Batman vs. Superman to feature Cyborg, African-American Dick Greyson?
By Josh Hill
Credit: DC
It’s safe to say that we live in progressive world and that has a lot to do with Hollywood forcing us to accept things that go against the grain of societal thinking. The recent movement to have a wider acceptance towards gay rights was largely motivated by Hollywood not caring about the ‘norm’ and portraying human beings on film as they are — straight, gay, bisexual and everything in between.
We saw this sort of movement in the 50s and 60s when African-American actors were getting more and more screen time and started becoming stars. Today we could care less about the skin color of an actor but it seems that we still look at certain roles in a certain way. Batman vs. Superman may look to change that as not only is Warner Bros possibly considering the unfortunately rare black superhero, but they’re rumored to be thinking about changing the skin color of an already existing character.
According to Latino-Review and Indie Wire, Batman vs. Superman was at one point in time eyeing Michael B. Jordan for role and many have concluded that this would either be for the hero Cyborg or the first black Robin ever portrayed on film.
The idea makes so much sense and you’re probably sitting there like I was wishing I had thought of it. There’s nothing to guarantee that this is what the studio is thinking about doing, but it’s definitely something we could see in a Zack Synder version of Batman and Superman that he’s trying to make unique.
It doesn’t get much more unique than changing the race of a major character, but there’s no reason why it can’t be possible. They had a non-white character play Spider-Man in the comics and it’s high time that the color of a character’s skin stops being a prerequisite for real life actors to play certain characters — looking at you James Bond.