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Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules still apply.

  • This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
  • While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
  • Spoilers for new releases should not be discussed without spoiler tagging for at least two weeks. Rather, each title should have a dedicated thread where that sort of conversation is held. We can mention new releases in a general sense, but please be courteous to people who don't want to be spoiled.

If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.

    Original post 
Since Thor and now Captain America came out this year, I wanted to get what Tropers thought of the concept and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. Personally I love the idea and wonder why this idea hasn't been seriously tried before. It sorta seems to me like the DCAU in movie form (And well, ummm, with Marvel), and really 'gets' the comic book feel of a shared universe while not being completely alienating.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM

PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#95676: Jan 26th 2019 at 9:00:55 PM

[up]You only need one, and I'm sure there's one out there.

wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#95677: Jan 26th 2019 at 9:06:03 PM

I mean, I posted a link a while back about the successful casting call for a 14 year old Asian-American trans boy. Open casting calls work, if you actually bother to do them.

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#95678: Jan 26th 2019 at 9:07:01 PM

You only need one, and I'm sure there's one out there.
You only need one if the only character you care about is Kamala Khan. But there are plenty of other characters out there that also need actors.

For example, I recommended Jameela Jamil play Faiza Hussain, mainly because Jameela Jamil is completely delightful in The Good Place and is in the same age range, is the same ethnicity, and even looks like as Faiza. But Faiza is a Pakistani-British citizen, while Jameela is half-Indian, half-Pakistani. Faiza is also Muslim and wears a headscarf, but Jameela isn't Muslim at all. Does that mean Jameela would be a bad fit for Faiza Hussain? Nope, it just means that sometimes you sacrifice the 1-to-1 similarities for a person you know would do a great job with the role.

And Jameela Jamil would absolutely kill in that role.

I mean, I posted a link a while back about the successful casting call for a 14 year old Asian-American trans boy.
But what if the only people who audition are 15 or 16 years old? I understand the need to specify "Asian-American" and "trans," but the age thing seems a bit weird. People play older and younger all the time.

Edited by alliterator on Jan 26th 2019 at 9:08:55 AM

wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#95679: Jan 26th 2019 at 9:17:54 PM

I was just giving an example of how it was possible to match a very specific set of criteria.

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#95680: Jan 26th 2019 at 9:31:04 PM

Right, but then again, they don't specify an actual ethnicity. They only say "Asian-American." Is the character supposed to be Japanese-American, Chinese-America, Korean-American? So the casting call is actually less specific in some regards, while more specific in others.

I'll give a different example: when casting Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna wanted the love interest to be an "Asian bro" which they named Josh Chang. The actor they eventually hired was Vincent Rodriguez III, who was Filipino-American, so they changed the character's last name to "Chan" instead of "Chang," since that fit more with Filipino ancestry. In fact, after they settled on his ethnicity, they decided to get a lot of things right about the Filipino culture. But before they cast him, they didn't yet have a specific ethnicity and instead built it around the actor's own.

You can't exactly do that with characters you are adapting from other works, because those characters come attached to ethnicities already, mostly. The only thing you can do is hope you find someone who fits, but, again, the more specific you get, the smaller the audition pool is going to be. (Even Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did this when casting Josh Chan's family — his mother is played by the amazing Amy Hill, who has Japanese and Finnish ancestry, even while everyone else in his family are played by Filipino-American actors.)

Edited by alliterator on Jan 26th 2019 at 9:37:11 AM

HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#95681: Jan 26th 2019 at 9:53:52 PM

I find it a bit silly trying to make some manner of hard rule on this as it is the kind of stuff that can only really be judged on a case-by-case basis.

Sometimes the casting lucks out and they find someone that's a 1:1 of the character, other times they have to accept that practicality won't budge from the seat next to the biscuits; most of the time you end up having to compromise somewhere.

