Marvel fixes obvious, glaring fuck-up, adds Danai Gurira's name to the new Endgame poster
Aux Features FilmIf you looked at the new Avengers: Endgame poster this morning, it probably didn’t take very long for something to peg as obviously wrong. No, not whatever the fuck is going on on top of Hawkeye’s head—it’s the fact that every single person pictured on the poster is listed in the film’s credits, except one: Black Panther star Danai Gurira. Fans were quick to point out that this was, in fact, some bullshit, bombarding Marvel with angry notes this morning about Gurira—who also stars in The Walking Dead, at least for a little while longer—not being included in the billing alongside every other major star of the movie. (Hell, Jeremy Renner even made the cut, his name hovering over Robert Downey Jr.’s head like heaven’s saddest, most faux-hawked angel.)
For what it’s worth, Marvel has now fixed the error—which is to say, the deliberate decision that they made and then got yelled at for—issuing a new poster alongside a statement saying that “She should have been up there all this time,” which, no shit, guys.
Billing on Hollywood movie posters is generally hashed out by each actor’s individual agents and management, so presumably someone on Gurira’s team signed off on the decision to not include her name next to the guy voicing the CGI space rat on the original poster. That being said, someone at Marvel marketing could have solved a lot of problems for themselves today by looking at that first draft, thinking “Hey, the only person whose name isn’t on here is the only woman of color, who was also a huge part of one of our biggest movies, and who is a massive TV star in her own right. Hmm”—and then fixing this obvious, blatant fuck-up in the making.
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She was great as Michonne on TWD but this probably the best time to leave.
Yeah. Plus, The Ballad Of Rick’s Girlfriend already ended in the comic, and it’s kinda looking like they’ll go the same direction with Michonne.
I am ashamed to say I didn’t realise it was the same actor
Don’t be. There was an episode where Michonne is having a flashback, but I didn’t realize it was a flashback because I didn’t recognize Michonne…because she was smiling…
Noone’s shaming you here. The more you know, the more you grow. 😎
Hey, that’s the slogan of my Increase Your Penis Size Through Education program.
Ill definitely miss her on the show, but the shift toward Walking Dead: The Next Generation does seem like the right time for her and pretty much all the other originals to bail. Plus if the previews of Us are accurate to the actual movie, she’s about to be making all the money.
She’s not in Us.
You’re right. I made a stupid and kind of racist error there in confusing her for Lupita Nyong’o.
“which is to say, the deliberate decision that they made and then got yelled at for” I mean…they added her to the picture when they didn’t have to. Are we sure it wasn’t an oversight? Could this just have been an error?
Wait until he notices that they misspelled “Don Cheadle”
I think the most important thing is that millions of Internet nerds who have absolutely no information about what actually went on behind the scenes get a chance to express their exceedingly intense opinions about this.
Look, I don’t know who you are in the real world, but I’m pretty sure you’re actually a cannibal, so FUCK YOU!
#notallcannibals
Of course it could have been an error, but then we’d have one less chance for people to rend their garments about something supposedly being racist and sexist, SO THERE YOU GO.That said, I completely expect this non-issue to be brought up in at least two Presidential debates next year.
Either way, it’s pretty fucked that a journalist would make such an unsubstantiated claim. AVC toes that line all the time, but this definitely crosses it.
If I see any journalists around here, I’ll let them know.
While I agree that they absolutely aren’t, I like using the word because it throws into relief just how shitty of a job they’re doing.
Tread lightly, Jaden or Haiden or Cadien or whatever the fuck your name probably is. You are quickly becoming my new Prince Ruprecht the Monkey Boy.What happened to that lunatic, anyway? I’m hoping he was a victim of The Snap.
Agh, it hurts that you think I’m anywhere near that runny little shit. I sparred with him constantly, just like everyone else. Get back to me when I start accusing people of racism or sexism willy-nilly.I’ve been wondering the same thing, though. Maybe he reached such depths of self-loathing and confusion that he jumped ship to Jezebel.
Haha, runny little shit. I like that. Yeah, I don’t know! I was in the greys for some reason for a while, and when I managed to get back, he was nowhere to be found.He’s right behind me, isn’t he.Fuck.
Blink twice if he’s making bad-faith arguments directly into his asshole.
No, apparently he’s still trying to convince people he’s not a complete asshole.https://kinja.com/matty79/discussions
Going into that with nothing but contempt and then finding him writing multiple paragraphs consoling someone whose dad died is… Like dropping a hot coal into water.The water’s still boiling, though.
