An Actress to play Honor Harrington

When I regard something like this debate I look at the story as a whole and the reason said character is depicted in the way that they are presented. Is there a specific reason that this character is of a given racial decent? Is it a critical element of the story?

In the case of the Earthsea Trilogy, the author deliberately made only one group of all the peoples in her world white. All the rest, considerably outnumbering the minority whites, were of a variety of other races. In that case the very racial mix and the specific race of the characters is deliberate and changing them changes the story.

In the case of Honor Harrington and the Honorverse I never got the feeling that her race was chosen to make a specific point in the overall story, if anything he makes the point that 2000 years of Human evolution across the stars has created a melange of people many of whom it would be difficult to pin down their exact heritage. In fact the point is specifically made about Grayson is an exception to the rule in that they has a fairly Homogenous population. Even Allison's nearly pure Asian ancestry is uncommon across the population of the 'verse as a whole. In that case I'm more concerned that the casting be diverse and should predominantly consist of cast members of mixed Heritage (in the case of HotQ the Manties should be cast this way) and specific characters race is not as much of an issue.

This is not to denigrate minority casting for Honor, if they can find a person to pull off the role who is 182cm, a Martial Artist and has the chops to pull off the role AWESOME. If not don't hamstring the production with subpar talent just to make a politcal point beyond the score of the story. I just don't think honor's specific race is integral to the story in the same way changing the races of the Earthsea Characters was.

Think about Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Movies. Glorfindel has been completely removed and his story elements went to Arwen. Not only that but he added a completely new female protagonist in the Hobbit. In these cases they were bringing a story written in the 40's into the modern age. As long as the integrity of the original work is maintained adjusting casting to fit the available talent is common sense.

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am not getting frustrated or anything but most of your points I have to disagree with. Not your actual points, such as the % of whites vs others, but things like taking a charactor, written white, and making it minority. It shouldn't be done. Neither should a half asain woman be cast as a white woman, unless the description of the woman states it. I need to go back and re-read the discriptions of honr to get a good feel of her looks. Someone mentioned it was just her eyes?
Regardless, I think we have to agree to disagree on the politics of the issue.

As stated before, I think an actress of asian decent should play Honor, and in the spirit of that, Linda Park, Hoshi for Star Trek Enterprise. She seems all meek and mild but re-watch the mirrorverse episode with her being all agressive. I think she could pull it off. Might just fit the age range needed too.

You don't need to go back an read all the descriptions. Look at the last 6 to 10 book covers by David Mattingly, who David considers to be his favored cover artist of those who have worked this series, and with whom he has consulted extensively. David has said that those cover images of Honor are a close approximation of HIS vision of Honor's physical appearance.

Also, all those debating this. Honor's mother, the galaxy-class GENETICIST, might have taken 1-2 little steps to make sure that Honor was well adapted to her homeworld, within the limits of the Beowulf code. Little steps like assuring dominance for many of Honor's father's family's genes...you, know the Meyerdahl 2nd wave, et al. Keep a few cute Benton-Rameriz y Chou characteristics, like somewhat almond eyes, dark hair, but hey, 6' tall, high metab, temper like a treecat remembering a kitten killer, able to leap small Graysons at a single bound (on Sphinx), etc.

Frankly, I'm not sure one can infer anything about how a Beowulfan geneticist's child might look from the physical appearance of his/her parents. Bioscience is, like, the planetary sport, and the gene pool is 2000 years deep and fully accessible.

dreamrider

Commodore Oakius wrote:Ok, if he was 10-20 years younger, Harrison Ford for Whitehaven.

How about if he was $10M-$15M less expensive?...
In which case I'll nominate him for Howard Clinkscales, or Rev Hanks.

dreamrider

David Tennant => Benjamin

dreamrider

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dreamrider wrote:David Tennant => Benjamin

dreamrider

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Innteerestiiing...

For some reason I see him more as Rafe, but that makes no sense given Rafe's description. I think most of it is that he (Rafe) is first introduced to us as a 'puppy' and there is something undeniably puppyish about Tenant.

Hmn, now I wonder who elso of Dr. Who cast could be used in honorverse.

