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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Back when they cast Idris Elba to play Heimdall, I had about two seconds of "But Heimdall is Norse..." before I went "Feck it, Elba's a good actor, this will be fantastic!"

I did not feel that way about Arondir and Dísa. I don't know who these actors are, or if they're any good. I admit my memory is shaky but I don't recall back when casting Elba that there was all this guff about "Well ackshully Asgard is populated by many different races" and representation etc. Hogun was played by a Japanese actor, but the canon comics had Hogun being vaguely Asian, and the in-universe explanation is that he is Vanir, not Aesir. There you go, no problems with contradicting the source material (which is comic books and not pure Norse mythology). However, they still cast Chris Hemsworth and not Dwayne Johnson as Thor.

Black Dísa? Tell us that she is from one of the Eastern houses of the Dwarves, it's intermarriage between two royal lines. Don't beat us over the head with "That's racist!" when asking how come she is the only black Dwarf in the place. Give us a reason in-universe for this, instead of a parade of news media interviews about "I'm the first black/female/Dwarf ever!" (which people have pointed out is not true; there have been female dwarves and black dwarves in other shows and movies before).

I don't know what they have officially said or not said about the actors being black. I just got a bunch of articles about how so and so actor was flooded with hate for their role in the rings of power. I don't want to waste any time researching what was said back and forth by the creators (unless this turns out to be a popular show 5 years from now). Condemning them without knowing what they said seems premature, so I'll mostly withhold judgement. All I've seen so far is the advertising campaign, and that is what I'm judging.

Also, the Thor comic books only have a passing familiarity with the actual fables/myths. If someone was actually trying to dramatize the Poetic Edda, transracial casting would be a bigger deal.

There's no pretense that they're adapting the actual Norse myths, everyone knows it's the comics. So that at least is honest.

And if they were trying to do the myths, they'd have to have Loki transforming into a mare and giving birth to the eight-legged horse that Odin then rides, as well as Thor cross-dressing to be a giant's bride in order to get his stolen hammer back. Real mythology is way wilder than a few feeble attempts at "we are thoroughly modern Millie".

Even this show chickened out of showing the First Kinslaying, so we get the comic scene of the Elf-fleet sailing after Morgoth to Middle-earth For Great Justice (if you believe the voice-over in the prologue) with nary a word about all the Elf-on-Elf murder and theft. I know in large part it's because they don't have the rights to the material, but they shouldn't have touched any First Age stuff at all then. They have the simple plot-line of Elves Good, Sauron Bad and they're sticking to it desperately.

This is the real bone of contention. There is material there to do a Second Age story, but first they don't have rights to the source material so they're stuck with what is in the Appendices and second, they don't really want to do the story as it is in canon. They want their Generic Epic Fantasy Game Of Thrones Rip-off, just with names like Galadriel and Elrond pasted on the characters.

I could accept the compressed timeline and having Galadriel and Tar-Míriel and all the other characters interacting, because I realise that's necessary for the adaptation to television. I can't accept Bitchy Galadriel and Warrior Queen Regent.

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