Square: (killing the black man)"too obvious"

Everyone knows that Hollywood has a hideous history of killing black characters in movies either first or ensuring a black character dies in every movie. In their effort to appear "Western" Nomura and Kitase considered following Hollywood's lead and killing off Barret instead of Aeris. Finally, Nomura noted that killing the only black man in the game would not be a surprise to the Western audience who was use to black characters dying first or at a later time in films. He said it would be "too obvious" to kill Barret so himn and Kitase chose Aeris. I dont know whether to feel happy they didn't follow the hideous Hollywood trend or to feel upset that they even considered it. Link:http://www.ff7citadel.com/press/int_egm.shtml

I do remember stumbling across that a while back. We might have even discussed it here before, I'm too lazy to check :p

I don't know if

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Originally Posted by clowd

ensuring a black character dies in every movie.

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is quite accurate, but that's not the point so I'll drop it :p

I don't think Barret's death would have caused as much grief as Aeris's did, but it could certainly have been worked to achieve a pretty emotional response. Dyne's death was pretty powerful imo, and so styling it so that Barret could, y'know, rejoin his wife (and kid) and best friend (bonus points if Marlene is dead now too, leaving him with no-one) would certainly have done well.

There is nothing like killing off the main love interest though. What a sneaky move :p

Am I missing something here, or is this purposely tabloid? Seems like you're inserting unnecessary meaning into what Nomura said. It wasn't Barret's race that made him an "obvious" choice, but rather that he's tough, militaristic, reckless and a man. If he'd been killed, the blow would be less shocking, as most players would be inclined to think, "Well, a guy like that had it coming to him..." We're also pretty used to men in general, not just black men, getting killed off in games and movies anyway.

But killing the harmless lead female out of nowhere, on the other hand...

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Originally Posted by Jiro

There is nothing like killing off the main love interest though. What a sneaky move :p

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Tifa lived just fine tyvm :)

Also who cares if they had killed off Barret? He was crap, and Dyne was so much cooler. I was upset they didnt let me replace Barret with Dyne actually.

Maybe I should make a list over movies where a white person has died. I wonder if I have enough disk space.