In the upcoming movie version of Shakespeare’s fantasy epic The Tempest, Helen Mirren is playing the lead role of the sorceress Prospera. But as any fans of the Bard know, the part is actually supposed to be Propero, a male magician. Apparently, Mirren came to director Julie Taymor with the idea of playing this historically male role, and the rest is history.

While this will certainly be a different Tempest than we’ve seen before, the gender switch will be the only change made to the text (aside from a few cuts, which are necessary for all movie Shakespeare adaptations). But all it takes is that tiny tweak to completely change how the story fits together.

This got us thinking here at the offices of TheTorchOnline.com. There are many fantasy stories out there that would feel quite a bit different if the main characters were suddenly the opposite gender of what we’re used to. Here we take a look at five of the most interesting of these gender-bending possibilities.

Darth Vader

Spoiler alert — Darth Vader is totally Luke’s dad. But think how interesting (and progressive) it would have been if the one person in all the universe to ultimately bring balance to The Force was a woman. And just picture it: “Luke … I am your mother.”

It certainly would have shifted our perception of the relationship between Vader and Palpatine if it was Anaka Skywalker eventually turning into Darth Mader, bringing a potential sexual overtone. And let’s be honest, Star Wars could use a few more powerful female characters.

Frodo

Quick, how many female hobbits can you name? If you have more than Rosie Cotton and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, you’ve already got me, and I imagine many others, beat.

Much of the power of The Lord of the Rings stems from the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien created, as his hero, a lowly hobbit. But imagine if Tolkien had extended that sense of the underdog just a little further, and wound up with the natural conclusion: the hobbit that saved the world was female! That would certainly add a feminine touch to a massively male-dominated world, not to mention putting a new spin on the relationship between our new heroine and the ever-stalwart Sam.

Xena

Xena: Warrior Princess was a ground-breaking show for many reasons, but probably the primary one was that it took the rich world of Greek mythology and put a female action hero at the center of all the gods and monsters. So it probably wouldn’t be that great of an idea to switch up the gender of the main characters, especially considering the show was spun off from the inferior Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which was set in the same universe but with a man as the main character. Besides, there’s always the risk it might turn out like this:

Buffy

Oh, Buffy. The matriarch of the modern-day vampire crazy. The (formerly) one and only Slayer. Buffy Summers holds a special place in many a heart, largely due to her reluctant-savior routine. The running gag of the entire show was taking a stock character in horror films — the dumb valley girl — and turning her into the main hero, complete with epic powers.

But what if the Slayer had been born a guy? (Yes, I know, this doesn’t fit in with the mythos — this is just an experiment.) A surfer dude himbo or burn-out skater would fit equally well into the victim role in a horror movie, so how cool would it be to see a guy like that going stake-happy on all the vamps in Sunnydale?

Superman

And here it is: the big one.

Superman is, of course, the stuff of legend, the great-grandpappy of the modern day superhero. So what if the iconic man with the big S on his chest had a chest of a decidedly more feminine shape?

Honestly, the story wouldn’t change that much. Assuming this new Superwoman is heterosexual, she would probably end up falling for Jimmy Olsen instead of Lois Lane, but that’s about it, I’d imagine. An interesting storyline would be a rivalry/friendship with Wonder Woman, similar to Superman’s relationship with Batman.

Who knows? Maybe in the years to come, some rebellious storytellers will come around and re-imagine these stories with gender-switched leads. Until then, we can only speculate.

• We’ve previously reported on the casting of the child version of a young Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Well, we now know who they cast as the child version of a character we’ve barely seen until now – Lily Potter. She’ll be played by 10-year-old Ellie Darcey-Alden, and most likely appear in Part 2.

• Forbes has released their list of the Top 10 Earning Authors, and genre authors figure prominently. Stephenie Meyer is #2 with $40 million, and Stephen King was #3 at $34 million. I have some doubts that J.K. Rowling earned “only” $10 million this year, even if her books are past their prime: perhaps she got most of the money for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park earlier, but she’s still getting a big cut of the proceeds, I’m sure.

• Genre television is going to be hard to find in the fall. ABC’s No Ordinary Family isn’t getting great buzz, but you can now watch the first episode online and decide for yourself.

• Vampires Suck did all right at the box office over the weekend, raking in $12.2 million for the three-day period, and over $18.6 million since it opened Wednesday. Not bad for a film that  only cost $20 million to make.

• I’m not entirely sure that the world needs another version of The Tempest, but I’ll generally watch anything with Dame Helen Mirren. She’s cast as the sorceress Prospera (yes, a gender change) in the upcoming film, and can be seen casting spells on the front page. What concerns me is that also in the film is Russell Brand, and I have a policy of never watching anything he’s in. I’m fairly certain The Bard himself wouldn’t approve of the casting choice.

