My favourite explanation for the lack of Chinese people (that I read somewhere, perhaps on the Dope some time ago), was that they were all in happy, stable relationships. And this being a Joss Whedon show…
When it comes to stewed prunes, are four too many, and two not enough?
He’s quoting Groucho Marx for reasons that are unclear to me.
Michael Clarke Duncan as The Kingpin in Daredevil
Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor.
These have been mentioned already.
Because arguing what percentages of ethnic make-up make an ensemble “black” or “white” is stupid and counter-productive.
Plus, Groucho Marx is always appropriate! 
And again, I repeat my request for a quote from someone involved in the movie who said the role was specifically meant for a white actor but the ethnic actor was too good to pass up, as opposed to a role specifically set aside by the casting director to be a minority.
His point is these are not roles that were designated white that then got cast black due to the black actor having a crazy good audition. These roles were intentionally cast black to diversify the cast. One could argue that the movie role was always going to go to a minority despite the pigment of the comic book. If anything its tokenism.
At least thats what I think is going on.
Since I’m a good sport, I’ll point to Much Ado about Nothing, where Denzel Washington plays a role that would make more sense if he were white, especially since he is European royalty and the half brother of Keanu.
Wilson Morales: Many comic book fans know that Kingpin is portrayed by a 6’7 430 pound white guy. When the casting of Kingpin came about, how were you brought in the picture? Did you auditioned for the part or were you called?
Michael Clarke Duncan: They called me and offered me the role. The director called me and wanted to have lunch. I thought he was going to offer me something else, maybe a smaller role. When he said he wanted me to play Kingpin, I look at him and said “You know the guy is white, right?” He said yes and still thought I was the best actor for the job and the people at Fox thought I was the best actor for the job. After he told me that, I didn’t have a problem playing the role.
http://blackfilm.com/20030214/features/michaelclarkeduncan.shtml
The actor himself thought the character should be white while the director and the studio executives thought a black man was the best person for the role.
I always thought the casting was right on, given that the people in the Serenity 'verse started from a small population and that there was therefore much cross-racial breeding going on. The marriage of Wash and Zoe shows that such relationships are considered absolutely normal.
If anything, Wash is the outlier being light haired and blue-eyed. Almost everyone else in the cast looks like a person who is of mixed-race heritage. Even Kaylee has some vaguely oriental features, and Morena Baccarin and Summer Glau have somewhat exotic features. The ‘black’ people on the show trend more towards mulatto.
Anthropologists will tell you that this is generally the fate of the races on Earth as well. Globalization brings cross-cultural contact and interbreeding, with the result that the human of the future will probably look more like the cast of Firefly than the cast of Baywatch.
If you don’t believe in races, then what difference does it make if the cast is “almost all white”?
That’s still not what I asked for. I’m tired of typing it out.
We’re even then.
Kim Fields got the part of “Tootie” in the Facts of Life. She was the only African American to audition among a sea of white girls.
And a dubious example… Sun-Hwa Kwon auditioned for Kate on Lost (a part that eventually went to a white woman), but they liked her as an actor enough to create a new character for her. Still a positive step for Asians on TV, right?
Wicked has famously race-blind casting: Joel Grey/Ben Vereen playing the same part, among others.
Michael Clarke Duncan’s character in The Finder was also originally a white guy in the book. Guy gets around.
It does happen. Maybe not as much as it should. But it does.
I don’t think Wicked counts for this discussion; that’s Broadway, not Hollywood. Nor is it unprecedented. If I recall aright, Phylicia Rashad was the second actress to play the Witch in Sondheim’s Into the Woods, the first being Bernadette Peters.
Really? I doubt it. The two most devastatingly attractive men I ever met were half Asian, half caucasian, and the Asiatic features were very obvious and clear. A relative is half Korean, half caucasian, and her Korean heritage is clear in her looks.
I have relatives of purely northern European origins who look Asiatic, probably due to long distant Siberian origins showing up in the genetic shuffles.
What are you doubting? I have a pretty good understanding of what Asian people look like having grown up around them and being one myself. I also have a pretty good understanding of what my own nephews looks like.
I’m not saying that part Asian people CAN’T look Asian, only that part Asian people looking not very Asian at all is commonplace. The existence of a counter-example does not disprove this.
Cast a white woman as Storm in the next X-Men movie and there will be riots.
14, I think.
The characters were both originally white. How does that not fit your hypothetical?
Hence the “almost all-white cast.”
The character “Red” from Stephen King’s novella* Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redepemption *was a white guy who wound up being played by Morgan Freeman in the movie The Shawshank Redemption.
Similarly, Freeman’s character Ned Logan in the original script for Unforgiven was white, or at least presumably white and they never adapted the screenplay when Eastwood chose Freeman for the role. That’s why you had the odd scenes in the movie where when describing the characters to men trying to track them down references are made to “an old guy on a gray horse and a young guy on a white horse” instead of referring to “an old black guy and a young white guy” and why none of the white rednecks in the whorehouse blink when Ned goes upstairs with a white woman under each arm.
That said, generally Hollywood clearly prefers it the other way around.
The movie 21, about the MIT black jack team, where a bunch of Asian-Americans were turned into white guys was a perfect example(admittedly the movie bore little relation at all to the real story).