Percy Jackson: Rick Riordan Defends Casting - “Leah is Annabeth. The negative comments she has received online are out of line. They need to stop. Now.”

I can know that because of this casting. If they can't get something as simple as this right then it doesn't bode well for the rest of it.

The only person who gets to determine if the casting was right or wrong is the author. He's the one who wrote the novel and he's the one who will know if the person cast matches what he envisioned.

The author himself was literally involved in decision to cast her and is saying she is perfect for the role, so how can you say they didn't get the casting right? The description written in the book is not a contract they are bound to, and adaptations are not meant to be exact literal translations. If they were then they would just copy all the dialogue into a script word for word, mess around with the formatting a bit to get rid of the non-dialogue fluff, and then call it a day.

Annabeth was white in the Percy Jackson film adaptation and that movie was completely terrible and panned by the author, who was excluded from the entire production process for the most part. He made sure to be integrally involved in it this time to make sure things were done right, and this was his choice. You can't determine the quality of a film based on the skin color of one of the actors.

That's just a lie. People are always going on about whitewashing. If this character was black in the books and they cast a white actress, there'd be a huge uproar and the peoole making it would have to make public apologies.

It's almost never the fans making a big deal about this, but activists who are upset at whitewashing. Whether you like it or not, the shoe does fit differently on the other foot. With so few POC actors being cast into the main roles of fantasy/sci-fi films or being written into the main roles of novels, whitewashing the few that are written into them does carry a completely different connotation.

I haven't seen anyone do that. I've seen people say that this is not what the character is supposed to look like, which is true. That is not racist.

Give me a break. People aren't just doing a technical analysis and happen to point that out among other things. People are making a big deal out of the casting and implying the quality of the film will suffer for it. In fact, you yourself did that lmao. You literally said this:

I can know that because of this casting. If they can't get something as simple as this right then it doesn't bode well for the rest of it.

You literally said the casting of the character implies the film may not be good. Have some self awareness.

The outrage surrounding a blonde James Bond eas so big it made headlines in magazines all over the world.

Congratulations, you found one. And that was a silly thing to be outraged by, but that is more the exception than the rule.

It absolutely does. 'Saying that someone has killed someone doesn't mean they're a killer'.

Uh...no? Context definitely matters. If you killed someone in self defense you wouldn't be considered a killer. If you killed someone on accident, depending on the nature of the accident and the level of carelessness, you most likely wouldn't be be considered a killer. What makes someone considered a killer is the level of intention and necessity behind it. If someone killed someone in cold blood not in self defense then they would probably be considered a killer. If they killed many people in cold blood, then they definitely would be considered a killer.

Likewise, just because I am writing this response to you does not mean I am a writer. Just because I played a video game for the first time in years yesterday does not mean I am a gamer.

Doing or saying something racist unintentionally does not mean that someone is inherently racist, as long as they are willing to reflect on it and try to do better in the future in controlling the way their implicit biases affect their actions. If you consistently do racist things and refuse to ever consider that your actions may have a racist effect, then you're more likely to be labeled as a racist person.

Would you feel the same if it was a black character played by a white actor?

That it's racism to complain about it without giving them a chance?

Context matters. If a black character in a book is whitewashed, the criticism usually comes from a place of fairness rather than "how could they do this to my precious fictional character??" When so few black people are written in sci-fi/fantasy novels as it is, casting white actors for the few that are is necessarily going to be seen in a negative light because it's worsening the problem of black people not being represented proportionally in the media.

White people, on the other hand, are used to being represented in most movies/TV shows. Having one of the main characters in a few shows/movies being changed from white to black (with a still largely white cast) doesn't do anything to change this reality for white people. Therefore, the outrage when this happens is usually coming from a place of privilege, given that black people have lived their whole lives not being fairly represented in movies and tv shows.

/r/television Thread Parent Link - rickriordan.com