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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.
If you think Zendaya is hotter than Gal Gadot you need to get your eyes checked. She's not unattractive, but she has a very underdeveloped body for an adult woman. She's mid-pubescent for a healthy, on track to be very attractive, woman.
Gal Gadot has a very similar body, i.e. very flat, no?. She also has a very similarly 'needs proper angle to be attractive' face. Gadot's side profile is awful, for instance. I was under the impression she was only considered so attractive because she expresses a lot of jewish phenotypic traits very attractively. Unlike someone like Natalie Portman who is very attractive but in a very gentile way.
Both Gadot and Portman look extremely Jewish. Actually Portman looks more Jewish, because Gadot could theoretically be like half-Greek, half-Levantine or perhaps even half-Balkan.
Hard disagree. Portman looks more jewish now in her older years, but young Portman doesn't look jewish at all.
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