It does seem like silly racist-baiting to cast the only superhero who is expressly European as a black man, but ultimately, I just don't care who plays Thor as long as he's pretty.
I hate to play this card, but if it were the other way around--say, a white man cast as Anansi--would that not be offensive?
I can guarantee the French will not be amused, given the whole issue with rioting and burning of cars and such.
Quite frankly, if he's gonna be French, why not make him, you know, French? Hell make him black and French, and/or Muslim and French, but at least French and French. Otherwise just abandon this notion of having different people "representing" different areas of the world and just get together a bunch of guys and girls to fight the badguys, with no regard to origin at all.
Anything that would get a conservative "in an uproar" is by definition good, better, best.
This is no longer an "advanced" country!
Conservatives avowed, never-varying aim is to return the U.S. to the days before abolition, suffrage, fed notes, steam power, electricity, refrigeration, food safety, seat belts, telephones, ink, books, houses, heat, light and sexual reproduction.
In other words, conservatives want to go back, back, back, as far as they can drag us. They will never give up their quest to "get their country back..." -- as far back as the Dark Ages, if at all possible.
Conservatives are doing what terrorists could never do: utterly destroy this country and everything for which it stands.
In a few years, all that will be left of the U.S. will be a tyrannized slave colony, with hundreds of millions toiling to support a few thousand ravenous vampires.
@6: It's like how people got up in arms about Denzel Washington playing Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing, but had no problem with white actors (often wearing some godawful blackface) playing Othello.
Marvel and DC have had PC messages on and off as long as I can remember (look at X-Men, the whole thing is about minorities who are feared, attacked, etc). I have no issue with the content, though the delivery has usually been pretty heavy handed. If these idiots are just noticing it now because of a Muslim character, they are remarkably dense.
@14: Except that it is important to the story that Othello is black and not so much that Don Pedro is white.
This is more along the lines of casting one of the ancillary egyptian or greek gods as a white nordic dude...which I'm pretty sure has happened to no controversy what so ever.
@14 - I don't remember the hullaballoo of which you speak, but I was pretty young when that version of Much Ado came out. I do, however, remember many lengthy discussions about how to best handle a production of Othello or The Merchant of Venice without being blatantly offensive as per the original scripts. I have heard the argument that it's a tradition to have Othello in blackface, but so once was an all-male cast, and I don't remember the last time that happened.
I guess my point is that everyone is maybe a little too worked-up about this, but that's nothing new.
@17: Read what I said again. Based on the point you made (Othello is clearly black, but Don Pedro's race doesn't matter much), it would make sense for people to get upset about white actors playing Othello, but not about black actors playing Don Pedro. What actually happened was the opposite.
@21: But 400g isn't even a pound. 450g is, you buffoon.
You're right, there probably would be a huge, passionate outcry in some communities if a white person played [insert ethnic deity here].
But you know what? As inevitable as that reaction might be, it would also be incredibly stupid and petty. I will give props to white people on this one, in that only a few of them really give a crap that a black actor is portraying a Norse God. Maybe it's because honkeys have shitloads of accomplished role models already and don't feel some possessive need to cling like a terrified infant to one bush-league deity as a critical symbol of self-esteem and worth.
Of course, idiocy is not owned by any one race, as we can see from all the comic book geeks who are furious that a muslim or gay person or lefty could possibly make a decent superhero.
If it's racist to protest that a Norse god is being played by a black man, then it was also racist to be annoyed that the main characters in Airbender, who are all supposed to be Asian or Pacific Islander, were played by white people.
It's not racism, it's people wanting the movie to be like the book/manga/comic/whatever. You can argue about how nerdy that makes people, and whether they should care, but it's not racism.
There are very few actors in this world better suited to play a god than Idris Elba.
That being said, this kind of non-controversy is best ignored. Idris Elba wasn't from Baltimore either, but he played a Baltimorian drug dealer on TV. If there were any controversy about his previous roles, we would have considered them too stupid to comment on. This is the same.
Actors play against race or sexuality or accent or whatever all the time. No one should care.
and chris hemsworth is whitey mcwhiterson. i agree, @27. idris elba is the perfect choice for Heimdall. and cartman, if that means you will not be wrecking my viewing pleasure by your presence, i shall sleep soundly tonight knowing that.
