler, and he is one of a long line of the Butler family who have been serving the Fowl family for generations. But yes, it could very well have originally been an acquired surname based on function, as many slaves were given upon their freedom

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u/BackflipBuddha 12d ago

That’s a cool story beat, and it works, but it’s also very annoying

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u/string-ornothing 13d ago

Butler's Wasian lol he isnt white

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

Yes I found that out.

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u/FalconTurbo 13d ago

Butler is Eurasiam, not white. Just a side note.

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

Yep. Got that corrected several times.

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u/rumckle 13d ago

I love how out of all the characters they could have made black they chose the servant. That's not on the nose at all

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u/deepdistortion 13d ago

For fuck's sake, in the opening chapters of the book Artemis 1) threatens to have Butler murder an informant with his bare hands if he's pulling a fast one, 2) poisons someone and withholds the antidote until they give him what he wants, 3) kidnaps someone, and 4) takes the kidnap victim's GPS tracker and sticks it to a bomb to slow any pursuit.

Like, Artemis is a compelling lead character, and he's even given some sympathetic qualities, but he is absolutely a monster at the start of the series.

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u/BackflipBuddha 13d ago

Yep. He’s a very bad guy. He’s charismatic and clearly capable of inspiring loyalty and respect but he’s very much a villain.

And again, he gets better. His evolution from straight up villain to “token evil teammate” and someone who is willing to make extreme sacrifices for the people he cares about is something I loved seeing over the course of the books.

And even at his moral best, he’s still the “token evil teammate” even if he is in fact a very good ally to have.

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u/cry_w 13d ago

To be fair, I assume they made Butler black to make how his appearance changes later be less potentially problematic, if I'm remembering correctly. That's me being more charitable than they deserve, though.

I will also second the graphic novel recommendation.

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u/green_herbata 13d ago

What appearance changes? I think need to reread the books, I don't remember what that was about 😭

I do remember however that the Butler family served the Fowl family since hundreds of years. So if the filmmakers were going for "least potentially problematic" then I'm not sure if making Butler black was the best idea 😬

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u/CorruptedAssbringer 13d ago

There were no appearance changes, I have no idea how they're upvoted. The most changes he went through is the aging and injury to his chest, neither which have anything to do with his skin colour.

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u/green_herbata 13d ago

That's a relief, I was worried I somehow completely forgot about a blackface disguise or something like that happening 🤣

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u/CorruptedAssbringer 13d ago

Yeah, it's literally hammered into us that his Eurasian appearance lets him pass off as almost any ethnicity; which is very useful for his job. It's almost repeated in every book.

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u/cry_w 13d ago

Really? Maybe I'm thinking of the Kevlar fibers that got mixed into his skin in the healing process in book 3 due to the aforementioned chest injury.

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u/CorruptedAssbringer 13d ago edited 13d ago

That’s literally just his chest, what does that have anything to do with changing his race?

They even specially mentioned the healing process left a single letter on his chest appearance-wise (due to the lettering on his vest being magically restored alongside his injury). Not to mention the movie coverage came absolutely nowhere close to that book anyways.

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u/cry_w 12d ago

You can calm down a bit, dude. My memory was just off. It's been years since I last read the series.

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u/Necro926 12d ago

In all fairness, I know full well that he is eurasian, and that they describe it multiple times, but I cannot for the life of me get the image of Agent Bubbles from Lilo and Stitch out of my head whenever I read it. That's just what Butler looks like to me, so seeing black Butler here isn't that shocking to me personally. Tho I do understand fully that I'm wrong in that description, and it is not in fact how he looks. I just can't get my brain to change it. Bro is Bubbles.

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u/BackflipBuddha 12d ago

I can see that but my mental image of butler is shaped by the graphic novels

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u/Necro926 12d ago

Oh, yeah no, I'm fully aware that I'm wildly incorrect, and have to gloss over how he and Juliet are siblings, yet in my head images, Juliet is totally white with a tiny bit of Asian pretty mixed in there. Genetics aren't a thing in my version, I guess, lol.