CBR: Kevin Smith Redirects "Green Hornet"

[CBR News]

The fan favorite director and occasional comics writer opens up to CBR about how his lost movie screenplay came back as a Dynamite Entertainment comic, how Green Hornet is like Boba Fett and the finer points of a female Kato.


Full article here.

[iduckles]

"You could never do the like, you know, "In the Heat of the Moment, We Accidentally Fucked" storyline with Batman and Robin. I mean, you can, but DC would sue you."

What a great idea for an Elseworlds story! Can we please have a gay DCU story? (and this isn't sarcastic, I think it would be a hoot).

[keilthetarheel]

"You could never do the like, you know, "In the Heat of the Moment, We Accidentally Fucked" storyline with Batman and Robin. I mean, you can, but DC would sue you."

What a great idea for an Elseworlds story! Can we please have a gay DCU story? (and this isn't sarcastic, I think it would be a hoot).

Ha - but you could do it with Batman and Black Canary - and fans would yell and cry and rant

(or wait, were they ranting just because, truthfully, they don't like Frank Miller)

[jadehorde]

"You could never do the like, you know, "In the Heat of the Moment, We Accidentally Fucked" storyline with Batman and Robin. I mean, you can, but DC would sue you."

What a great idea for an Elseworlds story! Can we please have a gay DCU story? (and this isn't sarcastic, I think it would be a hoot).

I saw this concept of sexual tension brought up elsewhere, and so they made Kato a woman, but I never understood it, or at least why this pairing gets broached.

Kato is the bodyguard and generally accepted if not outwardly expressed as the muscle for the pair. So why is it logical for Kato to be a woman and not instead change the Green Hornet? Now obviously say Cassandra Cain or Shiva would certainly be worthy and uberdeadly bodyguards, but then so would Val, Shang Chi, and Dragon. Eh, for me watching the Bruce Lee version and hearing about his outrage at Robin of all people beating him thus they changed it, I just don't see why they felt Kato was the one open to being changed.

[dupont2005]

I don't see why a woman can't be a bodyguard...

[Bic]

I saw this concept of sexual tension brought up elsewhere, and so they made Kato a woman, but I never understood it, or at least why this pairing gets broached.

Kato is the bodyguard and generally accepted if not outwardly expressed as the muscle for the pair. So why is it logical for Kato to be a woman and not instead change the Green Hornet? Now obviously say Cassandra Cain or Shiva would certainly be worthy and uberdeadly bodyguards, but then so would Val, Shang Chi, and Dragon. Eh, for me watching the Bruce Lee version and hearing about his outrage at Robin of all people beating him thus they changed it, I just don't see why they felt Kato was the one open to being changed.

A female Green Hornet would actually be pretty interesting, and would probably lead to just as many, if not more, plot lines to explore than switching Kato's gender.

Would an Asian Green Hornet work? Now I'm interested in how many different permutations of this pair can be put together.

[jadehorde]

I don't see why a woman can't be a bodyguard...

Sure a bodyguard can be female, especially in comics with uberhuman stats and pressure point attacks. But there's a reason in real life they generally aren't, and even in comics the highest end of the MA pool skew towards male. Hence my post, for every Elektra, Cain and Shiva, there are Dragons, Tigers, Val's, Murdoch, etc.

I don't particularly care about realism, but for the dynamic of the characters, Kato's role is the muscle. Green Hornet could handle himself in a fight, especially with the gear, but it was Kato that was the dangerous hand to hand partner. Sure, it could be a woman, but I think if you want to introduce the sexual tension dynamic, it makes more sense while better fitting all the pieces to have Green Hornet be female. I might be biased due to having seen the old show and then listened to the radio shows and so I can't really see anyone but Bruce Lee in the role, but I think that speaks to the point.

[jadehorde]

A female Green Hornet would actually be pretty interesting, and would probably lead to just as many, if not more, plot lines to explore than switching Kato's gender.

Would an Asian Green Hornet work? Now I'm interested in how many different permutations of this pair can be put together.

I agree. A woman in the societal place of Britt makes more waves (as in changes to established relations and storylines) than having his bodyguard/driver be female, hence my confusion why THAT particular pairing isn't even broached. A woman working in an old boys network of power brokers alone adds more drama.

I mean, if this was the ONLY run happening that would be one thing (though then I really wouldn't want too many changes at all, at last at first), but with 3 different runs of the Green Hornet apparently coming out, I think I have to agree with you in being interested in different permutations to the old formula, and while this is certainly a valid one, eh, I suspect it's a somewhat weaker one.

[TwinPistols]

A woman in the societal place of Britt makes more waves (as in changes to established relations and storylines) than having his bodyguard/driver be female, hence my confusion why THAT particular pairing isn't even broached. A woman working in an old boys network of power brokers alone adds more drama.

