by Gabriel Valdez
What if Star Wars: Episode I had featured an epic dance battle, hard-partying Jedi, and a deranged C3PO obsessed with wearing the skin of Jar Jar Binks?
These are just a few of the important questions that Auralnauts asks and, I have to admit, I’m late to the party on this one. Let me back up a bit:
It’s funny how you come across new tastes. I was having a Facebook debate one day about Michelle Rodriguez’s insistence that minority actors “stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes.” While Rodriguez would later contextualize the statement in a way that was more reasonable (although still not realistic to me), it was obviously worth talking about.
My view? In superhero movies: Tony Stark’s adversaries were changed from Vietnamese to Afghans in Iron Man. Superman, arguably, should be Jewish. While 1930s comics publishing wouldn’t allow a superhero to be Jewish, his creators did everything that era allowed to hint he was an analogue for the Jewish immigrant experience. He’s never been portrayed that way on film. I heard not a peep when Latino character Bane was cast with Australian actor Tom Hardy, or when the Arabic Ra’s al Ghul was cast with an Irish actor in the Dark Knight series.
If you read here often, you know that I’m in favor of recasting regardless of race across the board. We may not be a post-racial society, but if movies treat it as normal, we may one day pick up the cue.
Regardless, the same voices that express moral outrage over white comic characters being recast fail to speak up when nonwhite comic characters are recast. While I don’t agree with that outrage, it would be nice if it were at least a consistent outrage.
So I insisted that Kevin Costner should appear to Superman in a dream Obi-Wan style and tell him, “Actually, we’re Jewish.” Have the Afghans appear in the next Avengers film and reveal themselves as Vietnamese secret agents. Have Tom Hardy’s lines in The Dark Knight Rises re-dubbed by Selena Gomez. Use CGI to replace Liam Neeson with Omar Sharif.
Once that’s all done, anyone who wants can complain about white superheroes being stolen or adapted, but not a moment before.
Needless to say, we haven’t fixed the world just yet, and I learned a valuable lesson: once you suggest Selena Gomez play Bane, any serious conversation goes out the window.
The number of Bane redub videos I’ve been sent since is…catastrophic. I really need to re-evaluate my life. Most of them were horrible. The only good one, to tell the truth, was by Auralnauts, and it featured the wonderful Bane rap at the top of this video.
So I checked out their channel, and it’s what I never knew I always wanted from redubs, and I never even knew I wanted redubs. Take a look at their reinterpretation of the Star Wars prequels, where the entire plot centers around Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon skipping the bill at a Space Hooters and regional manager Darth Maul becoming obsessed with beating them in a dance-off. I’ll start you at a good bit in the middle of the first one, so you can get a taste of what’s in store.
I haven’t looked at all their work – there’s a lot of it – but I intend on following them for a long time to come.
Gabriel Diego Valdez 