I've got news for you guys, Algerians living in France... are French. France occupied Algeria from 1848-1962, and entire companies of Algerian soldiers fought under the French banner in WWII, in the name of "The Mother Country."
Yes, it could be true that certain Algerians feel more Algerian than French, but it is standard for them all to learn French in school and and anyone who chose to live in France would obviously be someone who felt more French than Algerian.
Obviously those CCC asshats are the exact type of asshats to make a big fucking stink about shit they don't even care about (I SERIOUSLY doubt that any of those fuck wads have ever read a Thor comic) but to say that anyone opposed to the casting choice is a racist is kind of silly. It's totally legit to have casting expectations for a movie that are based on the source material. I'm sure almost every single Harry Potter fan would have complained if Ellen Page had been cast as Dumbledore and it wouldn't have had anything to do with them being sexist.
That being said; I'm sure he'll be excellent and with Kenneth Branagh directing it actually has a chance of being a good film.
Well, except for Batman himself. He's too busy racially profiling villains.
I hate to play this card, but if it were the other way around--say, a white man cast as Anansi--would that not be offensive?
But still, focus of the film or not, this kind of racial exchange wouldn't fly if it weren't white-to-black.
Quite frankly, if he's gonna be French, why not make him, you know, French? Hell make him black and French, and/or Muslim and French, but at least French and French. Otherwise just abandon this notion of having different people "representing" different areas of the world and just get together a bunch of guys and girls to fight the badguys, with no regard to origin at all.
This is no longer an "advanced" country!
Conservatives avowed, never-varying aim is to return the U.S. to the days before abolition, suffrage, fed notes, steam power, electricity, refrigeration, food safety, seat belts, telephones, ink, books, houses, heat, light and sexual reproduction.
In other words, conservatives want to go back, back, back, as far as they can drag us. They will never give up their quest to "get their country back..." -- as far back as the Dark Ages, if at all possible.
Conservatives are doing what terrorists could never do: utterly destroy this country and everything for which it stands.
In a few years, all that will be left of the U.S. will be a tyrannized slave colony, with hundreds of millions toiling to support a few thousand ravenous vampires.
1.) Someone needs to look at a more recent map.
2.) If the US is so European, then wtf was that health care reform stuff all about?
This is more along the lines of casting one of the ancillary egyptian or greek gods as a white nordic dude...which I'm pretty sure has happened to no controversy what so ever.
I guess my point is that everyone is maybe a little too worked-up about this, but that's nothing new.
@18 I hear it's lost it's meaning when they converted Merchant of Venice to metric and started talking about 400 grams of flesh.
@21: But 400g isn't even a pound. 450g is, you buffoon.
You're right, there probably would be a huge, passionate outcry in some communities if a white person played [insert ethnic deity here].
But you know what? As inevitable as that reaction might be, it would also be incredibly stupid and petty. I will give props to white people on this one, in that only a few of them really give a crap that a black actor is portraying a Norse God. Maybe it's because honkeys have shitloads of accomplished role models already and don't feel some possessive need to cling like a terrified infant to one bush-league deity as a critical symbol of self-esteem and worth.
Of course, idiocy is not owned by any one race, as we can see from all the comic book geeks who are furious that a muslim or gay person or lefty could possibly make a decent superhero.
It's not racism, it's people wanting the movie to be like the book/manga/comic/whatever. You can argue about how nerdy that makes people, and whether they should care, but it's not racism.
That being said, this kind of non-controversy is best ignored. Idris Elba wasn't from Baltimore either, but he played a Baltimorian drug dealer on TV. If there were any controversy about his previous roles, we would have considered them too stupid to comment on. This is the same.
Actors play against race or sexuality or accent or whatever all the time. No one should care.
Yes, it could be true that certain Algerians feel more Algerian than French, but it is standard for them all to learn French in school and and anyone who chose to live in France would obviously be someone who felt more French than Algerian.
That being said; I'm sure he'll be excellent and with Kenneth Branagh directing it actually has a chance of being a good film.
I'm thinking casting a black man as a Norse god was specifically about avoiding the movie being 'adopted' by white power fanatics.