The blended family bit was distracting, and smacked of shoehorned-in tokenism. The movie should have just cast a black lady as Susan, then we wouldn't have had to watch Kate Mara's narcoleptic performance.
shareNo, it should have just cast a blond dude as Johnny. But that would require Josh Trank to not engage in nepotism.
shareApparently, Josh Trank wanted to be "progressive" by casting black Johnny. But he kind of shot himself in the foot when he refused to audition non-white actresses for Susan, didn't he?
"How come nobody's ever tried to be a superhero?" - Dave Lizewski, 2010.
A friend told me he saw an interview where Trank said that he knew families where they had mixed ethnicity by adoption. The problem is that by doing that to Sue and Johnny, you change what's up with their characters in that Sue is the older sister who's had to fill in as Johnny's mom as well. You don't get that dynamic that was in the 2005/2007 movies where Sue rebukes Johnny and you get the idea that this has been their relationship for some time.
I get the idea of changing a character's ethnic origins where ethnicity isn't the defining thing about the character, but when that leads to changing how the character works, yeah, not a fan.
What we see and what we seem are but a dream. A dream within a dream.share
And not to mention, it was clear the studio only let him do so because they wanted to say "hey look! We're more progressive than the MCU because we had a black guy on our team before the Avengers did!" not realizing what was gonna happen at the end of AOU.
Plus, if he did want to change a character's ethnicity, why did he do it to the one who's portrayed as rude, selfish and impulsive, and portray as even more so than his comic counterpart?
"How come nobody's ever tried to be a superhero?" - Dave Lizewski, 2010.
Ironically, at the end of AOU there were two black guys on the team (Rhodey and Sam), an Eastern European (Wanda- although the actress isn't), and a robot/android (Vision).
"Too bad YOU...will die." -Worst. Line. Ever.
I know right! :)
Even better when you realize Michael B Jordan was asked to play Falcon but he chose F4 instead. Luckily for him, the MCU remains a safehouse for unwanted Human Torches.
"How come nobody's ever tried to be a superhero?" - Dave Lizewski, 2010.
He was asked to play Falcon? Never knew that.
"Too bad YOU...will die." -Worst. Line. Ever.