To be fair America and her mothers weren't really dark skinned under McKelvie
To be fair America and her mothers weren't really dark skinned under McKelvie
Last edited by Beetle; 10-16-2020 at 11:04 AM.
A small few people are speculating that alternatively, she could be playing a character named Zelma Stanton. Haven't heard of her before, but I guess this offers another possibility. We shall see
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Zelma...on_(Earth-616)
We know the Young Avengers are being set up though, so that + the Multiverse makes Chavez waaay more likely
Love is for souls, not bodies.
We don't know for SURE if it's the same role that was supposedly America yet, but the actress being on the age range for that role (14) definitely seems to point that way. My opinion remains the same: I still think it's weird that they'd be casting someone that young for MAC, but let's see what happens. At least this actress looks a bit more ''actual teen'' compared to the other girl from the leaked audition, who literally looked like a 10 year old. That's an improvement.
I guess that would be ok, but I also fear that if they end up introducing someone from the UP who's kind of like America but not really her, it could backfire. Like, what if this character becomes super popular in the movie and then they don't wanna get rid of her, so they decide to stick with her and she ends up hogging the spotlight from America? That could be a problem...
Not officially, no. I've discussed this on this thread, but Marvel never promoted her as a black character the same way they do with other black heroes, so I don't get the impression she was ever supposed to be canonically afro-latina. I think a lot of people envision her as afro-latina because of the work/coloring of some artists, but even that is inconsistent. The fact that her backstory is so messy and she's not even human makes her ethnicity be very muddy as well, because she doesn't have a specific point of reference in her origin. We know she was raised all over Latin America, so she's just... a little bit of everything. So I get why the casting for this specific role might've been wide and not so limited to one specific ethnicity.
As for canon skin color; when in doubt, I say look for the character's first appearance. That is usually the best reference, which brings me to this point:
To be even more fair, THIS is how America looked as designed by her co-creator, Nick Dragotta:
I'd argue Nick and Jamie are probably the most important artists when it comes to America, because one of them created her, and the other one reimagined/popularized her. As you can see, neither of them made her look like an afro-latina. So I don't think this is a whitewashing situation like with Sunspot. If anything, it seems like it was the other way around: America was created as a lighter-skinned brown person, and some artists after Nick/Jamie didn't get the memo. Honestly, Marvel should have some guidelines for coloring characters, specially characters of color, to avoid confusions like this. A consistent palette that must be used for specific characters would surely help.
Also, since I'm already seeing some people refer to Xochitl as ''white'', if you look at this picture of her besides an actual white person, you can clearly tell she's not white, and her skin color is not that different from Nick/Jamie's America:
I would have no problem whatsoever with a darker-skinned actress getting the role, but I definitely don't think this casting is as problematic as the stuff that happened in New Mutants, for example.
Originally when the first casting call for the role arose and it only mentioned her being latina, I definitely thought it was for Zelma. However, that leaked audition changed my perspective, because the characterization and story there definitely felt more like America than Zelma. I guess it's possible they could be changing Zelma for the MCU, but I don't know, every insider who came across the information for this movie seems to believe it is America. If it talks and walks like a duck....
Last edited by Drops Of Venus; 10-16-2020 at 02:13 PM.
Even if she is playing America, I'm not sure if she'll be playing a final version of America or just a younger version of her compared to the one who ends up on the Young Avengers.
Don't know why they'd bother casting her for this movie just to immediately recast her. It's not like Cassie where the actress wasn't even 10 years old. I don't see why they couldn't just keep the same actress at 14 to play America in the inevitable Young Avengers show in two or three years.
This casting is lowkey making me dread not only who we get as the twins, but also what storylines they might get after WV. Like, god forbid I have to sit through early teen Billy getting Andi Mack'd and having some hokey-pokey Disney channel coming out storyline for Disney to pat themselves on the back for, especially since Teddy completes the whole nerd-jock romance trope that was in that show (the love interest of the gay character was even on the basketball team!) I just... I know stuff like that isn't for me, but I don't want to live through years of Billy going through that, especially when he was able to come out quick and move on to greener (hehe ;p) pastures in the comics.