Ming the Merciless is one of those iconic characters that there should be laws against changing, he's part of what made Flash Gordon so memorable: he's supposed to look a certain way, otherwise he shouldn't be known as that character. This guy was more like "Ming the Testicle-less", everything that made the character wicked was gone.
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Well, in today's PC world they couldn't do Ming the way he was originally done. I mean I've loved Flash Gordon since I was a kid but the original Ming was a giant middle finger to the Asian people. That was considered ok then but it's not now so you get weird things like that one where he's a lizard and the one where he had grey skin or whatnot. By comparision a blonde guy isn't too far off.
I had an idea once that maybe Ming should have been a Chinese guy from the Ming Dynasty kidnapped from Earth to be the hair to the previous dictator and brain washed to forget his past. Thus he COULD be Asian but done in a postitive or more neutral way.
The best revision of Ming, by far, was Max Van Sydo from the 80's movie but I worry that even that might raise an eyebrow or two these days and if you don't think so remember all the fuss about the aliens in the "Star Wars" prequals and how they 'sounded Asian' or some such.
As hypersensitive as people can be these days (and yes there are times when they are right but also there are times when they're just looking for something to complain about)you just have to either not care and bare the brunt of complaints or try to adapt.
Funny thing is that other characters who are in the same age bracket (Superman, Batman, etc...) and have been in contiunious publication all that time have changed as well but, in their case, in little ways over time but since Flash Gordon and his world are as active the changes seem more jarring.
I hear rumor of a new movie in the works so here is my advise: set it in the time of the original stories. Use the above mentioned Ming origin story. Keep it in the light 50's sci-fi tone it originally had. Keep Flash a polo player. In short: go back to the roots. :)
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Screw political correctness, we're talking about a classic sci-fi character here
Trying to appeal to everyone and keep them happy at the cost of pissing on the original premise of a beloved franchise and alienating the previously established fanbase is not my idea of "a recipe for success", they should've just gone into it with a mindset of "please the fans, screw the rest" and it would've been a beloved cult series at the least.
I thought Ming was superb. They did an excellent job at portraying him as the desperate ruler of a dying planet, doing whatever he could to cling to that power, as though it were the only thing that was going to keep him afloat while he was drowning in the misery he was creating. Bearing in mind that the reason Mongo was an armpit was because, in the aftermath of the Sorrow, Ming oppressed everyone to the point where they all became cruel, cold-blooded savages. Every bad thing people did to one another on Mongo was directly attributable to Ming's savage rule.
What most people seem to forget is that people don't do evil things because they're evil, but they will do the wrong thing when they're desperate. Ming was a perfect example of this; he clawed his way to power after the Sorrow, and that clawing changed him into a heartless monster. Maybe not the super villain everyone wants him to be, but definitely one of the most realistic villains I've ever seen. Some of the things he did, such as strangling the rabble rouser in front of his daughter, and cutting off the servant girl's finger for nicking his face, not to mention the executions of ten Verdan a day for every day that Barin didn't hand himself in, were just brutal.
Maybe people didn't like him because there's too much of humanity in him; we could all become like Ming if we were pushed to it.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
There was nothing "savage" about him whatsoever, he was "Ming the Inconvenient" at the most: he could've easily been made into a tragic figure while remaining the tyrant he was supposed to be if they really wanted to go that route, it worked fine for Darth Vader and he's considered one of the greatest villains of all time.
shareWhen you get down to it I NEVER understood how Ming COULD be an Asian guy while his own daughter was white and the other people of Mongo were guys with wings, lionmen, etc... That's one messed up planet to start with. Maybe they SHOULD have added an element about a hidden ruling race that kidnapped people from various planets and scattered them around Mongo. Maybe the original Mongo people were all but gone and the last of them did it in an attempt to rebuild something of their world, or maybe they picked each species for a certain kind of purpose but then Ming took over and the original plan degenerated into what Flash and his friends found. I don't know it's hard to try and make up for weird stuff that was put in sci-fi back in the day before people started wanted some basis in logic and fact. :)
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I honestly never thought he was Asian, just an intergalactic tyrant whose name just happened to be Ming (which sounds space-y if you think about it)
shareWell, I've seen drawing of the very original design for Ming and he looks a great deal like the Asian (epscailly Japanase) sterotype drawings that were popular in thoes days. Now he wasn't as comical as, for example, the ones used the infamous Bugs Bunny WWII era cartoons but the appearance was there. Also, if I'm remembering correctly in the early color versions he has yellow skin that was used for Asian characters back then.
