I loved Dr. Stange, and the Defenders.

"May, do you want to go to prison? It might be Taco Tuesday."

There's been a lot of grump about whitewashing the Old One.

Yeah, and a lot of fans in my section of fandom Not Talking about it because people are really pissed about the whole movie for various reasons, some more valid than others, and are going full blackball about it.

I think the justifications for it are mostly BS, but I must admit Swinton is the best possible choice they could have cast to get me to see the movie over my objections.

Apparently the movie is very pretty to look at, while the story is rather muddled.

I don't know anything about the character beyond what's revealed in the trailers. The origin story seems full of sketchy Orientalism and I give a side-eye to the whitewashing of the Ancient One. But Tumblr response seems extra screechy above it, even more than usual. Just a few days ago, someone I follow said "if you reblog any Dr. Strange gifs without explicit criticism of its casting choices, I'm gonna unfollow you immediately." And I was like, really? *sigh* You're tempting me to reblog shit about this movie I don't care about just to see if you follow through.

someone I follow said "if you reblog any Dr. Strange gifs without explicit criticism of its casting choices, I'm gonna unfollow you immediately." And I was like, really? *sigh* You're tempting me to reblog shit about this movie I don't care about just to see if you follow through.

Yeah, that kinda thing is why I'm not on Tumblr much any more. Yes, I wish they'd handled casting better. Yes, we need more and better roles for non-white people in US movies. No, I don't think continuing to be interested in the movie anyway makes you an irredeemably bad person. Most media is problematic in one way or another. Push to improve things and don't dump on people who just want to pay $10 to sit in a dark room and forget that Trump has fans for two hours.

I've hear people flat-out say you are no longer allowed to consider yourself an ally if you watch it.

These are the kinds of people who give any kind of social justice a bad name.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me the thing that really turned me off about the casting kerfuffle was more about the response from the filmmakers and the studio than it even was about the casting of Swinton itself. When pressed, they were basically like, "We need to make money. China doesn't like stuff about Tibet, so we couldn't make the character Tibetan" which I guess means that the character then automatically had to be white? I don't know. It was a ham handed response and they haven't done any better at addressing the issue as the controversy has continued to roil. I'll admit, I'm conflicted. I will probably wind up seeing the movie anyway, but handling the PR fall out has been poorly done on Marvel Studio's part. Very poorly done. Also, the whole "We can't make money if we cast POC" thing needs to die a horrible, horrible death. Quickly.

"We need to make money. China doesn't like stuff about Tibet, so we couldn't make the character Tibetan" which I guess means that the character then automatically had to be white? I don't know. It was a ham handed response and they haven't done any better at addressing the issue as the controversy has continued to roil.

There's an interesting interview that addresses it more thoroughly and with mixed results (linking to the start of a Twitter thread about it). [link]