I Don't Want an Asian-American Iron Fist

[HeWhoSlapsAll]

I think they should go Hispanic with this.

Not Black, as there's a few other Black Heroes-for-Hire type characters.

Not Asian, for what's said in the article, and because that could mean no Shang-Chi. Plus, if they were going to go this route, Daniel Wu would've been perfect, but he's already doing a similar show in Into the Badlands.

Not a Caucasian, because the MCU is like 90% white.

We don't have any Hispanic/Latino heroes on the big, or small, screen, so Marvel could get the jump on that since they've literally missed every other boat. Hell, he could be half Hispanic/Latino, and half Asian!

[AdamPallydin]

Read the entire article over looking for any mention of Shang-Chi and found nothing. Come to the comments and half a dozen members bring up the Master of Kung Fu. Glad I'm in good company.

[Sighphi]

Shang Chi was created first when kung Fu was getting popular.
So it's not like Marvel just created white characters because it was the thing in those days.

[Gryphon]

Read the entire article over looking for any mention of Shang-Chi and found nothing. Come to the comments and half a dozen members bring up the Master of Kung Fu. Glad I'm in good company.

I was shocked to find out Marvel is reprinting it now

[jonny_anonymous]

They cast an Asian American actress as Elektra who started out as Greek descent? Personally to deal with all this sensitivity on either side of the argument, I think they should cast an Asian American, but then actually play with many of the stereotypes by acknowledging them and breaking them down. Subvert expectation. Could make for interesting TV.

No they didn't, they cast a French-Cambodian as Elektra.

[John Aston]

Casting on this should be based on a combination of acting and athletic ability (preferably some knowledge of martial arts). Or else, editing can't hide old-wrestler-kung-fu forever. Of course, I'm assuming the show will be martial-action driven.

[Gryphon]

If they do cast a white actor then I hope Christian Howard is considered for the role.

[kalorama]

Iron Fist is on his base level a white stereotype character
The fact that a character like Shang Chi exists in the same niche but with almost none of the acclaim makes the idea of Iron Fist being Asian in the netflix series irrelevant.
Daniel Rand is a white man, fine
Almost all the Iron Fists before him were asian. Why did this change? because Danny Rand needs to be a rich white man instead of an asian man apparently

I don't think the notion that Iron Fist is greatly more "acclaimed" than Shang-Chi really holds.

Shang-Chi was able to sustain a solo starring series for more than 110 issues, whereas Iron Fist's original solo series got cancelled after 26 issues (the first 11 being a solo feature in the Marvel Premiere anthology book) before he and Luke Cage got bonded, basically in a desperation attempt to save them both from the ax. The odd couple vibe worked and the book ran for another 70 or so issues before it got axed. But both Iron Fist and Shag-Chi have had spotty endurance records as solo characters since then (as has Cage). The only thing that Iron Fist really has over Shang-Chi in terms of "popularity" is that Fist has traditionally had much stronger, more deeply rooted ties to the rest of the Marvel Universe whereas, for most of hid solo run, Shang-Chi was largely set apart from the rest of the MU. He would occasionally appear in Marvel Team Up with Spider-Man or Iron Fist in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Marvel's B&W mag, but the rest of the MU had almost no presence in Shang-Chi's own book. Yet, even with that decreased crossover visibility, Shang's book outlasted Iron Fists.

[WakeupNow]

2nd that, you don't need to change the race of characters we need new and interesting characters. Marvel has already created characters from video and added them into the Marvel U so it's time for that to happen to include other races. Danny being white was part of the characters central growing through the best Iron fist stories about the past incarnations of the Iron fist and other immortal weapons and lets face it iron fist was totally b or c squad till then, and that's being generous.

Why can't there be other weapons on different continents, etc. It's not like every continent didn't have their own form of martial arts or combat anything like that. We need creators who get to know the cultures and make interesting characters that can stand the test of time.