• Star Trek’s Walter Koenig is back making comics. He’s starting with a news series called Things To Come, in a post-apocalyptic world where vampires are the dominant species on earth. He’s also doing new editions of his Raver series, where the hero has to travel in nightmare worlds that are born from his own psychosis.

• We’re going to round out the post with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader news. First, young Arabella Morton, who plays the controversial role of Gael in the film, has started a fan page on Facebook. She’s only got 207 fans as of press time, but she is answering questions about the film, so who knows what you might discover?

• And finally, three short clips from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader have appeared online. In general, they center around young Eustace Clarence Scrubb (Will Poulter), who is, of course, a little brat. The first clip is partly new footage.

• The second clip from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is almost entirely Eustace, as he finds a mountain of gold treasure. Like most movie gold, this stuff is incredibly lightweight. But there’s a twist to what happens, even if you don’t quite understand it yet.

• If you haven’t read the books, the final clip resolves the second. That said, it reveals an encounter that I wasn’t expecting, and least not quite this way. Clearly, some license has been taken with the source.

• What do you think? Excited for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader now?

For those living in or close to New York City, the wonderful tradition of Shakespeare in the Park — free performances of the Bard’s plays set in the beauty of Central Park — continues this year with Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s great comedies (that features a strong female lead to boot!).

While Shakespeare has a bad rap for being alienating and esoteric, the fact is there’s a lot to enjoy from his works for your average fantasy fan. Chances are if you like Tolkien and Lewis, you’ll probably get a kick out of Shakespeare.

Now, not all of his works are astoundingly fun and exciting. He had quite a dark side, as evidenced by some of his tragedies, like Othello and Titus Andronicus. Those looking for action and magic might be bored by his history plays, even though there’s some great drama in them.

But what endeared Shakespeare to me at an early age was his blatant and unapologetic love of fantasy storytelling. His works are littered with magical sub-plots, powerful sorcerers, and mystical potions. He was a student of world mythology, and thus had a respectable knowledge of gods and faeries, which he used freely and liberally, often changing characters or inventing new ones depending on the needs of his story.

One of his most famous and oft-performed comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a series of one magical plot after another. The play opens in Ancient Greece, when a wedding celebration between Theseus and Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen, is overshadowed by four young lovers who just can’t seem to figure it out. (It’s complicated and non-magical, so to us it’s boring.)

Soon we are treated to a scene featuring a quarrel between Titania, the Queen of the Faeries, and Oberon, her consort and Faerie King, over which one should have custody of a changeling servant. Oberon orders his spritely servant, Puck, to dose her with a magical potion and make her fall in love with some nasty forest creature.

Wackiness, as always, ensues. Puck (a character whose fame has possibly outgrown the play that features him, and is where we get the word puckish) puts a spell on a mortal, giving him the head of an ass, and sets it up for Titania to get hot for him. The love potion — has there ever been a better plot device? — is also used to mess around with the mortal lovers, but of course, this being a comedy, all ends happily.

If you’re intrigued by the story, there’s a pretty decent film version from 1999 starring Rupert Everett, Kevin Kline, and Michelle Pfeiffer (who, as Titania, looks so beautiful she might melt your television screen.) If you like musicals and don’t mind a little guy-on-guy action, there’s also a really interesting film called Were the World Mine that just came out last year, which features a high school kid who discovers the secret to the love potion’s formula while playing Puck in a school production.

A less light-hearted but no less magical work is The Tempest, a play about an exiled magician, Prospero, who comes to rule the spirit-infested island on which he is marooned. He rescues a spirit, Ariel, who is trapped in a tree, and then forces Ariel to do magic on his behalf. (Arthurian scholars might remember the legend in which Merlin is trapped in a tree by the sorceress Morgan le Fay — a story Shakespeare was probably familiar with.)

Prospero takes revenge on those who did him wrong by sending out a great storm and shipwrecking his enemies on the same island, eventually drawing them closer towards an inevitable reunion. Also of note is the character Caliban, who is said to be the son of a mortal woman and a devil, and is sometimes describes as half-fish, but always referred to as a monster. (He also might be the basis for the character Calibos in Clash of the Titans, a creature who has no actual Greek counterpart.)

While Midsummer and Tempest are Shakespeare’s most obviously fantasy-rich plays, bits of magic are speckled in his other works. The presence of a ghost kicks off the action of Hamlet, and a ghost also appears in Julius Caesar. Three witches, commonly called the Weird Sisters, are heavily featured in Macbeth.

It’s clear Shakespeare enjoyed a nice magical romp. Even if you’re not a fan of him per se, at least you can know you and Shakespeare were fans of the same genre.

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