I also remember reading a good deal about him, Fu Man Chu and others who were part of the anti-Asian portrayal in media in thoes days. Also, even in the 80's movie (which I love) that have a refrence to Dyzan who is an Asian deity.
Again, there's nothing wrong, in and of itself, with Ming being portrayed that was exactly. I THINK the original issues where in HOW he was portrayed beyond just being evil and a dictator and all that. In which case it wouldn't be TOO hard to change that but keep the look, hell, for that matter Max Von Sydo was pretty close to the look without being Asian in any way. Of course another point could be made that even his look would be dated today and hard to do a bad guy with that look and be taken seriously. :)
I kind of look at the issue in the same way as say Lex Luthor. The character of Lex has gone through a LOT of changes in the decades since he was created and likely will go through many more to keep up with the times. That's really how long running characters become and stay long running characters by keeping up with times.
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Yeah, but taking Flash Gordon seriously? Come on...the spirit of the series is what it is, I honestly think a characterization based on Von Sydo's version of the character and the Buster Crabbe serials could've made the series 800x more enjoyable: you just can't reinvent the wheel with something like Flash Gordon, the tyrannical ruler of the universe should be exactly that instead of something completely different or else it's no longer faithful to the source material.
shareWell it couldn't have hurt but I'm sure the thinking was one of two things or a combination of both: (1) Trying to avoid stepping into that whole Ming as anti-Asian sterotype thing and (2) how would modern audiences take to a villian in robes and a Fu Man Chu beard?
In any case I THINK they probably had some high minded idea about charismic dictators that rule by playing to the people and being all PR minded as opposed to the older version of Ming who ruled by fear and intimidation. It was a decent idea, guess it didn't work out.
I gather had it run longer than the next season would have had Ming return and be more brutal and openly evil. It's kind of like what "Supernatural" is doing with Lucifer right now. They're trying to paint him as sympathic and misunderstood ranther than evil but you just KNOW once he gets what he wants that his true colors will come out.
Oh well, I think the NEXT "Flash Gordon" project whatever it is should be set in the golden age and present it pretty much as it was originally done (Asian stuff aside of course). I think it should be in the mold of "Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow" which is very much the same feel. Of course given how poorly that worked out money wise I doubt ANY studio would ok that idea.
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Except that their plan for Ming DID work out. People were just going to defecate on the idea regardless, because he WASN'T the guy with the Fu-Manchu and stupid costume. That's what annoys me. People get so bent out of shape about Ming being close to canon that they forget that he was great anyway. In fact, it was being so far away from established canon that MADE him great. Discarding parts of a franchise that suck isn't a bad thing; I wasn't sorry to see the back of Joker's hand buzzers in TDK.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
You're delusional, there was nothing "great" about the characterization that they made: it wasn't even the same character anymore, they murdered an iconic villain and didn't even place something badass in his wake.
shareI'm not delusional, and yes they did. The original Ming was a laughing stock; they were right to bump him off, and he was NEVER iconic. No one cites him as evil, just as a joke. Yes, we have a Ming who's more politically minded and more concerned with resources and ruling his people like a REAL ruler would, but that's not a bad thing. Its vastly more apt for today's society than the original Ming, who was never apt for any society; instead of standing on a pantheon of lame comic book villains who were never good for anything, he now stands shoulder to shoulder with real-world "villains" like Saddam Hussein and Hitler, each of whom bore striking similarities. I enjoy a good political commentary, more so than I enjoy rampant, unintelligent planet destroying and evil cackling.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
There's an unwritten rule in what makes a good reimagining of an already established franchise, and that is making sure you keep things recognizable to a degree while you make the changes you decide upon: the creators of this series didn't bother following that at all, and it cost them a large chunk of their viewers because it wasn't "our" series anymore.