Plus who doesn't want to see Luke cage and Iron Fist whooping @ss like it was the 70s again in a retro episode where they go undercover in a disco. It just works and you don't mess with what works.

[The Canceler]

I don't want them casting an Asian-American as Daniel Rand, because Daniel Rand is not Asian-American. It's like Stan Lee said: don't change already established characters, create new ones that are more diverse. And why would it be "problematic" (the censor's favorite buzzword) for an Asian-American to be good at martial arts? Stereotypes on their own are not racist. Stereotypes exist because culture exists. If you were to make fun of stereotypes, or use those stereotypes to generalize, then that would be racist. You can't effectively say that ethnic minorities can't represent their own culture and, in the same breath, say that other minorities can't appropriate that culture.

I'm not going to say that lack of representation isn't a problem in comic books, because that simply isn't true, but changing and rearranging is not the way to do it. Comic books should never get to a point where the established universe cannot be expanded upon. There is always room for more new characters.

[kalorama]

I honestly don't understand why Marvel would prefer Iron Fist to Shang Chi.

Partly for the reasons I stated in my previous post, that Iron Fist has more deeply rooted ties in the larger Marvel Universe. But also because, even though Shang-Chi himself is a wholly-owned Marvel character, he was spun out of a licensed property (the Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu pulp novels) that Marvel no longer owns the rights to. So trying to use him in movies or TV could present some legal and or creative issues as they try to dance around his roots. It probably also doesn't hep that Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy had a habit of creating supporting characters that were based on movie stars of the day or were homages to other licensed characters that Marvel didn't own. (Clive Reston, a British spy who was one of the main supporting characters in MoKF was generally believed to be, although never explicitly identified as, a descendant of both James Bond and Sherlock Holmes.) One of the complications arising from a character whose most active period came in the days when a characters placement in external media wasn't really a consideration.

[King's_Gambit]

How about we just stop the goddamned race-bending? Clearly, Hollywood is basically addicted to it at this point.

The idea of an Asian Daredevil, for instance, which the author brought up, sounds absolutely putrid. Matt Murdock's Irish American background is crucial to the character. In fact, all of the candidates for Asian race-bending raised by the author sound horrible.

Then he brought up Amadeus Cho and the support for him. Well guess what? I love Amadeus Cho. And he's a new character who happens to be Asian, not someone whose race was changed by a Hollywood board meeting looking to hit a diversity quota.

(for what it's worth, I'm an Asian dude).

[HeWhoSlapsAll]

Still, if Marvel does get a white actor, it better not be the result of a "White, Blonde Males Only" casting call.

It's about getting the best actor, unless the ethnicity plays a crucial role, which it doesn't here. At all.

If he's white, let it be because he beat out EVERYONE that tried out for the role.

[Miracleman]

I don't have a problem with diversity,what I don't like is just changing it for the sake of making a quota. I am fine with Amadeus Cho being the next Hulk...What I am not ok with is just making a movie or retconning it in comics that Bruce Banner never existed and that it was always Amadeus Cho...just because it's the trendy thing for SJW's to just remove anything caucasian out of some sense of white guilt.

Stan Lee was interviewed by Larry King and asked why have their never been more minority based characters. Stan Lee at his ripe old age even said "we wrote characters based on the people and interactions we had growing up" given in his time he probably associated with other people of the same skin color as it was in his time. I will not,and would never blame or accuse him of not creating more diverse characters that he couldn't know how to write.

As far as Iron Fist,it's Danny Rand. That's it, 2nd if you look right now actually the new character BlindSpot is DD's protege and is Chinese American if I am not mistaken. So like I said,representation is coming,just not as fast as people want.

I like more organic creations like that,also like the Runaways comicbook characters. Hell Victor is one of the best in diversity,half robot/half mexican american.

[Lot 49]

It's going to be about marketability. If Marvel Studios thinks that an Asian or Asian-American Iron Fist will play better in China, then that's what they'll do...