Oh, I’m still ready to go after him guns blazing. That dude cashed his check with me a long time ago. His constant need to out-lib anyone at every turn was somehow the least annoying thing about him.
It’s always fascinating when someone tries so hard not to be a bigot that they inadvertently become one.
If you say you don’t believe in him he loses all his power.
I don’t believe in that runny little shit. I don’t believe in that runny little shit. I don’t believe in that runny little shit.
Careful invoking that name! We might summon him back into being!While we’re on a Marvel article thread, I’m reminded of one of Prince Ruprecht’s most Ruprecht moments, where he suggested that Captain Marvel beating up an old lady who’s clearly a Skrull in the trailer was clearly problematic because we shouldn’t be sending the message that beating up old ladies is something worth cheering. As if people were going to see that trailer and go, “Huh, the societal taboo about cold-clocking the elderly has expired then? Get ready for a beating, Nanna Elsie!”
Probably one of the biggest and most egregious purity ponies I’ve ever come across. I remember he once told me I wasn’t allowed to call myself a liberal anymore because I disagreed with him on something. Honey, I’ve been voting for Democrats and further left for longer than you’ve been alive. Go make me a sandwich.Remember when he thought we’d be interested in his supposedly being bisexual? Ew.
Honey, this is a blog, not the New York Times.
Your name being included on the poster is usually part of the compensation and contract negotiated between the studio and the actor’s agent. The 3 C’s of an actor’s deal are usually Compensation (how much $ they get paid), Credit (where their name appears, when, how big, etc.), and Control (whether they have influence in the script, the edit, the final picture, etc.). No way is a movie poster, especially for as big a deal as a MCU film, just some kid in marketing just deciding who’s name to put on there and in what order. It’s absolutely negotiated by teams of lawyers ahead of time as to who gets billed where (which is why her name now appears “last” in the list, it doesn’t upset the pre-negotiated order of the other actors (with the And-As credits for Bradley Cooper and Josh Brolin being actually last since they had negotiated the prestige position of final placement)). So this is really just a bunch of nerds forcing Marvel to give up something extra for free to Danai Gurira that her agent didn’t get for her. Her people made the deal, but, turns out that Internet Rage got her more out of it.
Totally right and totally agree. I would only add that there are probably copies of that poster in every possible configuration. Names in different order, faces higher or lower or bigger or smaller, looking left or right, and anything else that may come up. All changes made to accommodate everyone’s contracts. She was probably supposed to be on the final poster, but the poster that got photographed (yes, probably by an intern) was a wrong edit. The one that gets printed and sent out will probably be right. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they left her name off deliberately just to trend. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit…
It’s not uncommon for someone to get their face on their poster, but, not their name. All part of the contract details.
Yeah, but literally everyone on that poster got their name on it except the one person that everyone is going to pitch a fit about. Shenanigans.
Yeah, this movie definitely needed some help getting attention.
Is it possible that Chris Hemsworth’s contract states he gets to look in the opposite direction of everyone else? I so hope this was something his agents negotiated.
The tone of this article really sucks. Misplaced hostility in place of snark = kinjavclub
This is absolutely a mistake by a designer working in a hurry. He or she got a copy doc with more than a dozen names plus the huge pile of footer text, was copy-pasting to get all the type in place and likely didn’t even think to count the number of layers, much less look to check the particular names. The project manager checked that everything was spelled correctly, the social media intern made sure the image loaded properly and that was all the thought anyone gave it. Happens all the time, this is just a randomly high profile example.
I’m going to abide by the old maxim, “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” Seeing as they had roughly 9 million names to put on that poster, is it so hard to believe that one was left off by mistake, even if it is the woman of colour? I mean, no one’s going to forget to chuck RDJ’s credit up there, but Gurira, no offence to a fine actor doing great work, is one of the more likely names to be missed.
