It's been a minute since I saw Black Panther. But didn't they shoehorn Martin Freeman's character to add some white diversity as a token white guy?

It’s like making a movie about Themyscira, (DC I know) and having one of the main characters be a man.

Sure, it isn't necessary, but would he say the same thing about an all white or all male cast? That's the default, so having something to show the default isn't the only option is good too. As a cis straight white man, I don't give a fuck if there isn't a straight white man in a movie. Why should I? I see myself everywhere being validated. Let's give other people extra space because they've been denied it for so long.

It's mostly not necessary, just like it's not necessary to have an all-white cast. In the last few years I came to realize that colorblind casting doesn't diminish great art, just like it won't help bad art to become better. I'm not saying casting should always be colorblind, but in sci-fi and fantasy movies I don't see skin color or gender matter at all.

They should do what the comics did when they were told there needed to be more white people in Black Panther and just have him start beating up the KKK.

Because whenever a movie or TV show or video game has anything except a cis hetero white man as the main character, people like this start screeching. They aren't satisfied with having people that look like themselves represented in the vast majority of main characters. They view any time a character not matching the above description shows up in some kind of media as discrimination against themselves. Any slight reduction in privilage they mistake for real discrimination. They mask this by claiming they're just concerned with the integrity of the art or some nonsense, especially the gamer gate type crowd.

Anytime a gay character or a female character or someone pops up they start yelling, "why does this character have to be gay? It must be lazy pandering at the expense of a good story." To which I would pose the same question back to them. Any piece of media featuring a straight cis white man, why does the character have to be a straight white man? Must be lazy pandering at the expense of story.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's more interesting to have a wide variety of characters and stories in media. Sometimes people are just gay, or are just straight, or just female, or just male. It might have a big impact in a story and it might not. It shouldn't be "unless this is a story specifically about the gay/female/black experience the character must be straight/male/white by default." If that is going to be part of that piece of media, great, but it doesn't necessarily have to be depending on the story being told. You'll never see this crowd upset with a straight white male character for these reasons though, very transparent.

All this guy is basically saying is “why make a movie that isn’t exactly the way I think?”

Embedded in his mindset is the idea that black people don’t deserve their own audience.

Ok I am about to argue that having an all black cast in Africa is in fact racist.

So I did a very quick look through the 20 "black" actors that appear when you search "black panther cast" in Google. I selected every one with a character name.

Out of 20 exactly 2 are actually from Africa. And they are both from south Africa, notably not anywhere near the central African region of the mythical Wakanda.

So as an example; not only did they get say 90% of their actors to play, say, new Zealanders from Europe but just as a kick in the balls they got the rest from Australia.

As if being a COLOUR would be some great gesture as opposed to a linguistic and cultural identity.

That's without even touching the numerous examples where marvel has done the opposite and just plain got away with it because it is a piece of European cultural heritage they are using for profit like in the cases of Little mermaid and snow white.

For the love of God just make good movies. People will watch watch whatever tripe Disney puts out that has a large enough marketing budget. But dear God have they put out some "successful" pieces of trash in the last few years. Largely being shit because of the forced diversity.

That's not even addressing the problem of Black panther not really having anything black in it aside from the name. If they had any real balls they would make a Luke cage movie and actually address the issues instead of putting the word black in stuff and printing money cos it has "marvel", "disney" and "black" in the same sentence.

Disney is without a doubt very agenda driven lately. Their "represetation" agenda is useless bullshittery at the least and actively harmful to the cultures it tries to represent at worst.

He’s also upset that the black panther wore a black suit.

Oh, there's young racist fucks too.

I was out doing some outdoor work last week, and I've basically the skintone of a vampire so I cover up, so I had a big unstylish fishing hat with a neck protector on. And some kids from the local junior high mocked me in terrible Spanish as they walked home. (And by terrible, I mean I could identify how bad it was and I haven't had Spanish classes in 20+ years and never was fluent in it and I could still tell it was bad.)

I'm not even Hispanic, but it made me mad enough with it happening just one time that it hurts inside to know similar stuff happens on a daily basis to other people. And some of it totally comes from young racist fucks.

The mother of a racist is always pregnant.

Hate to break it to you but the majority of Americans disagreed with interracial marriage until the fucking mid-90s.

"My mother was a woman"

Wait, what? What psycho transformers movie is this?!

Edit: nevermind. I looked up the scene. Whatever the fuck was that?!

And let’s be honest, it’s not like they’re pushing anything immoral, obscene, etc.

While I agree with what you're saying, Disney didn't change the gender or racial identities of the characters he's complaining about.

Ms. Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel are all very well cast for their roles. They're practically plucked out of the pages of the comics, and match on race and gender identity from the source.

And Black Panther is about a super hero protector of a nation of black people. The answer to this racist's question is literally in the name of the movie.

Changing the design of a beloved character was always met with criticism and skepticism. When James Bond was made blonde by casting Daniel Craig there was as much of an uproar amongst the fan base as when Ariel was made black.

If a movie is good, people will accept the design changes, if the movie is bad people will blame the design changes. And some people just never get over the design changes and will refuse to give it a chance.

The discussion is just a bit more heated because of the current social and political climate. But that's mostly by people who don't even care about the movie and just use the topic to stir the pot.