Fan outrage has always been a part of fandom. In recent comic book movie history, the casting of Michael Keaton as Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 frenzied masterpiece is now considered a classic depiction of the character in the movies. Despite the letter writing campaign (back when cavemen rode dinosaurs and blackberries were picked on the farm), quite a few fans settled in and were rewarded by Mr. Keaton’s performance.
With the perceived entitlement of some fans have concerning characters of fantastic media, and the anonymity of social media, hate from all sides of an argument are being thrown at actors and actresses within fantastic media, sometimes as quickly as Han Solo gets off a blaster shot.
Speaking of Star Wars, Kelley Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”, was bullied by everyone from Star Wars fans, who said she was unnecessary to the film, to racists who felt having an Asian, female character was not good for the franchise to attack her on Instagram. The assaults got so bad, that the actress deleted her account.
And even more recently, RubyRose, who was picked to play the Kate Kane version of Batwoman in this years CW Arrowverse crossover, left Twitter due to the fact that she received hate from people stating, she wasn’t Jewish/Gay/Lesbian/etc; enough for the role.
Although having already established acting chops in action roles, such as XXX: The Return of Xander Cage and The Meg, the actress was also putdown as having no cred to play the character.
However, this kind of hate seems to parallel the kind of hate Gal Gadot got when she was picked to play Wonder Woman for the DCEU. While it may have made sense to many to have an Israeli Army trained female who did hand to hand combat instruction and background in action films from the Fast and Furious franchise play a character based on mythology , that is supposed to be the ultimate warrior woman from the same area of the world as that actress, fandom who felt they owned the character was the most aggressively negative.
If it seems that this is an ongoing issue, it is. For every Robert Downey Jr is the perfect Iron Man fan, you have fifty Bat-Affleck haters. So, what can fandom do to fix ourselves, what can keep us from becoming our own worst enemies?