From what I know about how this kind of thing is done (source: I’ve worked with designers/graphic artists in professional contexts for many years), there’s one or more people responsible for actually assembling the imagery, and those people have literally zero authority to decide whose name goes on the poster. They are given a list and told to put the names up top. Those people do not typically question the list unless it’s egregiously wrong, e.g. names are misspelled or the star of the movie is not there. Danai Gurira is great but she’s second-tier at best in a movie like Endgame and if the list that was given to the artist omitted her name, they wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with it, even though her face is on the poster.And that’s assuming that the artists even realized the disconnect, which they likely would not have: artists are, in my experience, not the most detail-oriented folks; that’s not meant as a criticism, just an observation. They tend to care more about the big picture. (I know artists who bemoan having to distract from their artwork with things like captions and names.)So the poster’s done and they send it off to various people for approval, and it’s entirely possible none of them notice that one name that should be there is missing—except they check the list that was sent, and sure enough, Gurira’s name isn’t on it, so they all figure, well, Janet, who made the list, would know who’s supposed to be on it, and she’s in a meeting right now, and she yelled at me the last time I interrupted her in a meeting, so I’m going to say it looks fine. For all they know, Gurira’s agents didn’t negotiate to have her name on the poster, or she took a pay bump in lieu of her name, or there’s some back-alley backstabbing going on and someone at Marvel is trying to fuck over one of Gurira’s agents (because he hates that agent) by leaving her name off the list and pretending it was something her agents okayed.Another possibility is that the mistake was noticed, and fixed, but then the person responsible for publishing the image (who is absolutely NOT any of the people mentioned above) grabbed the wrong one from the directory “Endgame_onesheet_v3_final_FINAL_feigerevision2_final” and sent it out. Or, it wasn’t until social media made a stink that the person who actually knew that it was wrong (Janet, who realized too late that she had simply accidentally deleted Gurira’s name from the list while copy-pasting it from Excel into Outlook) called the art department (or, possibly, the outside marketing company who did the work) and screamed at them to fix it.
I’ve never worked with artists, but I’ve worked in enough offices to know about the existence of documents labelled “Name List_FINAL” and “Name List_FINAL (2)”. And all the other little mistakes and steps that could have led to this.
Looks like you had a great time writing this one, Hughes.Big fuck up for sure. Glad they fixed it.
OH DEAR GOD 18-24 YEAR OLDS ARE BACKLASHINGSTEER THE SHIP INTO THE SUN
We do make up 11% of moviegoers.
Congratulations, you explained the joke. You’ll understand why that’s a bad thing when you get a little older.:: head pat ::
You have to admit that your comment could easily be read either way.I’ll take the head pat for sure though. Arp arp.
You have to admit you need to wash your hair, too.
The weird ordering system Kinja uses made me say, “What does my clean hair have to do with vaping?”
All that pudding up there is far more of an issue anyway.
IT’S CEREMONIAL!!!
Check out the new Kinjamprove Continued for all your Kinja thread nesting and blocking needs: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kinjamprove-continued/mcoeilbaljapapgpnokmhdgnmgdbimgo?hl=en-US
Wow, functional and hideous! This is way better!
I was about to respond that I washed it this morning before reaching up and discovering that it was literally caked with human shit. Other than the two-hour period during which I completely blacked out this afternoon, I have no idea how this is possible!
I want pudding.
How do you sneak your avocado toast into the theater?
I fold it inside my fist-sized cotton candy-flavored vape pen. Tide pods fit right in your pockets though, so I usually go for those and pop em like milk duds.
Once, I asked one of those vaper fucks how they got those huge clouds of smoke, and he replied, “Well, if you have at least a rudimentary understanding of electrici….hey!!!” as I knocked the fucking thing out of his hand and called him a knob.
I really hope this is true.
Eeeh..mostly true. I walked away and left the room mid-sentence as soon as he started with his “If you have a rudimentary…” bullshit. You ever done that? Just walked away from someone while they answer a question you asked? Total dick move, but man, it feels good.
That one got me. A+.
I like to nibble a tiny hole in each section of the Tide Pod and enjoy each flavor separately.
If we’re talking ideal circumstances rather than movie theaters, I generally treat them like poached eggs and let them spill over my avocado-thick toast. That way I can always lick my chin later if I crave more of that brain cell-deadening flavor.
Better than actual Milk Duds.
I prefer Pornhub’s off-brand MILF x Studs.
In your ironic beard, obvs.
It’s actually really difficult, because the obvious thing would be to put 2 pieces together, avocado in, so it doesn’t schmear the inside of your pockets. But then you’d have an avocado SANDWICH, which is deeply unacceptable.
In smoothie form hidden on an emotional support animal
Your virtual pitchforks, memes and cat videos are a force to be reckoned with.
What kind of person cares about this shit?
People with massive hard-ons for intersectionality, I guess.
It doesn’t take a lot of care to write something on the internet, you know. I happen to be using an extremely miniscule amount of care to write what I’m writing right now.
Ummm, Karen Gillan is a woman of color. The color blue.
I’ll show myself out
For what it’s worth, Marvel has now fixed the error—which is to say, the
deliberate decision that they made and then got yelled at for.You’re one of those insufferable white guys who needs to signal their wokeness at every possible opportunity, aren’t you?Did you skip that class at journalism school where the professor explained the dangers of making completely unfounded assumptions?Meanwhile your colleague James Whitbrook managed to sum up the situation without making unfounded claims based on no evidence whatsoever.
