Most people reading this are probably only familiar with the Queen soundtracked 1980 Flash Gordon film that saw our titular hero fighting racist stereotypes — um, “villains” — and saving the day. That is, unless you’ve also seen the 1936 film and read the original pulp comic strip. There are racist stereotypes in that, too.
Well, get excited, because last night THR confirmed the rumors that Gordon would be finally be getting a new film soon. Hopefully with less racists, since it’s 2014 and we’re supposed to be better than that now.
Racial grossness of the “Ming the Merciless” character aside, Flash Gordon was one of the most influential comics in science fiction history for a long time running (George Lucas is gonna tell you that Kurosawa was his primary influence for creating Star Wars, but c’mon, it’s a Flash rip-off through and through), and it’ll be interesting to see if Twentieth Century Fox can take the classic pulpy style of the comic and translate it for a modern audience.
They’ve already got producer John Davis fronting the project and upcoming Star Trek 3 writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay on tap to write the script, so let’s cautiously hope for good things. Just don’t make the same mistake the last Star Trek did and cast a white guy as the villain, because I think Flash Gordon has had enough of that already throughout its history as a series.
(via Comic Book Movie, image via Flash Gordon)
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- Michael B. Jordan is kind of the best