You bring up a lot of good points on this subject. I have to agree that changing the gender of the person with the gear and weapons, to female, makes more sense, "on paper" at least, than changing the gender of the bodyguard character. And for a different pair of characters I think that it'd work just fine, but in this situation, it wouldn't have flown.

When you're talking about the Green Hornet you're talking about a well-established main character. Kato is the well-established supporting character, and the two roles aren't equal, in my opinion.

It isn't really Batman and Robin, it's Batman with Robin. Look at the Dark Knight Returns. Changing Robin's gender there didn't make that much of a difference because Robin's the supporting character, even though Robin was well established as a boy before hand.

The Green Hornet's top billing here. Don't get me wrong, Kato's a fantastic supporting character, one that can steal the attention away from the main attraction, at least for a time, but he's still the sidekick. And since the Green Hornet is well-established and still remembered, changing his gender to female wouldn't work for the comics or the film.

[jadehorde]

You bring up a lot of good points on this subject. I have to agree that changing the gender of the person with the gear and weapons, to female, makes more sense, "on paper" at least, than changing the gender of the bodyguard character. And for a different pair of characters I think that it'd work just fine, but in this situation, it wouldn't have flown.

When you're talking about the Green Hornet you're talking about a well-established main character. Kato is the well-established supporting character, and the two roles aren't equal, in my opinion.

It isn't really Batman and Robin, it's Batman with Robin. Look at the Dark Knight Returns. Changing Robin's gender there didn't make that much of a difference because Robin's the supporting character, even though Robin was well established as a boy before hand.

The Green Hornet's top billing here. Don't get me wrong, Kato's a fantastic supporting character, one that can steal the attention away from the main attraction, at least for a time, but he's still the sidekick. And since the Green Hornet is well-established and still remembered, changing his gender to female wouldn't work for the comics or the film.

Certainly a fair interpretation of the situation, but I look more towards it being a legacy character issue more than supporting character issue. Batman can't be a woman because he's Batman. And not the obvious pedantic issue of name, but that it's Bruce Wayne's neverending crusade against crime. Robin's have come and gone regardless of your particular likes and dislikes to the individual standard bearers. A girl being Robin is inevitable even when Dark Knight came out (and there was a lot of interest created by that very change). Same with Superman. But Green Lantern, Flash and others (other than for nostalgic Silver Agers) have successfully moved onto other characters with the mantle. Sure, they are still largely say white and male, but that's part and parcel with the demographics of the audience so you have to accept some of that. But changing the character wholesale isn't exactly out of the question we've done it reasonably successfully at least twice in each of the character's history.

I mean you can't even argue it's supposed to be the "original" Green Hornet since that's back in the 30'-early 50's. You can argue reimagining certainly, but I'm just saying that once you dip into legacy character and not the original or established continuity, anything makes sense.

And for me just cause how I encountered the story, it's Bruce Lee first and then pretty much everyone else ever involved in the franchise next.

[TwinPistols]

I mean you can't even argue it's supposed to be the "original" Green Hornet since that's back in the 30'-early 50's. You can argue reimagining certainly, but I'm just saying that once you dip into legacy character and not the original or established continuity, anything makes sense.

And for me just cause how I encountered the story, it's Bruce Lee first and then pretty much everyone else ever involved in the franchise next.

Fair enough. Could the Green Hornet mantle be passed on to a woman? Sure. Why couldn't it be, right? And you don't have the problem with the denotation of "Man" in the Green Hornet's name. Would a female Green Hornet sell, in any medium? I sincerely doubt it But we can agree to disagree on that one.

All my memories of the character come from the TV show, and yeah, Bruce Lee was the biggest star both in, and out of that show. Nobody remembers who played the Green Hornet (at least, nobody I know) but everybody knows Bruce Lee. I was surprised they went with the female NOW comics version for the first series, but here's the rest of the news in case you don't know - and for those that definitely don't:

The First Green Hornet Series is Kevin Smith's Green Hornet, based on his screenplay, it features the female Kato. It's running concurrently with Green Hornet: Year One featuring the male Kato, and the Kato Ongoing series featuring both versions, and bridging the gap between the two. So Kato's getting an ongoing and will definitely be top billing there. Which Kato is the main character in the ongoing? That I don't know. I think it's the "new" female version, but even if I'm right--

--Kevin Smith's Green Hornet is running for ten months. After that the normal, honest-to-goodness Green Hornet Ongoing will be kicking off. FYI, I frequent the Dynamite boards and Brett Matthews (Lone Ranger scribe) who's writing the series has assured us that his Kato is the male version...So!!!

You gonna get you some Kato. Oh yeah!! And so am I... I'm looking forward to grabbing all the GH stuff as it comes out.

-Pistols