That’s how a professional does it.
Seriously though, has William Hughes never heard of Hanlon’s Razor?“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”So which of the two is more likely, that some overworked guy responsible for the credits on the poster design forgot to do a headcount (there are a lot of heads on that poster!), or that a cabal of mustache-twirling evil executives sat around in a luxurious board room and thought up ways to marginalize a black actress…right after making the decision to put her on that poster in the first place.In what kind of bizarroworld do you have to live in for the latter to make more sense? Jesus F. Christ, this writer makes Hamilton “hot take” Nolan look like Alexander Hamilton in comparison.
Both the article and the headline call it a fuck-up. There is literally no suggestion of what you’re talking about.
You’re one of those insufferable white guys who needs to signal their wokeness at every possible opportunity, aren’t you?It’s annoying how often this happens nowadays. I don’t need you uneducated people to speak for me, thank you. That Nagini thing from the Fantastic Beast movie was excruciating to watch.
Umm… You mean the Nagini thing that women of color were the first to call problematic?
Nope. At first the “woke” people were trying to claim that Nagini was “an Indian name and the actress should be played by an Indian”. Fuck off. Nagini was taken from Indonesian—my birthplace—and the actress playing her was a Chinese-descent Korean. Chinese-descent people, in Indonesia especially, has been suffering from discrimination in Southeast Asian countries, and people of other races have tried to erase our people’s contribution to history. To this day, non-Chinese have been trying to revise history and make it so my people don’t seem to have a home or even exist—Nagini in Fantastic Beast stood against that. That’s the most spotlight we’ve ever got in Hollywood.So, to those people faking an outrage over it. Fuck. Off.
You’re being completely dishonest. Whether it’s purposeful or you honestly don’t remember how things went down, I can’t say, but it’s dishonest nonetheless. Read the articles about the complaints, including the one written here. One of the first people to complain about the decision was Ellen Oh, a middle-grades author of Asian descent. And her complaint was that Nigini being an Asian woman and also a pet was problematic for obvious reasons. Another person cited was an Indian author who’s written about Nagas who correct Rowling (and you) by noting that the myth and the word were both Indian in origin and traveled to Indonesia later. I’m glad you felt seen and represented to some extent by the character. That’s great. But that doesn’t make the other people who were frustrated by the story and casting wrong. It’s bullshit to pretend it was a fake controversy being spearheaded by white people trying to “virtue signal” when it was people of color who’d spent time researching the history being referenced who actually complained.
Oh, fuck off. You’re being dishonest if you choose to ignore countless “she’s the wrong color Asian, DUH” posts, tweets, statuses, etc. You know damn well those two things you listed aren’t the only complaints people were having.Second of all, lots of Indonesian culture was influenced by Indian myth. Our ancient language was Sanskrit. We have as much claim to it as India, and to ignore one’s claim is as bad as ignoring both.No, those frustrated by the casting was simply wrong. There’s no two way about it. You can’t use the “well, actuallyyyyy” bullshit defense. Rowling based the character on Indonesian myth and specifically said she hailed from Indonesia. Virtue-signaling is correct. That’s all you people do. So, kindly fuck off and leave my culture alone.
I’m not doing shit to your culture, so you can save your self-righteous attitude. I’m also not being remotely dishonest. You claimed that white people were the only ones complaining. That was as lie. And now you’re being an asshole about it. I’m not sure why you can’t seem to fathom that people could have legitimate issues about something that you personally found to be empowering. No one is saying that you don’t have the right to see someone who looks like you and comes from your background depicted on screen or that you, as someone from Indonesia, can’t also have connection to those myths. The fact that you’re a person of color doesn’t give you the right to tell other people of color (or their white allies for that matter) what they’re allowed to care about and only assholes use the phrase “virtue signaling” seriously.
I never said “white people”, let alone that they were “the only one complaining”. The guy I quoted did. I agreed with the sentiment he was making, not the people who were making them. But “white people” were, in fact, part of the group who voiced their opinions on things they have no place in. The fact that you’re putting words into my mouth tells exactly the kind of person you are, if your posts so far haven’t made it clear.My issue is uneducated people voicing their uneducated opinions on things they know next to nothing about. My issue is people who fucking said “she’s the wrong color Asian”. You coming in here telling me “no, that didn’t happen” is fucking bullshit. “White allies”? That’s something only people who think that “white people are allowed to have an opinion on this” say.For the last time, fuck off. I’m ignoring you, since apparently I can’t block you. You’re exactly the kind of person we don’t need more of in this world. The fact that you think you’re an “ally” or you think you have moral high ground in this matter is laughable.
