12 Blockbuster Hits With Racially Offensive Undertones Directed at Black People

Avatar Despite being the highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar is no exception to bumbling race depictions. The movie’s famous Na’vi are a primitive tribal alien race, played by a number of nonwhite actors like Zoe Saldana and Laz Alonso. Meanwhile, all the humans in the film are depicted as white. And, of course, the disabled white U.S. Marine Jake Sully becomes the hero of the tribe, even outperforming the best among the natives. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen The sequel to the hugely popular Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen features two token black-guy robots, Skids and Mudflap. Both are given monkey-like features; they speak in a street-like dialogue; one has a gold tooth, and neither of them can read. It’s blatant stereotyping. Director Michael Bay defended the characters, calling them “good clean fun”, Planet of the Apes The original Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston and released in 1968, served as a “what if the shoe was on the other foot”-type scenario, where white men experience the type of discrimination regularly experienced by Black people. Though it was intended to show support for Black people’s fight for human rights, it reinforced the racist notion of Blacks not being fully human, choosing apes and monkey of all animals as stand-ins for Black people. It also played into the issues of skin-color hierarchy, making lighter apes more intelligent than their darker, more uncivilized counterparts. Lord of the Rings The motion picture trilogy and the novel by J.R.R Tolkien, upon which it is based, has been accused of being racist for having all the good guys white-skinned, mostly blond and mostly blue-eyed. The bad guys, on the other hand, are described with combinations of black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate or a psychologically undeveloped horde. Although Tolkien had an entire Black civilization in his novel, director Peter Jackson didn't include it or any Black actors, for that matter. Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope The original 1977 Star Wars movie was justifiably criticized for not casting a single Black person, except James Earl Jones for the voice of Darth Vader. George Lucas had planned for the character of Han Solo to be a Black person. He auditioned several Black actors (including Billy Dee Williams) and even musicians until finally settling on Glynn Turman. But later, he decided to make the role white. Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace Fast forward to 1999 for the first installment of the prequel trilogy where we're given Jar Jar Binks, an annoying, lame-brained, pseudo-Caribbean-accented stand-in for a Black person. This frog-like species was derisively referred to as "primitives" at one point. Aside from Samuel L. Jackson's brief appearances as the Jedi warrior Mace Windu, there was only one other legitimate Black person with a speaking role in the movie. His line? It was something like “Yes, your highness.” The Godfather The Godfather is seen by many as the world's greatest film. In the 1972 film, there's not a single Black role, but the film's creators thought of Black people enough to make a reference to them as “darkies with no souls,” running numbers rackets and driving Cadillacs. Terminator 2: Judgment Day The Terminator trilogy features white super-human cyborgs from a future where nearly every human is also white. The savior of the human race is also white. The one time Hollywood makes the Black man a genius computer programmer, he's the one responsible for destroying the world. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls The first and second Ace Ventura films were blockbuster hits, but the second, When Nature Calls, took some racial swings at Black people. Set in the fictional African country of Nibia and passed off as a bit of fun, the film didn't have qualms portraying Africans as bat-worshipping, spear-throwing, war-mongers, and was even less worried about its protagonist mocking them. Raiders of the Lost Ark In Raiders of the Lost Ark, archeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do, but one has to wonder what would be the difference. He travels the globe robbing graves; despoiling ancient tombs; shooting, whipping, kicking and verbally and physically abusing native people depicted as South American savages, Nepalese grotesques and Tunisian thugs. He strangely never encounters a single Black person though. Ben-Hur Let's not mention the depiction of Jesus as a blue-eyed European in the 1959 epic Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston. There are plenty of other offensive images to go around, such as white actors in black face, depicting Arabs and the white horses vs. black horses in the famous chariot race scenes. On top of that, in a film about Christians, Romans, Egyptians, Hebrews and other groups, the film depicted none of them as Black. Birth of a Nation The epitome of racist films, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Birth of a Nation is notable for its depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as heroes of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and Black men (or rather white men in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually violent toward white women.

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