Comics books have their base audience, but even their characters have diverged from their normal roles. From zombies, to vampires, and even there were some comic books which catered to the ethnic audiences per se. The fact of the matter is that while many of the characters are iconic based on who these people are...we cannot ignore the fact that ideas can be tinkered with and in the case of the casting...as long as they can deliver a strong performance, their ethnic identity should be of no issue.
Not a fan of Thor, but as a fan of book and comics that have been adapted into movies that have been horrible; decisions that deviate too far from the story world are often signs of a bad movie.
And what kills me most is people are bitching over a minor character its not even like its Loki or Odin or eve Thor himself.
And if Thor or Odin (batman, superman, spiderman....) were played by a Black man, using your reasoning, you wouldn't have a problem with it. If these people had consistent reasoning I don't see why they would particularize according to the importance of the character. Of course they are not consistent, they are racist, but you and others are arguing and conflating what seems like different subjects to me: The unimportance of accuracy of myths in movies in general, and the racial misrepresentation of figures by Europeans using Jesus as an example.
Either you should feel it doesn't matter from a story basis of being just “the movies” (a marvel comic), or feel because european art has misrepresented racial historically depicted subjects (real or not) that it doesn't matter or shouldn't be a problem when a historically depicted white subject is depicted as black. To me these are different issues and if you believe in artistic story/integrity at all, previous and current white hypocrisy shouldn't matter.
And yes, Heimdall, is a historically depicted white subject and given the cultural dynamic of the last 2,000 years, so is Jesus. Whether it's wrong that the biblical depiction of christ (along with the early black paintings and sculptures of him) has been “whitewashed”, or the modern art of cinema has done the like: owes to the fact whites created motion pictures and europeans have been the arbiters of Christian thought.
If this and other white depicted roles given to Black actors are a recompense or as tony soprano said:
every good movie needs a strong black actor, They needed someone to fill a meaningful role and they want the movie to give love to us in a way the comics didn't is one thing, but along the lines of what Flying Geek said, I think just because whites have a history of fudging doesn't mean that we should find the same thing acceptable when a historically white character is removed.
If it's insignificant because it's a marvel comic that's another thing, but I'll say again after seeing many bad comic adaptations, that changing the story is often a sign that the movie will not be good. Excuse me while I go search for other movies on norse mythology.....and see whats been done previously......
What did you guys think of Beowulf?