I can kinda see Roger Delgado as either Rob Piere, or Claus Hauptman.
Also John Barrowman should be there somewhere.

Jeri Ryan as Alice Trueman?

Commodore Oakius wrote:Jeri Ryan as Alice Trueman?

Too skinny. Alice is described as stout IIRC, attractive, and short, but not slender at all.

Here's a question, although it won't be relevant until HAE. Who would you cast as Chien Lu von Rabenstrange? I'm thinking someone along the size of Jet Li. Thought about Yung-Fat Chow but he seems a bit tallish for the role and I think either one would struggle with a Germanic accent.

There's a real conundrum, that's a role that was specifically made to make a point about how cultures can drift.

Had to post again, was thinking after posting my last about Alice Truman and stocky shorter Blondes. Then I hand an epiphany, Katee Sackhoff, She's muscular enough to pull off stocky and has the toughness of a Manty Captain.

dreamrider wrote:David Tennant => Benjamin

dreamrider

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SPACE GODDAMN WELL TAKEN.

He has just the right twinkly-eyed, manic energy to play the role and just enough maturity and gravitas to be believable as someone who is quite literally grabbing the reins of power and yanking them quite forcefully away from his various officials.

Now if only he were a bit less expensive...

BrightSoul wrote:Had to post again, was thinking after posting my last about Alice Truman and stocky shorter Blondes. Then I hand an epiphany, Katee Sackhoff, She's muscular enough to pull off stocky and has the toughness of a Manty Captain.

No. Oh, sweet Tester, please, no.

I honestly have nothing against Katee as a person or an actor - I didn't pay much attention to her in BSG, because I was too busy swooning over Bill and Laura, but I've heard she's got acting chops - but after her role on 24 I can honestly never watch her in anything ever again because all I will see is Dana Walsh. (Season eight of 24 traumatized me in major, major fashion - even more than season seven did. I don't talk about my time in the 24 fandom any more.)

Yannosh wrote:Also John Barrowman should be there somewhere.

John Barrowman as Hamish Alexander?

*passes out in a catatonia of lust*

Well, I am sorry that you disagree, but in my opinion, taking some of the huge majority of roles that are written white, and casting a minority actor in it is much less of a deal than taking one tiny number of non-white roles and casting a white actor.

The fact is that in recent history, many non-white roles have been played by white actors. In Argo, the man Ben Affleck's character was based on was actually Hispanic. In the Star Trek reboot, Khan Noonian Singh was played by a white guy, when the character was written a Sikh. In the Airbender movie, the racially diverse good guys were all turned white, but the bad guys were left Indian. Have you ever heard of the movie Extraordinary Measures? Probably not, because it opened the same weekend as James Cameron's Avatar. It was based on a true story, but they took the actual Taiwanese doctor, Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen, got rid of him entirely, and created Dr. Robert Stonehill to take his place, and cast Harrison Ford.

There are two facts that can not be argued. 1) That race bending happens a lot, and 2) most of the time it is bent very firmly away from minority actors.

That is why rewriting a white character from the sixty's as a black character is just not as bad. I agree that it shouldn't happen, but it shouldn't need to happen. They should cast minority actors in minority parts. Especially in "based on true events" type movies like Argo and Extraordinary Measures. They don't.

And just for a bit of context, Nick Fury was created less then six years after nine black kids had to be walked to school by the 101st Airborne in Little Rock.

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am not getting frustrated or anything but most of your points I have to disagree with. Not your actual points, such as the % of whites vs others, but things like taking a charactor, written white, and making it minority. It shouldn't be done. Neither should a half asain woman be cast as a white woman, unless the description of the woman states it. I need to go back and re-read the discriptions of honr to get a good feel of her looks. Someone mentioned it was just her eyes?
Regardless, I think we have to agree to disagree on the politics of the issue.

As stated before, I think an actress of asian decent should play Honor, and in the spirit of that, Linda Park, Hoshi for Star Trek Enterprise. She seems all meek and mild but re-watch the mirrorverse episode with her being all agressive. I think she could pull it off. Might just fit the age range needed too.