Now a black superhero himself, playing “Falcon” in the upcoming Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you should have expected that Anthony Mackie would have something to say about fanboy backlash against Michael B. Jordan being cast as the “Human Torch” in the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot.
Mackie shared his thoughts in an interview with ComicBook.com, stating: “It’s crazy how much they know, and if you deter from that, it’s like ‘Well, that’s not authentic.’ You know it’s not real. It’s made-up, so we can change it. ‘No, no, that’s not right. No, he’s real.’ Alright.”
He also makes it clear about his friendship with MBJ and the reality of superheroes, adding: “Michael B. Jordan is a very good friend of mine. I’ve known him since he was a teenager, and I’m so happy, for more than anybody else for him to be getting the accolades he’s getting, because he deserves it… I think with these type of movies, everything else aside, you need a good actor. Michael B. Jordan is a good actor, black or white. So what you have to realize is, and go back and forth and just say, ‘Superman can’t fly, Batman ain’t real, the Human Torch don’t really set himself on fire and fly around the room, so he can look like whatever they want him to look like.’ You just have to allow yourself to see him that way. And if you can’t do that, that says something about you.”
What Mackie said seems like common sense, but it’s a shame that some people just don’t see it that way, and by “some people,” I mean fanboys. Maybe it will give fanboys some solace to lean that the producer on this reboot of Fantastic Four, Matthew Vaughn (director of X-Men: First Class) said that this reboot will be darker than the previous installments.
Via Empire Magazine, Vaughn stated “Its a total reboot, that’s for sure. It’s got nothing to do with the other bloody ones. It’s not stretchy guy and a guy running around in rock that looks like it’s made of polystyrene. And its not a comedy.”
Truthfully, a comment Michael B. Jordan made about the brouhaha, when TMZ caught up with him recently, says it all: “They’re still going to see anyway.”
