Doctor Strange

Kevin Feige is about as far from a credible source as you can get. He's the guy in charge of the MCU. If anyone is not allowed to go, "It happened because we f*cked ourselves in the ass with our last movie," it's him.

That's, like, PR 101. Unless your product killed someone, you don't even suggest that you made the wrong choices with it.

edited 17th May '16 11:52:16 AM by TobiasDrake

From my understanding, Black wanted a female villain for Iron Man 3, but Perlmutter (being Perlmutter) turned it down.

Yes, he mentions that in his interview. Black wanted Killian to be a woman.

Either way Killian is probably the worst villain that the MCU has produced. And I don't mean "worst" as in good worst, like they're a good villain, I mean the opposite.

edited 17th May '16 3:13:53 PM by theLibrarian

As far as I understand he wanted the role Killian actually had in the end for a woman...I suspect Maya? I always said that the climax would have been better if she had turned out to be the true villain in all this.

Either way, Feige now has the control, so let's wait and see what happens.

Man, I am so hype for this movie. Love the trippy, Ditko-inspired visuals.

Between Spidey in Civil War and now this, looks like both my favorite Marvel characters are getting great showings, and I am ridiculously happy about it.

Wow, Benedict Cumberbatch actually appeared personally at Comic Con. That is really rare, usually he is too busy for stuff like that (not a knock against him, he really has a full schedule).

They got the "Strange" part down.

My favorite part in Ant-Man was the Quentom Realm scene for capturing the eldritch scenery you will normally see in a silver age Marvel comics (Negative Zone comes to mind).

Now that they are doing Doctor Strange, a character who normally traverse these realms, I am SOOOO happy that they are going to tackle that element to awesome effects.

With all the controversy over the casting of the Ancient One I have to ask, was there any safe way to cast the role? Every casting choice I can think of as some sort of criticism or potential flaw.

1. Cast a Tibetan actor.

Accused of racial stereotyping and risk China not allowing the film to be shown in China which is a major market.

2. Cast a Chinese actor/actress

Accused of racial stereotyping and pandering to China

3. Cast another minority in the role

Accused of pandering to China, potentially racial stereotyping (the magical black character for example), denying Asian actors a role, deviating from the source material, and having the white guy become better than the POC.

4. Move the whole thing to another culture such as making The Ancient One a druid and getting rid of anything Asian.

Accused of pandering to China, deviating from the source material, denying Asian actors a role, and whitewashing.

5. Get rid of The Ancient One all together in favor of something else like a space alien or Strange meeting some mystical entities.

Accused of pandering to China, deviating from the source material, and denying Asian actors a role.

6. Make The Ancient One a shapeshifter from a completely unknown culture or mix of cultures (due to living so long and having been part of all of them). The Ancient One constantly shifts between skin tones and genders so he/she simutantously represents all of them and none of them.

Accused of pandering to China, deviating from source material, denying a single minority a major role, and trying to appease everyone.

So, was there any safe way to cast the role of The Ancient One? The last one is the safest I can think of and even it has its flaws.

There was no choice that was going to be 100% free of room to criticize, but in my mind the two most sensible ones are:

1. Get an asian writer involved, write a more nuanced and complex asian mentor character than the norm. There could have been a lot of ways to downplay any stereotypes here as well like adding a few relatively important asian characters, so the Ancient One wouldn't be the only asian in the movie.

2. Remove the asian mysticism altogether and change it to something else. It would suck for the loss of potential asian representation but it would be a lot less disrespectful.

edited 4th Aug '16 8:00:45 PM by wehrmacht

I'll second both of those. Obviously the first one is ideal (and really, people act like writing a character in a non-racist way is some insurmountable task, it's really not), because it grants significant Asian representation while simultaneously humanizing a character who was previously nothing but a shallow stereotype.

But the second one would also have worked. Yes, we would have lost some Asian representation - but we're losing it anyway. Moving the setting so that the apparently Celtic wizard is actually in the place Celts are from would at least remove the cultural appropriation salt from the sound, because we would no longer have the image of Tilda Swinton with shaven head and Asian robes standing in a temple teaching Cumberbatch martial arts. (Obviously doing so would also have opened a discussion about Celtic appropriation, but that's not my wheelhouse so I'll stay out of that one.)

I might also add that getting a good asian writer to help them probably wouldn't have been hard either, this movie has been planned for years now.