Ignore me if you want, but I will not “fuck off.” You don’t get to tell me what I’m allowed to talk about just like you don’t get to care other people what to care about or be offended by. Pretending that you weren’t talking about white people specifically five comments in after intentionally quoting someone else who was doing so is laughably disingenuous. My issue is people who fucking said “she’s the wrong color Asian”. You coming in here telling me “no, that didn’t happen” is fucking bullshit.When did I do that? All I said was that people of color were the first I saw and most notable people upset at the casting and storytelling decisions. I then explained why they were upset, which you chose to totally ignore because you’d rather just be an angry asshole. “White allies”? That’s something only people who think that “white people are allowed to have an opinion on this” say.Yes. I do think white people are allowed to have an opinion. It should be informed by the thoughts and experiences of people of color and those who are directly affected should be the ones directing the complaints if there are any. But that doesn’t mean white people can’t have an opinion on something related to race or voice that opinion. Using your ethnicity to silence others is bullshit. Especially since I’m not even disagreeing with you. All I’ve done is point out that other people of color had a problem with the portrayal of the character. The fact that you’ve chosen to write multiple angry screeds in response and act like I showed up on your doorstep with a white hood while accusing other people of being performatively woke is seriously ironic.
You don’t realize how easy we’re getting it here — if Barsanti had been assigned this write-up, God only knows what scolding we’d have to read.
So much virtue signaling. It feels good to feel superior to someone else, and that is what he’s doing for this whole article. When Marvel apologized and wrote “It should have been up there all this time,” he was like, “No shit, guys.” No shit is something you say when someone says something that doesn’t need to be said. Like would you prefer it if they hadn’t apologized for their mistake? You can do better.
You can never win with these guys, it’s never good enough.People who desperately look for things to get offended about will always find them.
What’s your problem, Hughes? Why are you like this?
I was so pumped to see her on the poster. Does this mean she is a part of the team? She seems like too much of a badass to leave on the sideline.
Given the heavy implication that Shuri is also dusted, it’s likely that Okoye is in charge of Wakanda right now.
On a side note, anyone else feels like Rocket feels just a tad out of place? It’s like all these stoic looking superheros, and a raccoon at the very bottom. I guess Raccoons can’t look stoic, that’s the problem.
Would you settle for pensive and a little sexy?
Ikr, he should be huge and right in the middle. And the stupid endgame name should be changed to racoon’s revenge: this time it’s fursonal
Rocket is obviously there for comedic effect and I welcome it
This isn’t nearly as bad as what happened to Judson Scott.
Calm. The fuck. Down.
Maybe instead of criticising them for this one mistake, we should congratulate them for remembering Jeremy Renner. That’s no cake walk there.
There’s a lot of complicated contract stuff that usually leads to actors getting notable billing on posters/credits that I’m sure the designer was following by the book, but I think it’s nice they just went and added her name anyway, even if it was technically just a corporate move to appease twitter. She definitely deserves to get billing just purely as a great actor playing a great character that apparently is important enough to be on the poster.
I’m so happy that internationally beloved superstar Danai Gurira was added as the 65th head to the already cluttered and ugly genre of posters for superhero movies. We’ve come a long way.
“That being said, someone at Marvel marketing could have solved a lot of problems for themselves today…”Or not because as you said this shit is all worked out in contracts. Glad the pissbabies with no concept of any of this got their way though. That’ll help things in the future.
Can’t wait to read the over-the-top, ridiculously ass worded, stretching af, article that comes from this on the Root
so presumably someone on Gurira’s team signed off on the decision to not include her name next to the guy voicing the CGI space rat on the original poster. Ahem — I believe the preferred term is trash panda, not space rat.I hope someone got fired, etc.
On a happier note, James Gunn is back to direct GotG 3 😀
This article has it’s facts wrong. Danai Guria was listed with cast on the poster…at the bottom. The problem was was that unlike everyone else who’s picture was on the page she wasn’t listed on top like she should have been.
Much ado about nothing. But the outrage must play on!
Implying 75% of the audience even knows her character’s name.
Aren’t we neglecting another possibility here? That she was never supposed to be on the poster in the first place? Maybe after looking at the proof, someone said, “man, this poster looks awfully white and male…anything we can do about this?” Then, they added her and neglected to add her name? It seems equally plausible that they fell asleep after an attempt at being woke.