Is the internet going to shit its pants over the fact that Kenneth Branagh has been going multicultural with his casting in the Thor movie? First he hired a Japanese guy to be one of the Warriors Three and now he’s cast the distinctively black Idris Elba to play Heimdall, guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifrost that connects Asgard, home of the Norse gods, to Midgard, which is a dweeby way of saying Earth.
Heimdall’s rarely a major player in Thor stories, so it’s likely that Elba is in a very supporting role. And honestly, I love the idea of casting colorblind for these roles; Jack Kirby redesigned the Norse gods into his own technomagic style so much that many of them are barely recognizable from mythology. And while the Norse were among the whitest motherfuckers to ever rape and pillage, why couldn’t their gods represent the whole of humanity in appearance?
I’m actually sort of excited to see if the usual racist suspects raise their heads, or if Idris Elba’s iconic work on The Wire has made him ‘one of the good ones’ in the eyes of the Fanboy Aryan Nation.
via the HeatVision Blog
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