It's honestly a shitty situation for me because I still want to see the movie but the whole situation with the ancient one is just sort of a huge downer.

edited 4th Aug '16 8:12:53 PM by wehrmacht

Same here. I was super hyped for the movie when it was announced - I'd been wanting a Doctor Strange movie for years. Theeeen along came the Ancient White thing, and well, that's my interest gone. I just can't in good conscience hand my money to a project that would pull a stunt like that. (Not trying to tell other people not to see the film - that would be hypocritical of me - just saying I'm not going to.)

And hell, while an Asian writer would have been ideal (because they would have the most nuanced understanding of the cultural and racial identity), it wouldn't even be inherently necessary. There are plenty of non-Asian writers out there that are capable of writing an Asian character in a way that isn't racist.

The stunt was so expected due to the Tibet/China issue, that it hardly registered with me until it became a big thing.

The whole thing is such a loose/loose situation, and I actually feel that Marvel found a good compromise by diversifying in a different way. I am actually pretty excited to see a wise mentor woman for a change.

Honestly, I find the whole thing to be seriously overblown, and I'm Asian-American myself (albeit adopted at only a few months old). Seriously, I don't get the people online who plan to boycott it just because of this one issue.

As another Asian-American, I would've much rather had the Ancient One be Asian, but I'll roll with it anyways.

As an Asian, I don't mind it at all.

Like the one time I can think of complaints about a character's race being justified for a non-controversial role is that Great Wall movie that's being made and for some reason stars Matt Damon instead of a Chinese guy.

Which is ironically made by a Chinese company which simply wants a well-known face in their movie to have a shot at the international market.

I'm just trembling with anticipation on how Marvel Studios will envision places like the Nexus of Realities and the Dark Dimension. There is so much room for them to go nuts with the concepts.

Considering everything else we've seen happen, I'm anticipating it too.

It would be really sad to see the film fail because of all the people online who are anti-Doctor Strange simply because of a casting choice. Seriously, that's a fricken tag on Tumblr, and George Takei fanned the flames by saying that "Marvel must consider us idiots". I mean it, the hatred that is being spewed towards this film is unbelievable. Comments like this don't help, as passionate as they are:

"If you didn’t get the hint, I really, really hate MCU. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but what Marvel has done is way too personal for me to be quiet. The one thing I will force upon you with all my heart, is my pure hatred of the Doctor Strange movie. I’m begging you, please boycott Doctor Strange.

What Marvel is doing with this film is inexcusable. I’m Tibetan, and I grew up in America as a child of refugees. My father was a fan of Marvel comics as a child, and one of his favorite stories was Doctor Strange’s, because of his connection to our homeland, Tibet. The Ancient One was a high Tibetan lama who taught Doctor Strange the art of magic. You might think Marvel’s only crime is whitewashing him, but its a lot worse then that. tl;dr Marvel blatantly turned the Ancient One into a white woman, as well as changed Doctor Strange’s original setting of Tibet to Nepal, in order to avoid any involvement with Tibet’s current politics (aka oppression) with Communist China.

The reason my parents are refugees is because of the Chinese genocide of Tibetans. Tibet is a country occupied by China, and is one of the most oppressed countries in the world. You probably don’t know much about it because China’s position as a global superpower as well as the government’s complete control of media and news. There is no freedom of speech in all of China, therefore national censorship is extremely common and no one who isn’t involved really knows anything. China pretends that all Tibetans are happy and they really do not like anyone even mentioning the Tibet situation, especially outsiders.

Marvel knows this, one of their main markets is their viewers in China. China has banned a lot of foreign films for long periods of time because of even slight implications of Tibetan oppression (ex: the Avatar the Last Airbender movie). Doctor Strange could get banned if they included Tibet, meaning millions lost. Why bother risking loosing money from China when you can just whitewash everything to cover it up? This is Marvel’s direct statement that they care more about money then human rights, and I’m honestly not surprised. This has always happened, and it will happen again. Literally no one gives a fuck about Tibetans, I’ve seen it happen all my life.

Westerners and the Chinese government alike want to hide our oppression, hide our culture until it makes them money, and hide our millions of deaths and losses. If you do happen to be one of the few who do care, please, please, do not support this film and boycott Doctor Strange."

Seems like people think that the morally right thing to do is not see the movie.

edited 6th Aug '16 1:40:13 AM by LDragon2