Personally, I think Marvel should go the whole nine yards with Kamala Pokedex Nº115, her being one of the biggest new characters to come out of Marvel Comics and just having a lot of cultural significance in today's Usonian society.

Edited by HailMuffins on Jan 27th 2019 at 1:15:07 PM

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#95682: Jan 27th 2019 at 3:44:45 AM

I suspect that they will do the same they did with Tom Holland and make a wide call for a young talent anyway. Which limits their options from the get go, because they need to find someone with enough raw talent that she can already carry a movie at this age and stack up against seasoned actors. That is not easy to do.

Shake-Master Since: Dec, 2013
#95683: Jan 27th 2019 at 4:08:38 AM

Its fucking Disney. If they don't have a mechanism in place to find and recruit young actors, what the hell have they been doing for the last 60 years?

IronScope STOP. RESETTING. MY. DISPLAY. OPTIONS. from Somewhere Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: I like big bots and I can not lie
STOP. RESETTING. MY. DISPLAY. OPTIONS.
#95684: Jan 27th 2019 at 4:13:45 AM

Manipulating copyright law in their favour

This place is careless.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
eligram Since: Sep, 2009 Relationship Status: In denial
#95686: Jan 27th 2019 at 7:18:42 AM

Researching the technology to revive our future overlord Walt Disney?

HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#95687: Jan 27th 2019 at 8:17:07 AM

Getting all the money in the world so they can build a new solid-gold planet from which to plot their conquest of the universe and the death of that meddling fool, Flash Gordon?

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#95688: Jan 27th 2019 at 8:26:25 AM

Well this conversation took a weird turn.

At least tell me that in this theoretical dystopia where the mouse reigns supreme that we have a Pakistani American actress playing Kamala Khan.

Edited by windleopard on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:32:20 AM

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#95689: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:20:58 AM

Someone's religious persuasion should in no way be any reason to not cast them if they're part of the ethnic group. Even if we put aside the continued and kind of uncomfortable assumption that there can't be any good actresses who are both Pakistani and Muslim, religion is an aspect of practice and tradition, whereas culture group is something you represent by birth for better or for worse.

The appeal to casting a Pakistani actress in the role of Kamala is that it gives representation to a overlooked culture group. Also casting a Muslim would be a plus, but because the ethnic representation is such an inherent in the person being cast it absolutely should not be a dealbreaker. And plus, because religion is after all a matter of practice it would actually be better for the director or writers to be Muslim than all of the actors and actresses, because they're the one ensuring that the characters and the setting are respectful to that practice.

And either way, throwing out the need of cultural representation because "wait, she'd have the be Muslim too" is - to be frank - an excuse, and poor one at that.

This kind of logic tends to always be problematic - "well, we're going to cast by what's convenient, because we can easily assume that there's certainly not any competent actors in the culture group we need" - and I primarily remember it being used by Hollywood and fans as an excuse to cast white actors and actresses in nonwhite coded roles (like in the ATLA movie, or Dragonball Evolution). It was fallacious then, and its fallacious now. Not to mention patronizing and actually somewhat insulting to the group being discarded.

And what's more, it's exactly the sort of thing the character of Kamala Khan was made against.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:23:08 AM

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#95690: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:31:46 AM

And what's more, it's exactly the sort of thing the character of Kamala Khan was made against.
Huh? Kamala wasn't made against poor casting decisions. I mean, the character herself would be against those poor casting decisions, but the character of Kamala Khan was made by Sana Amanat and G. Willow Wilson (and artist Adrian Alphona) because they really hadn't seen their own experiences reflected on the page — specifically, Sana Amanat, who is a Pakastani-American who grew up in New Jersey. While they wanted to see their own identities reflected on the page, I'm not sure if they were even thinking about the eventual on-screen representation.

Beatman1 Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Gone fishin'
#95691: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:32:18 AM

[up]On the plus side, the two examples you mentioned ruined the careers of the people who were cast. So that should increase the reluctance to take such a role.

