Known for co-creating the New Mutants with writer Chris Claremont, comics artist Bob McLeod has taken to Facebook to express his disappointment with The New Mutants film which include slamming it for whitewashing and misspelling his name.
In his post, he amidst stating his concerns over the changed character designs, he also slams the movie for whitewashing Roberto da Costa aka Sunspot played by Henry Zaga instead of being portrayed as a “short and dark-skinned” character.
What’s more ridiculous is the fact that the movie even managed to skip out on properly crediting McLeod. His name (and only his) “McLeod” was misspelled as “MacLeod” and no one deigned to correct it. Fellow comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz, has apparently alerted the director Josh Boone on the mistake and he has “forwarded the correction to the appropriate person or persons at Disney” so hopefully this gets rectified ASAP.
This isn’t the first time Hollywood has whitewashed characters and it probably won’t be their last unfortunately. However, it is still disappointing and uncomfortable to see such controversies happening, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement and more happening globally to encourage people to take a stand against racism.
Theses controversies brought up by Bob McLeod only adds to the list of issues that have plague the release of the film such as having its premiere date pushed back multiple times for two years. While the whitewashing of the character cannot be salvaged at this point, we can at least hope that the name misspelling will be corrected soon!
The New Mutants is playing in theaters now and if you’re a fan you can try your hand at winning movie premiums as Geek Culture has an ongoing give away for five sets of The New Mutants movie premiums worth S$240.
Fumiko is an avid fan of spreading herself too thin and drowning in too many fandoms. She would love to spend all day reading fanfiction at home and crying.
Natalie
Trinity Sun
