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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Has the MCU had a German character appear who wasn't in some way connected to the Nazis? Word of God says even that one old guy from The Avengers was a Holocaust survivor.
Nope....even Zemo is played by a German actor.
Honestly, Hollywood does this all the time. Do you really think they care if an actor is actually American, British, French, German or from any other European nationality? As long as he looks the part and manages some sort of believable accent, he can get the job. And while I am sometimes really bothered when my native language is butchered (props to Marvel, btw, they even got the inscriptions in The First Avenger right), I am totally okay with this. That is the point of acting, after all, to be something you are not.
That is why I don't buy into the notion that an Asian character has to get played from an actual Asian from exactly that country, though I do understand that regional differences should be considered - I mean, Hollywood casting agencies are at least aware that someone from South Europe tends to look slightly different from someone from the North, and it would be great if the same awareness would exist concerning Asians, too.
Or even worse, that a gay character has to be played by a gay actor because that would mean that gay actors shouldn't play straight characters, and that would be just a shame.
Honestly, it is way more important that there are people behind the scenes who have the necessary knowledge to put something believable on screen.
Concerning Amadeus Cho: Not a comic book reader here, but I really like the idea of a movie with him, mainly because it would be something entirely different. We are so used to heroes with flashy powers but his main ability is his crazy intelligence. I am pretty sure that Marvel would team him up with someone to get their action beats, but honestly, that would be kind of a shame. Just having a protagonist who outwits a powerful villain despite not having the same physical power level could be very uplifting.
Well, it's a little complicated by the fact that A Lot Of Asian Countries Do Not Like Each Other. Think having a Brit played by an Frenchman or vice versa. Ethnically not that far apart either, but there's probably going to be some geopolitically sourced butthurt. Now take that stick-up-ass feeling and replace it with a festering wound when it comes to the various Asian countries, especially with the history of the last century into account.
The idea that people from the same geographic region will play characters from another country, in a more ideal world that has already realized the distinction between those countries, and where the exact nationality of the role isn't important (like, a Chinese actor playing a Japanese agent of a multinational team versus a Japanese general in a movie about the WWII Pacific Theater or a movie specifically about life growing up as a Japanese geisha) is not significant, is generally a non-issue in principle. At least it should be.
However with East and Southeast Asian nations we have a problem where even with a more aware general audience the state of relations between the countries is going to cause some continued mortal offense at crosscastings anyway, which often has as much, often more to do with political tensions than matters of outsider racismnote . Hell Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China are the same Han race but you'll see a lot of anger on the sinophone internet anyway due to political tensions between them.
Now the fact that Klementieff is Korean instead of Vietnamese or at the very least Southeast Asian is a little aggravating since I share Nightwire's concern about the lack of specific representation for the Vietnamese outside of Vietnam War stereotypes. And there's that whole thing with unpunished Korean war atrocities in the Vietnam War that might understandably rankle feathers in some circles. On the other hand given that Mantis's Vietnamese nationality mostly amounted to some really noxious stereotyping beyond establishing her as ambiguously Asian it's probably one of the more expendable aspects of her character. That allows for some interchangeability and what may have ultimately been Ability over Appearance, even if the ideal situation would've been to maintain that Vietnamese connection in Doylespace.
edited 6th Dec '16 12:10:53 PM by AlleyOop
I would also point out that the "acting is about pretending to be something you're not" argument is the exact type of logic that people use to defend things like blackface and yellowface. And I would once again draw attention to the fact that treating all Asian ethnicities as being interchangeable is not equivalent to a white American actor playing an English character.note
A more valid equivalency to make might be a non-Jewish German actor playing a Jewish Holocaust victim. Or an English actor playing an Irish character - in a movie about British oppression of Ireland.
Wanting characters of a certain marginalized ethnicity to be played by actors of that ethnicity really shouldn't be a lot to ask, especially in a world where Interchangeable Asian Cultures is already a prevalent thing. (Not to mention the fact that, contrary to common white Western belief, Asian people of different nationalities do not look alike. There are plenty of people who can usually tell a Chinese person from a Japanese person from a Korean person at a glance.)
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."Memoirs of a Geisha. That sparked a lot of the discussion. There's really no consensus. Even during that conversation they had various Asian actors giving a multitude of different opinions about whether or not it was okay.
That specific example was pretty contentious because China and Japan kinda hate each other, so a number of Japanese people found Zhang Ziyi playing a Geisha to be a slap in the face.
...Really? The one with the most doubt about his skills is the one they have enough faith in to run two series before he's had a chance to prove himself on the first one? Unless it's because the showrunners on the other three Netflix properties are busy working on sequels and they don't actually care about the Inhumans spinoff so they're just throwing whoever's still available at it, and don't feel like scouting for someone new.
Has Iron Fist finished filming? Maybe the execs were just really impressed with it.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.I think Loeb has done a pretty good job as far as picking the right people for the right projects and letting them do there thing - can't think of anything in the MCU that has been outright panned yet, even the very worst of it is just 'okay, kind of dull' instead of awful.
As long as he doesn't get the itch to start writing again it's all good.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

And Comics!Mantis, and Karma of the New Mutants definitely have 'very'' uncomfortable shades of the latter, especially in their backstories.