Unsung it's a living from a tenement of clay Since: Jun, 2016
it's a living
#95692: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:34:15 AM

[up][up]And what, you're saying you can't see a correlation between people wanting to see their experiences represented in comics and people wanting to see their experiences represented in film?

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#95693: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:39:11 AM

Kamala was made against an environment where Pakistani and Middle Eastern people were portrayed through a hostile social lens, and where characters who represented Pakistani culture and ethnicity, were respectful in that portrayal, and proud of that respectful representation were unheard of, even taboo.

Yes, not casting Pakistani actors and actresses was part of that. Yes, making excuses not to have brown actors and actresses in roles that may have been built for them was part of that, as a primary way to facilitate the former. So yes, doing the latter to try and justify doing the former would be exactly against the kind of problems that the character was made to overcome in the first place.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:43:47 AM

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#95694: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:40:30 AM

And I would put much more importance on involving them into the making of the movie than who is cast in the role...

Unsung it's a living from a tenement of clay Since: Jun, 2016
it's a living
#95695: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:42:27 AM

[up][up] Psst. You'll want to make sure you use Pakistani, not Paki. The latter is a slur in the UK and many Commonwealth countries. [down]No worries, you didn't know.

[up] I just don't really see why there's so much pushback to even trying. Yes, it might be a little more difficult. But this is the star of your movie, this is the face of all that it represents — why not go to a little extra trouble?

Edited by Unsung on Jan 27th 2019 at 10:45:36 AM

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#95696: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:44:07 AM

Oh, wow. Thanks. Really sorry.

And yeah, this is one of those things where I'm flabbergasted and disappointed that people that there's even a vehement argument against it. It costs so little to try and do, and gives so much.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:45:26 AM

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#95697: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:45:35 AM

And what, you're saying you can't see a correlation between people wanting to see their experiences represented in comics and people wanting to see their experiences represented in film?
Yes, there is a correlation, but correlation doesn't equal causation (yes, I know that's now what this phrase is generally used for, but go with it). Kamala was made by comic creators because of what they were seeing in comics (or, rather, not seeing). They were not looking immediately towards casting her in a film, because that's really not the way comics works (unless you are Mark Millar). In fact, G. Willow Wilson felt that the book was going to be cancelled in six issues.

Casting issues, while correlating to what we see in general media, don't really come into comic book creation, because you can cast whoever you want in a comic book, it's up to the writers and artists. Saying that "Kamala Khan was made to push back against all-white casting decisions" is a narrowing of the reason she was created and just plain wrong.

Edited by alliterator on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:46:45 AM

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#95698: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:45:49 AM

And I would put much more importance on involving them into the making of the movie than who is cast in the role...

I wouldn't.

If Kamala isn't going to be an unusually sympathetic portrayal of the Pak-American experience, then what's the point of even doing a movie about her? If the options are "No Ms. Marvel film" or "A movie about Camilla Conover, the white-as-snow redhead with stretchy powers who fangirls over Captain Marvel", I'd rather just not have the movie, thanks.

If you aren't going to do it right, then there isn't a point in doing it at all.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 27th 2019 at 10:46:12 AM

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#95699: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:47:35 AM

"A movie about Camilla Conover, the white-as-snow redhead with stretchy powers who fangirls over Captain Marvel"
*vomits forever*

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#95700: Jan 27th 2019 at 9:48:38 AM

Yes, there is a correlation, but correlation doesn't equal causation. Kamala was made by comic creators because of what they were seeing in comics (or, rather, not seeing). They were not looking immediately towards casting her in a film, because that's really not the way comics works (unless you are Mark Millar).

Comic writers aren't idiots, and they don't live under rocks. They know full well that the things they're trying to combat in the comics industry are a microcosm of things that are present in media and society in general.

None of them are going to go "these social issues I'm dealing with are all well in good in print, but they cease to matter once these characters leave the comic format."

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:51:16 AM


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