YOU might not have liked the "stupid fu manchu and costume", but other people did, and you can't deviate from something as iconic as the look of the series' lead villain to the point that he's character in name only and expect longtime fans to accept that: the look and behavior of Ming is part of what made Flash Gordon what it was, they gutted the plot and changed the characters so much that it could've worked as a standalone show under any other name.
Not everything that's put out into the world has to adhere to witty socio-political commentary, you know: sometimes people want the "rampant, unintelligent planet destroying and evil cackling", go make your own series for preaching and leave the classics out of it.
Frankly, your desire to cling desperately to outdated pop culture that wasn't even that popular at the time at the expense of good storytelling, excellent character development and charming dialogue makes me wish that they HAD made this an original concept. It was wasted on Flash Gordon's fans, it really was. You remind me of the idiot Silent Hill fans who hated the exceptional movie they got for no other reason than that it deviated slightly from the original plot. I don't understand why you people can't appreciate something for what it is, rather than what it isn't.
And why the hell not? If there's one thing the people in this world need its to wake up and face the fact that we live in a real world with real issues. If fiction can help with that, while still being entertaining, of course, then good for it.
To be honest, something must have made you gravitate to the Flash Gordon series to begin with, despite the fact that it was awful, so its not a surprise that when something good finally came out of it, you didn't like it. If stupidity was all it had to offer, then stupidity was all that was going to appeal. I just think that's a genuine shame. I'm a huge Resident Evil fan; our movies sucked. Your TV series was good. Your inability to appreciate it annoys me. Rest assured that if we'd been given a movie half as good as this show, I'd not be nearly as ticked off about it.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
The joy buzzer? Really? I LOVED "Dark Knight" but I gotta say a pyschic killer clown just isn't the same without the high powered joy buzzer and the killer laughing gas (Joker venom).
In that case they were taking the Joker all the way back to the start and while the results were great I was a tad disspointed not to see that stuff. I'm a bit conflicted on that one I guess. :)
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Surely its okay to not be faithful to the source material if the source material sucked. Why would you judge a good character based on how more or less like another character he is? That's self-defeating. Also, most people on this board seem to completely overlook how genuinely inriguing Ming was as a character, just so that they can stick to their initial "this show sucks" label. This show ISN'T hokey and camp; that's why its GOOD, not why its bad.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
Them's fightin' words, pal: you're talking about classic sci-fi here, and fanboys such as myself don't take too kindly to people saying the classics "sucked"
Honestly though, look at Batman, another classic comic book character who's had his share of campy adaptaions in the past: look what Nolan did with it, proof that you can, in fact, adapt a series to be good without sacrificing the soul of the series itself and turn it's most iconic of villains into a bad joke.
"Classic" isn't the same as "good". My opinion of the original is what it is; how people react to that is their problem.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
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Nonsense; people just base their ideas of what makes a tyrant on larger than life Sci-Fi concepts that have no basis in reality. Ming was every bit the dastardly swine that Vader was, with the exception that he didn't have an unlimited number of guards to murder for minor failings, or the ability to destroy planets with a big laser weapon. Surely you should judge him on whether he would do such a thing, rather than whether he had the capability, which he most certainly would, but only IF it would get him what he wanted.
And unlike Darth Vader, Ming's backstory didn't suck. Like he said, he earned his title through bloodshed; the man was a soldier, someone who had to claw and fight his way to the top. And let's not forget that Hitler was a soldier, and is a damn sight more popular when citing evil dictators than Vader. And, if we're going to use Vader as a measuring stick, we should point out that he was a) just Emperor Palpatine's bitch from beginning to end, and b) not beyond redemption. Ming was never going to concede that he'd been wrong, even if Aura had been in trouble; Vader openly did when he saw Luke being zapped.
Also, you're confusing popularity with good writing. Vader was never well-written, he was just a fan favourite.
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"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise thee."
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