I think someone at the CCC just found a completely unrelated website, latched onto the “boycott because X is portrayed by a black actor” bit and ran with it. The article implies that there is some reason to suspect a connection, without providing any evidence.
Stringer Bell is gonna be Heimdall? Weird and cool.
Vanir were the agricultural deities, I believe, usually depicted as fair-haired. Frey and Freyja were Vanir. Heimdal was an As.
Also, the conceit of Marvel’s Thor is that the Asgardians are extradimensional aliens with technology-advanced-to-magic, basically. So, go go diverse casting!
I’m not the world’s biggest Thor fan, but he’s been continually published since 1963, he had his own TV cartoon show in the 60s, and has enough of a pop culture presence to be referenced in movies like “Adventures In Babysitting”. Plus - and this is a big factor in the film’s favor - there’s no way Vince Colletta will get anywhere near this movie to ruin things the way he ruined Jack Kirby’s inks on the original comics. If they manage to capture the Kirby Grandeur, all that gigantic outer space gosh-wow cosmic stuff, they’ll have a hit.
Captain America - now THAT’s the movie I’m looking forward to.
But hobbits are supposed to be tan anyway, aren’t they? Or is that just D&D halflings?
As for black Heimdall, remember this is Kirbyfied Thor, where Thor is a blond. Hewing close to the Eddas is not required.
They shouldn’t take it so personal. It’s just business.
The current big thing in religion is that everything is just metaphorical. Don’t be so literal, man.
This story reminded me of a production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman I saw on DVD. They had a black guy portray the title character, and while it didn’t bother me (he was a good singer), I did chuckle when Senta sings to him, “O you pale faced dutchman,” but no…no boycott. 
And for quite a long time, Odin had 2 eyes.
This could be bad. Has a film has ever succeeded without securing the crucial white supremacist demographic?
Thor, in mythology, is depicted as a giant bearded redhead. I’ve met some black redheads , but they’re rare. Actually I’m a bit pissed off with the obligation, for US movies, to have their basic set of “representative” characters. Whatever the story.
I’m still waiting for a movie with a white guy playing Martin Luther King, and, off course, no outrage in the USA over it.
P.S: a black guy in a movie about Hercules could make sense, in the context of a movie about Asgardians, it is just more “obligatory quotas” forced down the throat.
And, Asgardians are not Eternals, they’re not multicultural quasi aliens like beings, they’re manifestations of the faith(s) of the Scandinavians.
Look, I’m not racist or anything, I’m just asking… would you want a black man to date your Valkyrie?
There’s a major difference between a mythological character like Heimdall, which 90% of the people will be unfamiliar with, and a major historical feature like Martin Luther King. But if it makes you feel better, we’ve had a white guy (John Wayne) play Genghis Khan.
Exactly. There’s a difference between a black guy playing Kingpin and a black guy playing John F Kennedy. If you can’t see it, that’s your problem.
Yes, the difference is that Kingpin is a crimelord in NY city, you dont have to rape all laws of believability to make it work (and in fact it didnt work, more because of lack of talent from the actor and the director than because of the actor’s skin color). Whereas Heimdall is a Norse god. This is just more James West bullshit.
It is completely patronizing blacks in plainly stating that they’re unable to inspire heroes and major characters, and the only option for blacks to play such a figures would be to blackwash a preexisting white character. In short, racism comes back full circle, this time with the trappings of political correctness. A little sugar in a turd pile doesnt make the turd pile more edible.
So, what - they made the gods’ doorman black? That’s not racist at all.
I wonder if Odin knows his name.
Lol, didnt think of it that way. Heimdall’s actually a rather cool chracter, and Idriss Elba is a very good actor. But forcing him into the role is stupid. If really they think there’s no problem with having blacks as Norse gods, they should have made either Thor or Odin black. Morgan Freeman as Odin, that would rock, if this is really where we want to go (though I guess if Loki was portrayed by a black actor, it would be called racism).
The Norse didn’t create the North gods in the mythology. So why would you expect them all to have the same skin color as the Norse?
Edit: So it’s stupid to have Heimdall be black but Morgan Freeman as Odin would be awesome? Nice turnaround.
The Norse DID create the Norse gods. At least they did up until the point I stopped reading comic books, that is the late eighties (maybe they were retconned since, or their retcon has since been retconned…). There is a quasi godlike group, posing as gods in the Marvel Universe. They’re very multicultural (the equivalent of Hephaistos is black), and a very good mix between SF and mythology (Chariot of the Gods like), they’re called the Eternals. Not the Asgardians. The Asgardians are white for the very same reason most Olympians are white, because they were produced by a “whitish” culture.
Hey, I’m just going with your own cheese here. As Alessan pointed out, the black role is for a relatively unkown character, basically they felt they HAD to have a black on the show, yet never had the balls to go all the way with it. Cowardice is one basic ingredient of political correctness. If you dont care about the skin color of your gods, you got to do that for ALL the gods, not just the ones the non-fans wont cringe about.
I don’t know very much about how the Norse gods are portrayed in Marvel so someone else will have to answer that.
I never spoke to their motives. If they included a black character so that people wouldn’t bitch, that’s either a cowardly move or a marketing decision, depending how you look at it. But it doesn’t matter to me because I’m not interested in this particular movie anyway. I just don’t think it’s necessarily stupid for there to be a black Norse god, according to my current understanding of how the mythology is handled in the Marvel universe- which is that the “Norse” gods visited the Norse a long time ago and the Norse started worshiping them.