Admittedly, I don’t know much about the Marvel world in comic form or its big screen counterparts. I’ve seen a few of the films, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan, and there are plenty of intricacies about the storylines and the Marvel universe as a whole that I simply don’t know. What I do know, however, is the racist backlash Michael B. Jordan has been experiencing ever since being cast as The Human Torch in Fantastic Four is absolutely ridiculous and completely disgusting. And frankly, he’s not going to take it lying dow anymore.
In an op-ed for Entertainment Weekly posted this week, Jordan hit back at whiners who couldn’t deal with the fact that a black man had been cast in the role of a character that was originally described — in 1961, lest we forget — as “blond-hair, blue-eyed”. How dare they actually reimagine this part and update it to reflect the world we live in TODAY? I mean, it’s not like books ever get changed when they’re made into movies! It’s not like white people don’t play people of colour all the time! What were they thinking?!
The whole post is well worth a read, but here’s my favourite part:
Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, “I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate. I’ll take the brunt for the next couple of generations.” I put that responsibility on myself. People are always going to see each other in terms of race, but maybe in the future we won’t talk about it as much. Maybe, if I set an example, Hollywood will start considering more people of color in other prominent roles, and maybe we can reach the people who are stuck in the mindset that “it has to be true to the comic book.” Or maybe we have to reach past them.
To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in. It’s okay to like it.
Too true. Step away from the computer, haters.
Lol, yea.. because “haters” just HAVE to be computer nerds who never leave the house. No, comic book fans who would like to see their favorite series stick to the original story and remain true to the series MUST be racist computer trolls. Take your head out of your a$$, Jennifer.
I’m a very big fan of video games, comic books, and unpopular sub cultures in general, and like many other true fans, I prefer to see game-to-film and comic-to-film adaptations remain true and canon to the original material. Even if some trolls are playing the race card it’s just to get a rise out of people and by his response (and even your own), I can see they have succeeded.
As for real deal fans of Marvel, we just want too see shit stick to the original material, and that means a black can’t play this white role. Modern times and things changing have nothing to do with this. Stop making it all about that.
It’s not about him being black. It’s about he got the role only because he is black. And he and the studio are denying that. No one cared that Pilgrim was black in Powers, no one cared that Ben Urich was black in Daredevil. Because it wasn’t as patently PC motivated as here: “Oh my god, 4 white heroes, we can’t do that, the PC police will rip us a new one. So let’s make one of them black. Which one? The thing? No, with his stoneskin you won’t see he’s black. Susan Storm? Nope, is already a woman and that’s minority enough. Reed Richards? Bitch please, he’s the leader, he has to be a white male. So Johnny Storm it is.”
This wasn’t colorblind casting and that is why people don’t like it.