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Their switch-over of Liet-Kynes to a random black woman for diversity points alone shows how badly the Director's understanding of the Dune universe works; a very wide but shallow puddle that completely misses the mark.
I didn't see the first one, won't see the second one. Don't even get me started on them showing off the Sardaukar homeworld.
Fun aside; None of the movies ever get the Padishah Emperor right. In the books he's described as a youthful, thirty-something redhead. Yet they always have him as an old man past his prime. Pity.
I'm pretty sure they cast the character as an African woman because the actress playing Chani (Zendaya) is biracial, and if her father is going to played by European Javier Bardem, one African parent is necessary for her ethnicity to make sense.
Although frankly I'd have preferred if they'd recast all the Fremen with Arab actors. It may not be canon, but in my head the Fremen are Bedouin, damnit!
That still boils down to diversity, hence my critique and criticism of the movie as a whole.
And yes, the Fremen should have been Arabic.
I really don't think Zendaya was mere diversity casting. She's a popular actress and her character is described in the books as being 'skinny, with an elfin face' and having 'darkly elfin features'. When I heard she was being cast as Chani, I immediately thought she was the perfect choice. And if we're in agreement that the Fremen should have been Bedouins, well, here's what a real Bedouin girl looks like. You can hardly claim Zendaya is too dark to play the sci-fi version of her.
Doubt. While my experience with most modern movies is fairly limited, everything I've seen of her is the metaphorical equivalent of a cudgel - an ambiguously brown women/girl they can shoe-horn and pretend everyone finds attractive, and if you point out the obvious race-switching, they make the typical noises about racism.
She's not even that good an actress, from everything I've seen.
I've only seen Zendaya in the Spiderman movies and Dune, so I can't speak to her acting chops, but I can't disagree more on the idea that people are pretending that she's attractive. IMHO she's easily the most attractive prominent Hollywood actress right now. Maybe Rebecca Ferguson and Gal Gadot might come close? In any case, purely based on looks and ignoring any acting skills, her apparent popularity seems entirely justified to me.
I can't even think of there being any particular hubbub about her race in casting decisions. Even in the super hero movies she was in - a genre notorious for filmmakers accusing fans of bigotry in recent years - her casting as the character-equivalent to the traditionally red-headed white woman Mary-Jane was basically a non-issue, similar to Sam Jackson being Nick Fury.
Maybe that's true, I'm not much for the movies or Hollywood. But I'd then say that there is a dire lack of actually attractive 'prominent Hollywood actresses' right now.
Hollywood has been ethnically cleansing its movies of redheads for a while now. A quick Google search will reveal that there is plenty of discussion on the topic. If there hasn't been any hubub in 'recent years' then it would only be because it's an old culture war that was has been completely lost by 'team red'. More and more of those.
Over time one would expect the red headed population of the United States to decline (excepting further mass immigration from Scotland and Ireland), surely?
I'm failing to see the relevance. The decline of the total red headed population in the country would not need to have any bearing on how Hollwood casts a comic book character drawn in the 1950's. If anything it would seem like a great opportunity to represent a desperately underrepresented minority.
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