Another Awesome Idea!

So, one of the soon to film projects I'm watching is Margot Robbie's Birds of Prey.  She'll reprise her Harley Quinn and also produce it.  Casting has been a hot topic on a bunch of comment boards all over the parts of the net I frequent.

Today we learned that Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been cast as Huntress and Jurnee Smollett-Bell will play Black Canary.  Not super familiar with either, but Winstead looks like she could come from Italian stock which fits the background of Huntress.  Smollett-Bell is African American, so naturally heads exploded at her casting as Black Canary, most often portrayed as a blonde Caucasian woman. 

While the Huntress has a specific backstory that makes it fairly important to cast a particular race (she's the daughter of an Italian organized crime boss), Black Canary has no particular history that requires her to be cast as a certain race as far as I'm aware.  Unless you count how she's been painted by comic book artists over the years, that is.  I don't.  If there's a character driven reason for race based casting (Black Panther, Luke Cage, Huntress e.g.) then fine.  If not (Superman, The Flash, Spider-Man e.g.) then I really don't care, beyond the question of acting ability, just who plays the part.  Sure, I like Henry Cavill as Superman but I'm sure I'd love the right non-white actor in the role.  Same goes for most superheroes and villains. 

As usual, the casting "controversy" surrounding a comic book character is silly.  The character has been portrayed by an actress of Latina descent in Arrow already and more to the point, she's not based on anything but imagination.  Black, white, green, purple - so long as the actress can act and convinces the audience, who gives a shit?

And I've seen, heard and shot down all that bullshit before.

As always though, the best part of one of these tempests in a tea cup comes up in a most unexpected way.

The villain of the piece is going to be a never before seen in live action character, Black Mask.  In the comics and animation, he's basically a bad ass gangster who wears a black skull mask.  Usually the mask can't be removed, leaving his race a bit undefined.  He's one character that almost no one could complain of being race bent, since we really have no idea of his race beyond what usually look likes Caucasian skin in the hands and neck. 

What I want to blog about here is an offhanded comment, intended to be a sarcastic shot at the idea of racebending in the movies.  A commentor on the casting of Smollett-Bell suggested that as a follow up, the producers would cast Meryl Streep as Black Mask.

I would watch the shit out of that!